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Educating GenZ
By Venguswamy Ramaswamy, Global Head of TCS iON, a Tata Consultancy
Services unit focused on education
In any sector, change and learning has grown steadily over the
transformation are driven by customer last five years. From around 1.8 million
expectations. The education sector is no students enrolled for distance learning
different, with the customer being the bachelor degrees in arts, commerce and
student expecting a service. science in 2011-12, the number has
In the education sector, the customer grown to around 2.3 million in 2015-16.
profile has changed dramatically. The As the customer has changed, so has the
student entering the portals of academe education sector. In recent years, the
today – be it any university in India – is education landscape has been
very different from a student of even disrupted with the entry of massive
five years ago. Today’s young students open online courses (MOOCs) that are
are digital natives, with most of them flourishing today. MOOCs offer a mix of
living life at the pace of the internet and free and paid-for content and are
accustomed to instant data at their increasingly popular. Some of the
fingertips via search engines like biggest MOOCs already have thousands
Google. They are able to participate in of courses and millions of users
collaborative studies via online forms enrolled in them. One of the largest
or even Whatsapp group chats. MOOCs has seen its Indian enrollment
grow significantly with Indians
This generation spends maximum time
exposed to screens – TV, tablets, students now the second largest
smartphones. They consume dynamic contingent. The reason for the
content -- YouTube videos, animations, popularity is not difficult to find. Online
presentations. They are more engaged courses offer a more affordable route to
with multimedia than with textbooks education. Georgia Tech’s online
and could expect the same kind of master’s program in computer science
interactive teaching methodologies costs just $6,600 – this is a fraction of
from their college classrooms. what a campus-based course would
otherwise cost , making MOOCs far
The freedom of the internet means that more affordable for students.
learning can be unstructured. This
generation is driven by ‘informed In the midst of this shifting landscape,
curiosity’ and are happy to source how will Indian universities meet the
content and knowledge on topics changing expectations of GenZ? When
outside of their curriculum. this tech-savvy generation sets foot in
colleges, they expect dynamic content,
Moreover, Indian students already have interactive teaching methodologies.
a comfort level with non-classroom They also expect connected campuses,
based learning ie distance and online instant services such as mail or text
education. Enrolment in distance
