What is the most educated generation

As millennials rethink the value of a college education, younger generations are turning towards apprenticeships and vocational schools to meet their education needs and avoid getting stuck with a large bill.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. While millennials are the most educated generation, they are broke compared to their predecessors.

College graduates born in the 1980s are less able to build wealth compared with earlier generations, as many have to go into debt in order to complete their education. Since 2013, student debt has grown by around $600 billion.

For every high-school student who graduates college and finds a job that leverages her degree, four fall short: They either never enroll in college, drop out, or graduate and wind up underemployed, says Oren Cass, executive director of American Compass, a conservative think tank.

3. Americans aren’t turning their backs on education; they are reconsidering how to obtain it.

Enrollment in short-term credential classes during the pandemic increased by 70% to nearly 8 million over the same period last year, according to Jonathan Finkelstein, chief executive of Credly, a digital credentialing network. That increase came as freshman college enrollment dropped by 16%. Students are also looking at vocational schools or apprenticeships as other options. The number of apprenticeships nearly doubled to more than 700,000 between 2012 and 2019, according to the Labor Department, and they are expanding beyond trades into white-collar industries like banking and insurance.

Companies like Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are launching programs which certify vocational competence and lead to well-paying tech jobs in or outside their companies. Google said it would treat the certificates as the equivalent of a four-year degree if students apply for a related role at the company. What remains unclear is whether this model can supplant the massive symbolic value of a four-year degree earned straight after high school.

Read the original article by Douglas Belkin here.

Millennials also known as Gen Y, Gen Next, the Me Generation and Digital natives, currently comprise some 80 million within the US population. Of that 80 million, 55.2 million are currently in the workforce and they are slated to be 75% of the workforce by 20201. Not since the Baby Boomers has a generation so radically changed the face of the American landscape. Millennials are vastly different from the Gen Xers who preceded them and are changing the way in which we do business, buy products and communicate. While many industries have quickly adapted to this force to be reckoned with, higher education continues to lag behind and is wholly unprepared in its ability to cater to this new generation.Millennials were raised by extremely attentive parents and given tons of praise leading them to be very confident, even if their confidence is somewhat unwarranted. They are a highly optimistic generation and err on the side of social consciousness, justice and corporate responsibility. They are more liberal than previous generations and have a greater need for social justice. And while they enjoy money and what it can do, they are not as driven to accumulate it as much as previous generations. They work to earn enough to do the things they need to do. They have a greater need to have life experiences rather than to accumulate material wealth, even though they do like to acquire things that will help them to enjoy those experiences.

Millennials are the most educated generation. According to the PEW Research center, some 63% of Millennials value a college education and plan to get one. Of that number, 19% have already graduated from college and the remaining 44% plan to graduate from college. Some 27% of Millennial females and 21% of Millennial males have college degrees. This is in stark contrast to only 20% of Gen X females and 18% of Gen X males. An even further contrast is the comparison to the Baby Boomers of whom only 14% of females and 17% of males have degrees. Not only are Millennials the most educated, but they are continuing the Gen X trend of more women earning degrees than men.

With their increased levels of education and having had the best that education has to offer – from K-12 to college – Millennials are now a generation shouldering student loan debt to the tune of 1 trillion dollars. Because the price tag of education is now so high and continuing to climb each year, Millennials have become very savvy about their education choices. Unlike previous generations who saw education as a rite of passage and an investment in their future, Millennials view education as an expense. More importantly, Millennials view education as an expense which is unnecessary unless it is going to lead them to an outcome they are actively seeking to achieve. They will choose to not go to school until they find a good fit both for program, as well as how they fit culturally within the institution. This is a huge shift from prior generations.

How to engage millennial students

Long gone are the days when educators could stand in the front of a classroom and pontificate expecting students to hang on their every word. Millennial students disengage fairly quickly if they are not actively engaged in the education process. Engaging Millennial students in the classroom and learning process can be accomplished by implementing the following six items.

Ensure that students have a hands-on methodology with the material.
Ensure there are mentors in the subject matter that can be the instructor but should also include guest speakers and other industry experts who can give students valuable information not found in the textbook, as well as personal anecdotes and feedback about their own life and work experiences.
Allow Millennial students to bring their own experiences into the learning process thereby actively engaging their prior learning in the process.
Engage in the use of technology with apps, blogs, social media and gamification.
Allow Millennials to use their naturally collaborative skill set to work in teams to accomplish learning goals.
Encourage social responsibility in their projects as a way for students to bring their personal experience and philosophies into the learning process. Millennials value experiences and so they like to travel, volunteer and do things which make them feel better about themselves. They are serving a greater purpose than themselves.

