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Shaping sticky students: encouraging lifelong academic relationships in an era of transience
To members of other generational groups, millennials and GenZ are often seen as inconsistent or flighty; too quick to move on when they don’t like a job and lacking the apparently in-built ‘loyalty’ of the generations that precede them. Deserved or not, that reputation seems fated to follow this cohort, but what does it mean for higher education institutions trying to foster an extended academic relationship?
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“digital literacy, commercial acumen and soft skills above academic achievement”
Traditionally (at least before corporatisation) you don’t have academic achievement without those skills so its a pointless comparison. Further, critical analysis trumps all those in complex workplaces unless you’ve introduced authoritarian principles in the workplace and complex thought is no longer required (as some employers seem to feel). There is a lot of widow washing but essentially moving Universities towards bneing more like what TAFE used to be is not working well. Getting rid of local fees and de-corporatising universities makes more sense if you want to boost numbers for whatever period of duration and if you want to advance our society beyond short term gains – that’s has been and always will be the point of education at all stages in life.