Universities vs. Millennials by Dr. Vladi Dvoyris
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This document discusses tensions between universities and Millennial students and proposes solutions. It summarizes research finding differences between how Millennials see themselves and how teachers see them. For example, Millennials prefer empathetic role models, guided supervision, and positive feedback. However, lectures have been the dominant teaching method for centuries. The document argues for collaborative learning and transforming universities into entrepreneurial ecosystems to attract investors and venture capital. Rather than seeing Millennials as the problem, they could be part of the solution to modernizing universities.
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Universities vs. Millennials by Dr. Vladi Dvoyris
- 1. UNIVERSITIES VS. MILLENNIALS What went wrong, and how to fix it?Dr. Vladi Dvoyris, DMD MBA
- 2. INTRODUCTION
- 3. L J van der Merwe et al., How we see ‘Y’: South African health sciences students’ and lecturers’ perceptions of Generation Y students, AJHPE 2014;6(1):10-16 WHAT DO MILLENNIALS THINK OF THEMSELVES AND THEIR TEACHERS THINK OF THEM? 47.50% 28% 71.30% 71.50% 56.70% 93.30% 46.70% 54.40% 89% 93.90% 82.10% 95.50% 90.50% 80.90% 29.70% 86.80% 88.20% 29.70% 0.00% 10.00% 20.00% 30.00% 40.00% 50.00% 60.00% 70.00% 80.00% 90.00%100.00% Millennials think that the internet is more than technology - it's a way of life Millennials prefer the anonymous, open online environment Millennials prefer empathetic role models Millennials need motivational leadership Millennials need guided supervision, preferably by an older mentor Millennials are used to following rules Millennials want immediate, personal access to lecturers whenever it suits them Millennials prefer positive feedback, because negative feedback is destructive Millennials grew up in a structured, organized environment Percentage of agreement on a Likert scale
- 4. ONE CANNOT TALK ABOUT MILLENNIALS WITHOUT MENTIONING THESE SEMINAL MAGAZINE COVERS…
- 5. THE INTER-GENERATION CONFLICT IS AS OLD AS THE WORLD… 1862 “Previously young people had been expected to learn. Because they didn’t want to appear to be ignoramuses, they worked hard willy-nilly. But now all they have to say is: Everything in the world’s nonsense! And that’s that. Young people are delighted. The fact is that previously they were simply dunces and now they’ve suddenly become nihilists.” Pavel Petrovich in Fathers and Sons
- 6. IS THIS THE WORST GENERATION EVER? Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders. Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune, 1-Jun-1997
- 7. THE TRUTH Millennials are confident, vociferous, know what they want and have higher expectations. Thus, they are prone to disappointment when these are not satisfied.
- 8. ALMA MATER
- 10. TODAY, THIS MONOPOLY NO LONGER EXISTS In the USA, there has been a recent decline in enrollment to both colleges and graduate schools.
- 11. COLLEGE DROPOUTS ARE THE NEW ROLE MODELS
- 12. WHY DO WE FEEL DISAPPOINTED? How many students in this class actually participate in the lesson?
- 14. Scott Freeman et al., Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics, PNAS, 2014 (111), 23, 8410-8415
- 15. THIS HAS TO GO… Lectures were the predominant form of university learning since the founding of first European universities in the 11th century… Isn’t it time to change?
- 18. THE PROBLEM
- 22. GOOGLE CAN’T THINK FOR YOU!
- 23. HAYS – Gen Y and the World of Work
- 24. THE UNIVERSITIES OF THE FUTURE WILL BE A FERTILE GROUND FOR THE GEN Y ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT
- 25. A MEETING PLACE BETWEEN PLAYERS OF THE UNIVERSITY VENTURE ECOSYSTEM
- 26. ATTRACTING INVESTORS AND VENTURE CAPITAL TO THIS MEETING PLACE WILL CREATE A UNIQUE ECOSYSTEM, GREATLY BENEFITTING ALL STAKEHOLDERS: • Current students and staff – the entrepreneurs • Angels and VCs • The university • The labour market • Prospective students • Government and taxpayers
- 27. MILLENNIALS ARE DEFINITELY NOT THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSITIES THEY MIGHT BE THE SOLUTION…
Editor's Notes
- My wife is a university lecturer in music theory. A new semester comes, and she starts getting these emails from students: “Please reassure us that we don’t really need to read the textbook…” ”Please tell us that the exam will repeat itself from last year…” “Please tell me this course is going to be easy-peasy as they promised in the Facebook group…” I usually find her staring at these emails speechless, asking anxiously: “Are these my students? Who am I teaching…” And then I get e-mails from students I mentor towards their theses, and they’re practically the same… Is she alone at this? Are we alone? Definitely not.
