Generation Z – Why we need to future-proof universities

Future-proof universities 

Article by Tom White

Brought up in a world of smartphones, high speed wi-fi and technology on tap, Generation Z's lives revolve around a digital world...

So, for example, how are we putting digital technology at the very heart of our education system? Let’s take a lecture theatre, for example: how is this a digitally interactive experience for students? How can students access learning materials, resources and academic papers? Is an intranet system really going to cut it?...

Technology is obviously a key area where universities can make improvements. However, considering just how familiar Generation Z is with marketing techniques, smart and truly engaging content needs to be a major priority.

From: University World News

10 June 2016 Issue No:417

the best social media accounts for academics

Irreverent, funny and informative – higher education does the internet really well. Here are our favourite blogs and Twitter accounts 

From the Higher Education Network - Helen Lock, 23 March 2016, The Guardian 

Via open licence “Courtesy of Guardian News & Media Ltd”

Can universities survive the digital age?

The fifth annual international IE University conference on “Reinventing Higher Education” discussed Bologna, English as the lingua franca and engagement between business and universities. But perhaps it will be the ‘digital natives’ of the next generation who will be higher education’s greatest challenge...

“I was not taught digital marketing in my degree because the change in the business model was so rapid that the university did not have time to adapt,” said Cristina Rojas, 23, an economics graduate.

Rojas added that in 2013 Facebook and Twitter were only known as social networks, they had not developed their marketing potential online and “professors did not even know that they existed”...

Santiago Iñiguez, President of IE University, concluded: “The Millennial generation is creative, cosmopolitan, entrepreneurial, sociable, with a distinctive global awareness and commitment, and they demand more control over their own learning experience.

From: University World News, Paul Rigg, 31 Oct 2014, Issue no. 341

Humanities Graduates valued/needed?

Move over, Stem: why the world needs humanities graduates

Global problems can't be resolved without a humanities perspective, so academics need to get out into the world and make the case for their subject...

So what's up with our cloistered historians and philosophers, our literary critics, classicists and scholars of the fine, performing and otherwise liberal arts? Clearly there's some gathering global anxiety within the academy and it's mainly around the difficulty of getting broader social recognition for the two convictions about humanities that are motivating these discussions.

Humanities graduates have unique skills

Humanities perspective is needed in all global challenges

From: The Guardian's Higher Education Network, posted by Paul Smith 19 March 2014
Paul Smith is director of the British Council in the US. He spoke at Oxford University as part of the activist humanities conference.