A post over on BrazenCareerist by Milena Thomas got me thinking about education again, a topic I’ve been known to rant about. In an article titled “Think Twice About All That Education You Think You Need” hammers home something I’ve been thinking for a while now: Gen Y is obsessed with education, particularly graduate programs, to the point where their piles of degrees can hurt more than they help.

Writes Thomas:

My most valuable education came after I graduated. I experienced the painstaking trial and error of proper vocal study, bargained with my dreams of stardom versus the realities of needing a steady corporate paycheck, moving in with my parents and wondering how I was going to make a satisfying life for myself.

A lot of what I want to say can be summed up simply: education, no matter in what quantity, is no substitute for experience. And, while there’s obviously no direct causation, the correlation tends to be that more school equals less real, work experience. And so Generation Y is in the unique position of being a generation that’s got tons of expertise in social linguistics or Leninist Russia but doesn’t know how to operate a photocopier or take notes at a business meeting.

Let’s disqualify certain graduate programs right off the bat — specialized programs like engineering are logically excluded from this. There are some university programs that are so geared toward a certain job-type that one can leave them already possessing all the tools they need to find work, and excel.

But this is not true for the vast majority of university programs, particularly in the arts, nor should it be. Universities were originally conceived as houses of higher learning, geared toward the best and brightest. You went to university because you enjoyed thinking and debating and immersing yourself in all things academic. You did not go simply because you wanted to get a good job afterwards.¹

What I think we’re seeing from Generation Y is the result of the perception that everyone is getting an undergraduate degree. To separate yourself from the pack, then, the natural course of action is to pursue beyond undergraduate, and land yourself a graduate or Master’s degree.

You don’t need to do this. In fact, unless you have a particular passion for your area of study that makes a graduate program a natural fit, pursuing graduate studies in the hopes of standing out from the pack of applicants is probably a bad idea. Graduate programs tend to be about delving further into the academic, and don’t really bestow the same level of transferrable workplace skills as undergraduate.

The overeducated but inexperienced applicant is not a more desirable choice than the educated and experienced applicant. Remember that as you make your educational choices, and consider where you want your career to go.

Photo by Kiara Kim. Licensed under Creative Commons

1. There were, of course, schools that were geared toward getting a good job. They called these vocational schools or trade schools. The unfortunate stereotype now is that this is where the dumb kids go. [↩]

I spent a day this past week attending sessions on Generation Y in the workplace presented by Max Valiquette and Giselle Kovary. I’ve seen both speakers before, but they’re both entertaining and continue to evolve their presentations to include interesting points, so I was glad to spend the time to hear their messages again. Plus, all-day workshop are a very welcome respite from the day-to-day work sometimes.

Listening this time, though, I was struck with something that’s actually been rolling around in my head for a while. Whenever anybody talks about Generation Y these days, they mention technology.¹ According to conventional wisdom, Generation Y loves technology. We love video games and cell phones and the internet and every gizmo, gadget or doowhacky under the sun. It is undoubtedly a very very ironclad part of our overall generational identity.

It’s not hard to find evidence. The Financial Post ran an article about the Ryerson Facebook incident (which I touched upon here) this week, and included a standard technology-is-everything piece in their explanation of Generation Y:

Confident, global -thinking and impatient, this generation of workers — approximately everyone born between 1982 and 1990 –does not know life without computers. It takes technology for granted, turning to e-mail, blogs and social-networking sites 24/7 to gather information and interact with colleagues and friends.

I’m not meaning to appear as contrary to this, because it totally does describe me. I’ve been a lifelong nerd, accessing the internet well before my teens and living a life largely based in three-letter acronyms for over a decade now (ICQ, IRC, AIM, WWW, FTP, HTML, CSS, JPG, BRB, LOL, ETC.) And the connectivity and virtual communication piece seems obvious: look at the explosion of popularity in any kind of online service that connects people with their friends.

But the paradox part of is that, for the last few years, I’ve spent a significant amount of time interviewing, hiring and working with other, younger members of Generation Y and throughout that time my questions to them about computers have yielded a fairly consistent statement:

“I’m not very good with computers”

This kills me, because it just seems so unbelievably wrong. We’re the COMPUTER GENERATION! How can you not be good with them? That’d be like a Gen Xer not being good at wearing flannel! Or a baby boomer not being great at complaining about everything! Or a traditionalist not being great at making babies!²

Plus, generally the same people making the claim that they’re not good with computers are the same people who spend their evening with seventeen instant messenger windows open while downloading tracks from Limewire and working on a term paper: “I’m not very good with computers, but often I use them for ten hours straight to do any number of tasks simultaneously.”

Trying to make sense of all of this

I’ve been trying to figure out why this disconnect exists, and I’ve come up with some potential explanations:

• Pure Semantics: Refer to the idea of a Digital Native and think about cars for a second. I would never describe myself as “good with cars” but that has absolutely nothing to do with my ability actually operate a vehicle. I’ve got no real idea where the fuel lines are or even how to change a tire but I still do pretty good at driving to work a few times a week.
  

