Universities are already thinking about how to accommodate Generation Z. Born from the mid-1990s onwards, they are today’s students and prospective applicants. This generation has grown up with technology, the internet and social media shaping their education and interaction, and universities are already looking to harness their entrepreneurial and collaborative learning styles. But what about their successors, Generation Alpha, who are still being born?
Karen Gross, a former senior policy adviser to the US department of education, thinks universities need to start thinking several steps ahead. She’s written a book, Breakaway Learners, arguing that universities shouldn’t just be reacting to the new students who enter their doors, but rather seeking to understand the coming cohorts as they make their way through the education system, from nursery school up.
Why is it important to think about the differences between generations?
I think it’s fair to say – at least in the US – that education happens in silos. University professors expect to teach students who look like them, act like them and learn like them. But staff need to be made aware of how young people are learning in the schools, particularly students who will be very adept at technology like Generation Alpha. In fact, this summer there was a toddler coding camp at a university, so there are lots of settings where that could happen.
One of the things that’s most troubling to me is that we do staff development within our disciplines, but we don’t do it horizontally across the educational pipeline. So people who teach really young children should be talking to college professors about how young kids are learning coding and how to use computer programmes and games. If professors don’t see how they’re learning when they’re young, they won’t be able to optimise and leverage how those students can learn in university.
What differences will there be between Generations Z and Alpha?
It may be a little early, but my instinct is that there will be two large differences between Generation Z and Generation Alpha. The first is the technology will be deeper in terms of socio-economic penetration. The prevalence of technology will not be in hands of the elite, but all kids, whether at school or at home.
The second major difference, in the US at least, is that the diversity of the alpha generation will be even broader. The data is showing that more and more diversity in terms of race, ethnicity and religion will be permeating the population. You need institutions that are culturally prepared for the fact that the students they are serving will not look like or come from the backgrounds that will resemble the staff who will be teaching them. In the US, academic staff tend to be largely white, the product of elite institutions, and of middle to higher socio-economic status. So recognise who your students will be, and think about how you can serve them optimally.
What should universities be doing to prepare for the arrival of students who are still babies?
Universities have to realise that how education happened in the past is not how it will happen in the future. What we currently do, is we say “oops, there’s something wrong with these students – we’ve got to provide more of something” – mediation, mentoring, summer programmes, whatever. Those are fine, but they will not solve the problem, which is that institutions haven’t adjusted to the students. You need to embrace the students that you will have and spend time coming to understand how they learn.
We need to change institutional culture. Paulo Freire writes in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (pdf) that most education is viewed like banking: we dump information into the head of the student, but that’s one-way education. Reciprocity requires an engagement between staff and student. Being a sage on a stage won’t work much longer – you’re going to have to learn how to be a guide on the side. That’s a tough transition for many staff.
We will have a generation of students, many of whom will be first in their families to go to university. Universities need to help students make wiser choices about how they choose what’s of interest. Thirty-two majors is not necessarily better than 16 areas of concentration.
Is reasonable to plan for the university landscape 20 years ahead?
I think you have to think about it like chess. If you don’t think five moves ahead, you’re behind. For me the idea that you’re planning ahead and thinking through the implications of the future is not only wise but also necessary. Otherwise you’ll be continually reactive instead of being proactive. A lot of what you would be thinking about would help not only the alpha generation but also the z generation. It’s not like generations have a cast iron wall between them.
In the US, change within the academy isn’t fast. The sort of rule of thumb is that what you can do in one year in the business world takes three years to accomplish within the academy. If you want to make change you should start early and create a culture that enables quality change to occur.
If a university doesn’t have enough bandwidth, plugs or charging stations, or doesn’t have enough staff who are using technology, you can’t wake up and suddenly fix all that when the alpha generation arrives. You have to plan and think through what the next generation will look like.
What motivated you to write your book?
I was the president of a university where almost 50% of their students were Pell eligible, which means low income, and 70% were first in their family to go to college. I realised very early on that these were not the students I was used to, and the kind of questions I was being asked and the issues that were coming up were not ones I was accustomed to and that we had to change how we did things. So we have to reframe our job and how we do it. We have to think about educational success for these students differently. It isn’t just getting them into university, through university – it’s also making sure they launch in the workplace. So our jobs are bigger and harder.
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