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We've grown accustomed to Generation X graduate students-those born between 1966 and 1976 who came of age in our nation's graduate schools in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Sometimes called the "lost" generation, this was our nation's first of "latchkey" kids, born after the post-WWII baby boom. Exposed to lots of daycare and often the product of single parenting, Xers were known for their skepticism and for questioning everything. The Xers were one of the best-educated generations, with 29 percent having obtained a bachelor's degree-some 6 percentage points higher than any preceding generation.
Then Generation Y came to our nation's graduate schools. Known as "Millennials," these students were born between 1977 and 1994 and were the largest generation (some 71 million) since the baby boomers. Generation Y students proved to be more sophisticated in their graduate studies, perhaps because of having grown up with cable TV, satellite radio, and the Internet. GenY was the first technologically savvy generation of graduate students. Unlike their predecessors, who were more prone to question everything, Gen Y students simply looked up everything on the Internet.
Well, move over Millennials, because Generation Z is coming to graduate school. Born between 1995 and 2012 means the earliest Gen Zers will be 22 years of age-and enrolling for the first time in the nation's graduate schools-in 2017.
This new generation of students beginning graduate study will bring significantly different challenges. The Z generation of graduate students, commonly identified as those 23 million born after 1995, has known nothing but technology; its members identify themselves and their lives in digital terms, referring to themselves as "the digital generation with digital devices." Their technological experiences are far beyond those of their immediate predecessors, Generation Y. Gen Z's education, starting with preschool, has been one continuous online, computer-connected experience. Gen Z is Internet savvy and Internet reliant.
Gen Z students utilized technology in...