Is Gen Z Smarter Than Gen X?

?? What you might have missed this past season on Future U.; and is this generation of students filled with smarter or more accomplished teenagers? Here are excerpts from Next. Sign up here .

EVENTS

??? The August "Next Office Hour" on Wednesday, August 28 at 2 p.m. ET

Student Migration and College Enrollment, where we’ll examine the forces that are reshaping enrollment patterns and what they mean for the future of higher education. Joining me in the live discussion will be:

• Rick Clark , Georgia Tech's executive director of strategic student access, and co-author of The Truth about College Admission: A Family Guide to Getting In and Staying Together
• Cindy Barr , N.C. State's vice provost for strategic initiatives in enrollment management
• Kim Parker , director of social trends research at the Pew Research Center

? ? ?? Register now for free .?(Support from Campus Sonar)

THE LEAD

As you catch up on your summer reading, it’s also a good time to connect with Future U. episodes you might have missed. It was quite a year of news in higher ed. As a college president told me recently, the past year felt like a decade out of their life.

Here are some of my favorites on the podcast channel that are now in reruns (is that still a thing in an era of streaming?):

??? Future of Online Ed . In Episode 143, we interviewed Fernando Bleichmar , then of Academic Partnerships (it has since changed its name to Risepoint) and Jeff Maggioncalda , CEO of Coursera.?

• We talked about the ROI of the online degree and where they make most sense for colleges to offer. Also, we explored what a focus on lower-cost degrees that are more modular in their construction might mean for the traditional university.?

???Leveraging Apprenticeships to Bolster the Rural Talent Pipeline . In Episode 145, we talked with Mallory Dwinal-Palisch , the chancellor of Reach University.?

• Reach works with K-12 school districts to take high-potential individuals already working in school buildings who don’t have a college degree. It then turns their day job into an apprenticeship that confers college credits and culminates in a college degree. Its focus is on rural schools, in particular, where the teacher shortage is particularly acute.
• I love this model not only because in a previous generation it could have helped my own mother—a teacher’s aide without a college diploma get one—but it solves what is increasingly a big problem in the U.S.: finding teachers, who often don’t want to pay for the cost of a four-year degree only to find out they can’t pay off their debts or that they don’t like to teach. This was the first of a two-part conversation we had with Dwinal-Palisch, so if you enjoy the conversation, be sure to find the episode that follows in our archives.

???? The Role of Higher Ed in the American Dream. In Episode 148, we talked with David Leonhardt , the New York Times columnist about his book, Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream.?

• I couldn't wait for this conversation because Leonhardt was someone who years ago in his writing turned me on to the idea that the high-school movement in the U.S. was one of its great innovations of the 20th century. And so on this episode, we asked Leonhardt what the high-school movement of the 21st century might look like when it comes to postsecondary education. Listen for his answer and our discussion.

?? How Small Schools Can Thrive As Higher Ed Changes . In Episode 150, we talked with Lynn Perry Wooten , the president of Simmons University in Boston about how being small isn't distinctive anymore for colleges and how they need to lean into other parts of their mission and strategy.

• The thing to know about Wooten is the interesting perspective she brings to the job as president, not only as a former business dean, but as someone who has spent her career as a scholar and expert on organizational development and transformation. In other words, she doesn’t just read the business literature as a college president; she has actually written it. Wooten is one of my favorite presidents in higher ed, and one of the most thoughtful ones I know, so enjoy the conversation.

???The Future of the Ph.D. In Episode 154, we talked with Leonard Cassuto , a professor at Fordham University who is co-author of The New PhD: How to Build a Better Graduate Education. Our topic: the future of the Ph.D.?

• Here's just one stat to ponder: Of the 21,000 Ph.D. recipients in 2022 who accepted jobs, only 33% said they were going to work at a college or university. Half said they were going into industry. Fifty percent is the same proportion, who as recently as 1992, said they were going into academia.
• Clearly, the Ph.D.-to-college professor pipeline is broken and Casutto offers up ideas on how to fix it. He was also an entertaining guest, so please give it a listen.

?? The Wild West of Dual Enrollment: Its Growth, Benefits, and Drawbacks. In Episode 158, we talk with Jon Fink, a senior research associate at the Community College Research Center, about the wild west of dual enrollment—and even what the term means.

• Dual enrollment is the biggest growth area for community colleges, in particular, so we had so many questions for Fink about who teaches these courses, their quality, how students get credit for them, and so on. This was one of our most popular episodes from the past year, so I hope you enjoy it.

?? We'll have one summer bonus episode of Future U. coming your way this month from our live recording at JFF's Horizons conference last week. Then Season 8 of Future U. comes your way in early September. Be sure to follow Future U. and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.

• And if you're regular listener, please take our brief survey .?

Will the Report Card Ever Go Away?

Grades are a key assessment tool for colleges–to get in and eventually graduate. Recently, I caught up with Wade H. Morris, the author of Reports Cards: A Cultural History . Part 2 of my conversation with him is below (edited for space). You can read Part 1 from an earlier edition of Next .