- Here we have the results of an interesting South-African survey among more than 600 millennial students and their university teachers. The teachers had to agree or disagree with certain sayings about millennials, and the millennials were to agree with the same sayings about themselves. We can see here that while there are several sayings – about motivational leadership and the fact that millennials prefer empathetic role models – where both types of respondents agree; but the strongest disagreements are when the teachers think, wrongfully, that their students prefer to be online – which is, apparently, not the case; And when the teachers don’t think that millennials are used to following rules – as a matter of fact, they probably do, but are these the same rules? And when the teachers disagree that millennials grew up in an organized environment. This one is the funniest, because – guys, these are your kids. You are the environment. Bear the consequences of your behavior. So what is the reason of this misperception?
- I think these magazine covers, published at Time magazine and the New York magazine, set a trend, when it’s perfectly okay to dismiss millennials, because the older generations misperceive them as narcissist, lazy, self-centered, self-entitled…
- However, the inter-generation conflict is as old as the world. You see here a quote from Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, published in Russia in 1862. Same thing – Pavel Petrovich, a representative of the older generation, tells us how worthless these youngsters are. The only thing that changed is that technology and knowledge change and transform much faster than ever before, thus the periods of time defining a generation have collapsed. I’m 33 years old, and I can barely understand 20-year-olds, although a mere 13 years separate us.
- So here’s a nice summary of these misperceptions. Everyone just wants to hear how their generation was better, smarter, more modest, more patient. But guys, you don’t remember yourselves when you were young. Mary Schmich here summarized it much better, it even became a song.
- If this generation is so bad, how can you let them protect you? There is no shortage of soldiers willing to serve in combat units. And look, they’re taking their phones to the battlefield!
- Then, they arrive at the university – and it’s an utter disappointment. They realize that the university isn’t about them – it’s first and foremost about research.
- Ever since their inception in the 11th century, universities as we know them had a monopoly in three key fields: Research – there was no other place to research anything aside of academia, which back then belonged to the church. Teaching – and if one needed to learn anything from philosophy to history to science, to medicine, he had to attend a university. And Societal Service – by creating this new knowledge and passing it on to students, universities were a beacon of light in a sea of darkness, teaching the brightest minds and turning them into professionals in their field.
- Today, this monopoly no longer exists. Knowledge is ubiquitous and abundant, and in the recent few years we can see a decline in enrollment to colleges and graduate schools – these are data from the USA. By the way, it’s interesting to notice that when the economy is booming – less people will go to college than in times of recession. Even big enterprises, like Ernst and Young, understand already that degrees matter less when it comes to the real world and job recruitment – so they dropped the requirement. One can be smart without a degree. So the societal service goes – you don’t need a university to supply professionals any more.
- Like these guys, who are perfect role models for the younger generation. And by the way, we spoke about societal service, but what about research? Well, I can assure you that commercial companies do wonderful research – which is both more relevant to the market, and probably comes at a lower price tag.
- But then we come to these younger students and tell them that they still have to go to a university and get a degree. And they come there, because for some professions – like medicine or law, or engineering, you still have to get a diploma or license no one else would give you. And they are utterly misguided and disappointed. Why? Let’s try and think – among the maybe 500 students sitting in this classroom, how many actually listen to what the lecturer has to say? How many are not stuck in their phones or Facebook pages? If we’re lucky, we’re talking about some 10 per cent. Maybe less.
- And no, it has nothing to do with acquired technological attention deficit. I remember being a student in a big hall packed with 200 students. There was the lecturer somewhere down below. He was talking about chemistry. We had no laptops, no smartphones, no WiFi in class – all I had was a pair of eyes, a pair of ears, a pen and a notebook. So nothing to interrupt my attention, right? I lost track after 15 minutes and almost failed that class. Remember, it was before we knew of problems with attention span, before we even talked about Gen Y. As a matter of fact, most students who took this class with me were slightly older than me – they were Gen X, and for them, it was only natural to sit in a 200-person classroom and try to catch bits of molecules from the lecturer down below. As their parents and grandparents did before them. For us, the 18-year-old millennials who happened to be there – it was a torture by boredom!
- And indeed, researchers from the University of Washington in Seattle reviewed 225 studies of examination scores or failure rates when comparing student performance in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. They found that the odds ratio for failing was 1.95 under traditional lecturing. When we talk about odds ratio, it usually means that we start from the end-result (in this case, the failure) and look backwards – so they went to the students who failed, and looked into how they were taught. And they found out that almost twice as many failing students went to traditional lectures than to active learning. Now, prospectively speaking, students in classes with traditional lecturing were 1.5 times more likely to fail than were students in classes with active learning.
- Frontal lectures will disappear in the nearest future. If you are still having students come to compulsory lectures – you’re killing their enthusiasm. You’re killing their learning, too. And they will show it – if you require compulsory attendance, they will drag their feet into class and sit there. And they will be very busy with their laptops – but you’ll never know whether they are looking at something that has to do with the class, reading their “Facebook” or calculating their tax returns. And while, being a student, I can perfectly understand it – being a lecturer in such a class (and I have) is a terrible experience. It sometimes feels like talking to a wall.
