‘It's the end of the university as we know it (and I feel fine)’: the Generation Y student in higher education discourse

Abstract

This paper examines discussions of Generation Y within higher education discourse, arguing the sector's use of the term to describe students is misguided for three reasons. First, portraying students as belonging to Generation Y homogenises people undertaking higher education as young, middle-class and technologically literate. Second, speaking of Generation Y students allows constructivism to be reinvented as a ‘new’ learning and teaching philosophy. Third, the Generation Y university student has become a central figure in concerns about technology's role in learning and teaching. While the notion of the ‘Generation Y student’ creates the illusion that higher education institutions understand their constituents, ultimately, it is of little value in explaining young adults' educational experiences.

Keywords:

• digital natives
• Generation Y
• learning and teaching
• student diversity
• technology

Acknowledgement

The author wishes to thank Dr Mandy Lupton from the Faculty of Education at Queensland University of Technology for her insightful comments on the original draft of this paper.

Notes

An earlier version of this paper was presented as a keynote address at the 2009 Australian and New Zealand Student Services Association biennial conference.

Many of the issues discussed in articles from EDUCAUSE Review are also addressed in the book Educating the net generation (Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005).

This paper will use the term Generation Y – or its common abbreviation Gen Y – except when quoting other sources which use alternative names.

These results are also presented in Goodyear, Jones, Asensio, Hodgson, & Steeples (2005).