Q. We tend to measure learning based on the time spent in a seat (the Carnegie unit), but there is a movement toward mastery or competency-based learning— measuring learning based on what we know rather than how much time we spend in school. Do you envision the report card evolving over time in the future, like it had over the history covered in your book? And what might —or what should—the report card cover in your opinion?

A.??After researching two-hundred years of reform efforts, I am a bit of a skeptic that systems of grading will be radically transformed.

Since the birth of modern American schooling during the antebellum period, grading systems have produced brilliant detractors: from Catharine Beecher to John Dewey, and then the wave of anti-grade pedagogues during the alternative school movement in the 1960s and 1970s. In each subsequent era of reform, the pedagogues try to remake schools in basically the same way: eliminate grades, make learning intrinsically motivated, and make schools more democratic. At each moment, reforms fail to transform mainstream American schools.

Here, researching my final chapter on the 1970s alternative school movement has shaped my thinking more than anything else. I went into the research with a lot of sympathy for anti-report card idealists. But then I did a deep dive into the downfall of one particular alternative school in Minnesota that had renounced grades. I read through their internal documents, the minutes of their faculty meetings, the surveys that the school conducted with parents, teachers and students.

"The pedagogues try to remake schools in basically the same way: eliminate grades, make learning intrinsically motivated, and make schools more democratic. At each moment, reforms fail to transform mainstream American schools."?

I came away thinking that many of alternative schools were hopelessly inefficient, that teacher burnout was an existential threat, that the wave of permissiveness from the era was not the solution to our problems. I suppose I came out of the research much more sympathetic to the status quo.

However, there may be reforms on the margin that could make the system more humane. For instance, with the advent of online reporting systems, we can make the report card a less permanent document. Perhaps we can create an academic reporting system that more clearly documents the evolution of a child’s accomplishments.

Second, a lot of schools have experimented with the use of portfolios as a supplement for overly reductionist grades. On the other hand, a portfolio requires a degree of patience on the part of the audience—parents, college admissions, an employer—that might not be realistic.

Finally, grades combined with teacher-written narratives helps lessen the sting of a single digit on a report card. This is of course nothing new and there are obstacles to writing meaningful written narratives: teacher workload, teacher ability, etc.

Perhaps, in the age of ChatGPT, artificial intelligence can be used to supplement grades with a more descriptive approach to a student’s learning experience at school.

Q. As you know, applications to highly selective colleges have increased significantly over the last 20 years. Based on your reporting for the book, do you think there are actually more competitive students in the pipeline or is it just more students applying? Bottom line: any sense of whether this generation is filled with “smarter or more accomplished” students?

A. The age-old discussion of generational decline or progress is a fascinating one. Since Plato teachers have been complaining about how students are getting worse. On the other hand, I have an inner-Steven Pinker monologue that is telling me that things are getting better, that the Flynn effect is real, that adolescents are becoming more ethically aware, better at abstract analytical reasoning, more socially conscious, etc.

But then at other moments my inner-Jonathan Haidt emerges. I wonder if screens and social media really are an unprecedented challenge that is literally changing the brain chemistry of my students. As a teacher in the trenches everyday with teenagers, I find myself making generalizations about the lack of resiliency that I see, the increasing rates of diagnosed depression, perhaps a lack of social maturation, etc.

I suppose if I had to choose a side, I would argue that it is too soon to tell. That we need another century or two to really understand what we are living through and how strange it is that we have built a social hierarchy around formal educational attainment. Combine this with an increasing disparity of wealth, political polarization, the ubiquity of smartphones, etc. It is all a fascinating mess. Ultimately, I look to people like you – thoughtful journalists – to help me synthesize all of these chaotic and competing trends. My hope is that public intellectuals can cool down the metaphorical temperature a bit. I don’t think millenarian rhetoric or apocalyptic thinking is helpful. We are living through a fascinating era, but this too shall pass.

SUPPLEMENTS

?? Another FAFSA Hiccup. “In the latest setback in the tumultuous launch of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, the Education Department said colleges cannot submit corrections to students’ financial aid records in bulk this year, a decision that could leave some students unable to pay their bills before classes start in the coming weeks.” (The Washington Post )

?? We Hardly Knew You. When former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse became president at the University of Florida, I thought he’d be the modern replacement for Mitch Daniels: a prominent Republican spokesman about higher education in a sector not known for many. But after just 19 months on the job, Sasse announced earlier this month he is stepping down to care for his wife, who has been diagnosed with epilepsy. According to Open Campus, here are 5 ways Sasse will be remembered. (Open Campus )

♀ Gender and Higher Ed. Everyone talks about: the crisis of male enrollment at American colleges and universities. But if you look at the data, according to Jon Boeckenstedt, "it is really a crisis of enrollment at community colleges." Take a look at the visualization that Boeckenstedt put together on trends in enrollment by gender over time. (Higher Ed Data Stories )

Until next time, Cheers — Jeff??

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