  Similarly, I think a lot of Gen Yers see themselves as “not good with computers” because they don’t know how to install RAM or put in a hard drive, but that doesn’t mean they’re not adept at using software and performing creative/administrative/organizational tasks on a computer.

  As so-called “digital natives”, we tend to speak and think differently about computers — more compartmentalized, specific to software, hardware and even individual programs — but Gen Y needs to be aware that, by and large, this isn’t how the older generations (read: the ones hiring you) think.

• Confidence: Gen Y lacks a lot of confidence when it comes to some of their skills, particularly their computer skills. Again, if you think about it in terms of being a digital native, it’s easier to understand why this is.
  

  If you asked a native English speaker if they were “good at English” they’d likely reply that they weren’t, especially if they struggled with Shakespeare and hated James Joyce. On the flip side, though, if you asked a native English speaker if they were “good at Spanish”, they might answer in the affirmative even if all they know is how to ask where the bathroom is or how to get back to the cruise ship.

  One of the more difficult things you need to do when selling yourself to a potential employer is frame your skills in relation to their expectations, not yours. This goes beyond computers, but it is perhaps most important within the technology sphere. Just because you don’t feel like an expert at Photoshop, for example, because you don’t know how to work with Lab colours and multi-layer documents, doesn’t mean your potential employer won’t see you as “Photoshop expert” because you know how to do rudimentary tasks. It’s all context.

• Education: This is a big one — almost too big to go into here — but to sum it up: everything they currently teach about computers and the internet in high schools is terrible and does more harm than good. The track in high schools has been, until very recently, to separate “computers” into its own once (or maybe twice) a week ghetto, where you learn how to type and not much else.
  

  As a result, I think a lot of people come to understand “computer skills” as separate from math skills, writing skills, artistic skills, communication skills, business skills, etc. When, in reality, a computer should be thought of has nothing more than a tool through which you exercise and develop these primary skills.

  As a first step toward providing real, valuable and much-needed education that fits into the ‘digital native’ sphere, schools NEED to start blending computer-use into every class, in a way that makes sense and isn’t just window dressing. (Letting the kids who finish their math problems first play on the computer is not, for example, a good way to handle this.)

But, then, I don’t know

I think there’s even more to this that I fully understand at this point, so I pose the questions back to the readers: have you ever claimed that you’re “not good with computers.” Why? How do you justify that to yourself? And is Generation Y’s much ballyhooed technological expertise a myth?

Photo by practicalowl. Licensed under Creative Commons

1. In fact, I recently attended a session where a presenter summed Generation Y up thusly: Love technology, difficult to manage. Which, you know, I won’t dispute, but there’s a little more to it than that. [↩]
2. I’m kidding. Don’t get mad. [↩]

The above (taken from the absolutely awesome web comic xkcd — visit or you’re a fool) pretty well sums up my feelings toward wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. It’s both an amazing resource and a fabulous time waster, and has become my quick go-to source for quick information about any subject, from actors and actresses to vacation destinations.

Yes, there’s the very real possibility of information being incorrect or (much more commonly) badly written, but the mountains of information more than make up for it.

Education has struggled with wikipedia since it hit the scene. Almost immediately after hearing wikipedia described to them, educators decided it was a menace — the academic equivalent of speculative hearsay. The rules fell into place very quickly: never cite wikipedia in a formal essay. You might as well source the National Enquirer.

Hearing their teachers continuously hammer home the message that wikpedia is unreliable has apparently had an effect on students, as evidenced by this report from a Generation Y workshop.

Interesting discussion during Dave Brown’s Generation Y workshop at LIFT08. It seems asking a few teenagers how they use the Internet is always going to produce a few findings like these:

Wikipedia is not seen as a very good/valuable source in school when it comes to usage in school work.

(emphasis mine)

And, sure, wikipedia probably shouldn’t become an automatically accepted authoritative source for academic essays. But you know what? Neither should anything else. The underlying message to all this “wikipedia is so unreliable!” chest-besting (which isn’t even really true) is that sources should be judged based on the medium in which they appear, and not on the quality of the source itself. For the most part, kids aren’t being told to look at their sources carefully before they quote them in an academic paper — they’re being told that the internet is bad, and print is good.

There is a way to make wikipedia a part of education, and it starts with teaching students the difference between a well-researched article on wikipedia versus a poorly-researched one. It could include instruction on examining footnotes, looking at the history and discussion pages and the way the article is presented. In short, teaching kids how to research instead of just blindly hunting for sources that their teacher has deemed as ‘acceptable’.

Wikipedia does have a place in academia. To argue otherwise is to ignore the massive growth and mindshare the site as claimed over the last few years. And there’s a way to make wikipedia fit with good, qualified research — it just requires a different approach to teaching.

Blogger Dallas has a good post about Generation Y and ‘Voluntourism’ at her blog.