- Collaborative learning in small groups, with enhanced participation possibilities, is the only way anyone would learn anything. What happens if you still have to lecture?
- Well, MOOC’s – massive online open courses – have solved this. You can record your lecture and let students view it in their convenient time.
- But then we have another problem. Knowledge is abundant and ubiquitous today. If one wants to learn something, he can take an online course. And why take courses, when you have all you need to know on Wikipedia?
- If a dentist or a surgeon wants to learn a new procedure, he can watch it on YouTube. Would you go to a dentist to undergo a procedure he learnt on YouTube? As a matter of fact, you do already – you just don’t know it. I learned minor surgical procedures on YouTube and performed them successfully.
- Is this the only value proposition of universities? This nice slick piece of paper? So what if it’s from Harvard – I have a laser printer at home, I can print one too and put it on a wall – will someone ever notice?
- Along the recent years, we have learned that our generation has specific learning traits, and awareness to these traits can greatly improve learning. Let’s take a look at them. The first two may seem like a nuisance. We have very little tolerance for delays. If I need to know or check something – I immediately go online and check it. If I send you an email – I expect it to be answered promptly. If things don’t happen immediately – and in learning they seldom do – we tend to get bored. What can you do to fight it? Two things. The first one is dividing your teaching material into much shorter, smaller segments. The second one goes along with the next point, which I already mentioned earlier – collaborative learning.
- I must say not everyone is suitable for sitting in a group of friends at a library – but collaborative learning has many forms. Some people, like myself, collaborate greatly over e-mail – but are quite bad collaborators in meetings due to a very short attention span. What else? Trial and error. We’re not ashamed of losing anymore. This is something the “Start-Up Nation” prides itself on –the ability of our entrepreneurs to start over after a failure, and the acceptance of failure. So then, if that is the case, we can be more playful, less logical, and try different, sometimes intuitive solutions.
- What else? All of us now have an acquired Attention Deficit Disorder. We’re surrounded by information, sounds, and visuals attacking us from everywhere. We have desktop notifications, phone notifications, some of us have both – we’re driving with the radio and listening to the GPS, when suddenly an e-mail gets in, and you have this fear of missing out – you must look at the email right now, despite the fact that you’re in the middle of the road. This is surely an information overload, but we can use this as an advantage. If you have a student who grew up with a lot of visual stimuli, you can use visuals to teach him. If he has a short attention span – give him a video with infographics and narration – and believe me, he’ll learn from it much better than he would have from a textbook or a lecture. Give him a hands-on approach, because then his hands and mind would dismiss the other, external and unwanted stimuli. Anyhow, for this generation, doing is more important than knowing. We have ubiquitous knowledge, we have enormous amounts of information – every bit of data in the world – accessible from our phone. So really, when the personal computer or a smartphone is an extension of our brain – we don’t need to store this much information inside. We might store just the things we like or care about. Results and actions matter more. Thus, gaining knowledge should no longer be the aim of higher education.
- A good university, a good teacher is no longer there to inform its students – it’s there to transform them. This is the only value proposition we can offer. We are there for the students to help them compile something meaningful out of the building blocks they may be able to get by themselves. They don’t need to remember anything anymore – but they need to understand how to interpret the huge amounts of information they get.
- Because this is something Google’s PageRank still can’t do for them. Increasingly popular theories are still scientifically unsound, no matter how much you write about them. Search “vaccines cause autism” on Google, and then search it in a scientific search engine – and see by yourself.
- Finally – the millennial generation is a generation of entrepreneurs. As a matter of fact, this is the most entrepreneurial generation we had. This the last chart I’m going to show you. These come from a research spanning 1,000 Chinese 18-30 year-olds. As you can see, making money is important to them – but acquiring knowledge and expertise is almost as important, and a significant part of them wants to be challenged constantly. 30%. Do you remember that I told you that when you lecture, only 10% listen? So there’s another 20 percent waiting for a challenge in the same class. And 94% either have their own business or want to have one. Damn right. I am an old Gen Y, and I had my own business from the moment I graduated college. Yes, I also had a regular job and I was a military officer – but I also had a small business, my own little piece of heaven.
- The universities of the future May: Take advantage of the millennial entrepreneurial spirit Support them in creating their own businesses Channel their personality traits and abilities properly
- A university can benefit greatly by becoming the meeting place between investors and young entrepreneurs
- Students and staff will be able to take advantage of university tools to test their ideas. Angels and VCs will be able to invest in slightly less riskier ventures, knowing that there is a body of knowledge behind them. Thus, we may be able to collapse the value chain, shorten the time between a venture investment and the return. The university may benefit from the ventures within it – by taking a share from each company or patent raised under its auspices, as it usually does, or by attracting funds to previously unfunded research The labour market will benefit from creation of new jobs within the companies mature enough to leave the campus. Prospective students will see the great deal going on within the university, and would like to become part of it. And above them all – the government and taxpayers, who will no longer ask “why do we need this research for”.