I <3 college
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| | Brought to you by Liz Hilton Segel, chief client officer and managing partner, global industry practices, & Homayoun Hatami, managing partner, global client capabilities
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| Welcome back! This week, we’re looking at the Gen Z college experience.
| | | It’s September, which means we’re transitioning from tomato girl summer to tailgate season, aka back to school. What’s top of mind for college students and faculty this year?
For those of us off campus, social media offers a glimpse of life at American universities. RushTok is back. This time, more brands are finding ways to insert themselves into the sorority rush phenomenon, which has some parents paying $4,000 for consultants to help their kids land a bid at the most coveted Greek-letter houses. But it’s not just outside advisers who are cashing in—the students themselves are finding ways to subsidize their pursuits. Two years after the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of student athlete compensation (which means #sponcon is now on the table), student athletes are making up to $25,000 a post. Hellloooooo, Cavinder twins!
Outside the sororities and the stadiums, meanwhile, students, professors, and administrators alike are confronting a handful of topics that could fundamentally alter the higher-ed experience. The buzz around generative AI? Still buzzin’. Educators are wondering whether to embrace the technology in the classroom or consider it the enemy. For what it’s worth, Gen Zers who learn gen AI skills now may have a leg up in the workforce later.
Speaking of technology, schools are also trying to find the perfect mix between online and in-person learning. Surveying 7,000 students who moved to online classes during the pandemic across 17 countries, McKinsey senior partners Jonathan Law, Jimmy Sarakatsannis, and coauthors found that almost 65 percent of students said they want “aspects” of their learning experience to remain virtual. Many students prefer a hybrid educational experience, citing fears of becoming more distracted by studying only online. Getting bored and lacking the discipline to stick with online classes were among the other reasons students preferred to keep in-person schooling in the mix.
But there’s an even more urgent issue for college professors and school administrators to think about: students struggling with the curriculum. In 2022, data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress in the US showed K–12 students falling behind in test scores after the pandemic. It seems that problem is also apparent at the university level.
Increasingly, Gen Zers are enrolling in majors (computer science) and expressing an interest in fields (finance) that they think will land them high-paying jobs in their postgrad lives. Great! But one final, if not comforting, point: making college the most fruitful experience it can be doesn’t mean focusing on grades or résumé builders alone. According to one professor, who also authored a book about burnout, “College is a unique time in your life to discover just how much your mind can do.”
| | | | | | | | | Generative AI has greater potential to assist in tasks performed by workers with bachelor’s degrees or PhDs.
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— Edited by Alexandra Mondalek, editor, New York
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