This is a generation that has been labelled as lazy, but they are not. They simply are motivated to work on things which interest them. Millennials see little value in simply doing something, unless it’s adding value to something they already see value in. Lectures, activities and/or assignments that are viewed as non-valuable will not be completed. Educators will want to demonstrate that course activities are tied to the learning outcome which the Millennial wishes to accomplish. Millennials do not see the need to do work simply because the instructor thinks it’s important. Millennials themselves need to see it as important and/or valuable. If Millennials find there is a constant disconnect with their education and/or their instructor, they will opt out and simply either drop the class or drop out of school. They are NOT the ‘grin and bear it’ generation. They expect to see an immediate and continued ROI if they are to remain in school.Millennials are labelled as spending all their time playing on their phones or video games. What many educators fail to realize is that these behaviors give them inherent skill sets which need to be properly harnessed and utilized. Millennials are extremely comfortable with technology, hence their name digital natives. They grew up with smartphones, tablets and the internet. Information was always readily available to them. Unlike previous generations, technology does not scare them. They expect to have technology incorporated into their learning environment. They went to classes online in high school. Computers and tablets were a part of their formative learning. They use apps on their phones to complete a variety of tasks. Failure to use and implement technology in the classroom and learning experience will disengage this population since their expectations are not being met.With regards to their rampant video game playing, the rise of gaming is a global phenomenon with this generation. There are gaming tournaments and some colleges now offer scholarships and internships for gamers2.The piece that most educators miss with gaming is that these are young people who often live in different states, countries, time zones and speak different languages. Yet, they have created a means to work collaboratively across space and time in order to play together. This is an amazing accomplishment of teamwork and collaboration, and one effective schools will note. This is something to be lauded and utilized within the work and education environment, and not seen as a hindrance to productivity or education. Instead, educators will want to find ways to use gamification within their classroom and learning environment to create further classroom engagement.

Two areas for which Millennials are often vilified is their (a) connection to social media, and (b) their lack of soft skills. The solution to this is quite simple. Millennials prize social media because it gives them connections and ties them to social referent powers. Schools and educators want to mimic this process. They may do this by engaging with Millennials using social media, as well as providing Millennials with referent powers in the form of truly engaged faculty members and experts in the field which they are pursuing.

Preparing Millennial students for employment

The top 10 things that employers seek in order are: Leadership skills; Ability to work as part of a team; Strong written and verbal communication skills; Decision making and problem solving skills; A good work ethic; Technical Skills; Initiative; Digital Literacy Skills; Professionalism; as well as Specialized Knowledge in the form of Honesty, Integrity, Accountability, Self-Regulation, and a Healthy Self-Image.Core to Millennials are (a) the ability to work as part of a team, (b) ability to quickly acquire technical skills, (c) digital literacy skills and (d) a healthy self-image. The areas of leadership, work ethic/initiative, communication skills and professionalism are the missing pieces that employers refer to as lack of soft skills within the Millennial demographic. It, therefore, becomes imperative that educational institutions build these skills into their programs if they wish to satisfy employers. Educational institutions can do this in a variety of ways.

First and foremost, curricula needs to focus on problem solving initiatives. An example would be providing the students with a problem/issue at the start of class which needs to be resolved. The class is then broken down into groups and each person within the group is assigned a role including Team Lead and Presenter. Each student then has an opportunity within the duration of the course to assume each role. By using this problem solving strategy over the course of a term, each student build skills in team building, collaboration, leadership, presentation and problem solving. Over the course of time, this becomes a technique that the student incorporates into their thought and decision making processes, thereby building a new skill set. At the end of the course, post-tests will determine how many of these attributes students have gained. Additionally, strategies like flipping the classroom gives students the ability to demonstrate their knowledge and communication/presentation skills by having the faculty member focus on problem solving skills within a classroom rather than focusing on content acquisition.

For educational institutions to meet the needs of Millennial learners and prepare them for the workforce, schools will want to focus on 3 key areas: Personal, Academic and Life Skills. The following table shows how educational institutions can help to increase these skill sets in Millennials.

	Implementation Strategies
Personal	Schools implement team-based exercises, speech requirements and collaborative tasks within curricula to help build leadership skills.
Academic	Use the Flipped classroom technique. Allow them to bring their experience into the classroom. Use adaptive learning techniques and technology. Teach students HOW to be inquisitive. Talk about change and how they will benefit from always learning. Teach them HOW to teach themselves. Show them how to be life-long learners.
Life Skills	Recognize them for meeting goals and targets

Millennials are here to stay! They are the largest demographic in the United States and in the world. They are young, bright and energetic and they ARE the FUTURE. They are great assets which the world must harness and use. Educators need to create strategies to solve the shortcomings which Millennials currently have. Of course, time is the greatest teacher and Millennials eventually will either conform to the standards … or, more likely, create their own!References1 http://www.marketingcharts.com/traditional/so-how-many-millennials-are-there-in-the-us-anyway-30401/2 http://www.fastweb.com/college-scholarships/articles/scholarships-and-internships-for-gamers