Part of my thesis research looks at the increasing trend of “voluntourism” (a type of tourism that mixes volunteer work with sightseeing), and the generation that has both fed and gravitated towards the voluntourism industry, my generation.

I’ve seen a number of friends spend their summers on so-called ‘voluntourism’ projects, venturing to third world countries to plant trees, build schools or do scientific research. Universities do a lot to encourage them by generally offering class credits to those students ready to sign up. I’ve always seen it as a bit of a dubious practice, as these trips are generally only available to students willing to pony up a lot of money (often double what a typical semester of university would cost), it’s not difficult to find a conclusion that points to a big post-secondary cash cow.

The money thing

Back to Dallas, who also points to the huge cost of these trips:

Although volunteering may be about free work, it is certainly not free to volunteer. Voluntourism, what journalist Laura Fitzpatrick has called “Vacationing like Brangelina,” seems to be a privilege of the privileged.

I’ve generally been critical of the people I’ve known who’ve gone on these trips. Sure, some — particularly the more scientific, ecology-focused excursions — seem more than a little worthwhile, but I’ve never quite understood what good a second-year BA student brings to the third world.

I suspect when Dallas asks “Does our generation genuinely want to help, or do we just want pictures to make us look worldly on Facebook?” she’s hitting on some truth, cynical as it might seem.

But we’re still good

Not that this is particularly damning for our generation or anything. Extravagant and exotic trips to far-flung locales has been a staple of university students for a hundred years. What IS interesting, and Dallas points to this too, is that Gen Y has, in large numbers, traded in the spring break trip to Cancun for vacations that are, at least in theory, far more socially mindful.

Generation Y’s overwhelming devotion to social and environmental issues is undoubtedly one of our hallmark traits, but I think we’re more than a little lost on what to do with it. We tend to desire fast, active, personal solutions to the issues we’re passionate. And we’d like to lead them, too. In that light, voluntourism starts to make sense.

Voluntourism is an issue that reveals a lot about the changing attitudes of Generation Y. But still the cynical side of me still wonders if these voluntourism organizations aren’t exploiting Generation Y, valuing their money far more than their involvement.

Photo by thomaswanoff. Licensed under Creative Commons

I found an interesting article by Tara Weiss at Forbes.com today (via The Ivey Files) about the influence parents have (or want to have) over their Gen Y kids’ careers.

In some human resources circles, these over-involved moms and dads are known as helicopter parents. They’ve hovered around their children (the Millennial generation) their whole lives, over-scheduling their childhood and pushing them throughout college. With graduation comes the next step: the job search. Now, more than ever, career counselors and recruiters say parents attend job fairs, accompany their adult children to job interviews and even make their interview appointments.

This isn’t new. Universities and high schools have been dealing with overly involved parents for years now. In fact, the effect on universities has been profound, as universities have adapted to the watchful eyes of parents by becoming more co-dependent, collaborative spheres of learning, as opposed to the live-and-let-die linear approach to academics once taken.

But parents holding influence over workplaces, while probably a natural extension of that, is definitely taking us into a place where we, as a generation, should not go.

Weiss continues:

But it raises the question: Do companies want employees working for them who can’t even set up their own job interview? Daphne Atkinson, vice president of industry relations at the Graduate Management Admissions Council, says society need to understand where this generation is coming from. Unlike their parents and grandparents, if the Millennials had a problem, they didn’t have to wait hours or days to get in touch with their parents for advice. They simply picked up their cell phone or shot them an e-mail, text or instant message. Millennials also came of age in the aftermath of Sept. 11, which made for some very nervous and protective parents.

The most surprising part about this article was not that parents are pushing to get involved, but that companies are actually starting to understand, adapt to and even encourage it.

But here’s the issue I have with that approach: a career has, traditionally, always been something people attain out of necessity. In simplest terms, people need the money a career brings. This isn’t good or bad — it’s just the reality of our era. Up until now.

Kids in their early 20s do not really need to work. For a lot of them, post-graduation, their immediate goals in life tend only toward adventure and continuing the lifestyle they enjoyed during university or college. And, with parents who tend to be financially stable and present welcoming environments in which they can live, there’s not really any need to work a “career job.” There’s enough wealth and stability in a job at Starbucks to pay for the hostels in Europe and weekend bar tabs.

It’s my belief that parents get involved with their children’s careers not purely to benefit their kids, but instead to benefit themselves, as parents. There’s a linear thinking that has dominated the way older generations raise us, and it says that we need to go to good post-secondary school and then get a good, stable job with benefits and a 401K. That is, I guess, the traditional measure of success. Once the kid has a degree on the wall and drives to a big office building every day, the parent can sit back, pat themselves on the back, and rest assured that they did everything they were supposed to do.

Not so.

Much of Generation Y has been blessed with great, supportive and financially accessible parents, but when those parents attempt to help their kids lead that traditionally successful life they end up hurting more than they help. Yworkers needs to understand that they have options and different pathways toward success, and that they should take the time to make the right choices totally independent of their parents or other outside influences.

Photo by slushpup. Licensed under Creative Commons