Generation Alpha
What defines the world of Generation Alpha?
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These potential students, who have had digital technologies (devices, phones, interactive boards, white-listed apps, peer-to-peer interaction, digital learning coaches, etc.) at their disposal since primary school and who have integrated technology singularly into their lives, will expect such technologies and capacity be made available to them when entering higher education. Such digital teaching environments and the newer pedagogical approaches required to teach online, which colleges and universities have been slow to embrace, will increasingly become a differentiator for applicants when applying to and enrolling in schools. Colleges and universities that build highly-flexible and robust but secure infrastructures to support 24/7 learning environments where students can engage in learning anytime, anywhere – whether it be through self-learning, peer-to-peer instruction, or flip, hybrid, and high-flex classroom instruction – will have a competitive advantage when attracting new students from an ever-decreasing pool of potential applicants. Moreover, it will be the expectations of such students – and their parents – that colleges and universities will have updated systems and applications in place to provide seamless enrollment and registration and ensure safe and secure financial transactions whether being conducted online through phones or other devices.2
The importance of creating such environments becomes even more evident when administrators understand the implications of what was identified above: namely, that alphas will invest in increasingly specialized education, with a percentage of alphas avoiding the higher education system altogether and opt for cheaper online learning. As will be evident later in other stories in this magazine, many high demand jobs in the future will not require a four-year degree but oftentimes two-year degrees or simply technical certification. Unless traditional four-year institutions start offering such certificates or pathways into such practical training, potential students will increasingly opt for online courses, community college programs, or for-profit certification programs – all of which diminish opportunities for traditional colleges and universities to generate revenue.
Why is This Happening? The Fourth Industrial Revolution
The reason this is happening is because students of generation Z and Alpha have been
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