Students today are not “impatient,” “lazy,” or incapable of sustained attention in the simplistic way public discourse often suggests. Nor are they fundamentally less resilient than previous generations. What many institutions are witnessing is something far more structural and far more predictable: students responding rationally to an enormous gap between the digital environments they inhabit every day and the institutional systems they are expected to navigate in higher education.
Outside university, students move through digital ecosystems engineered relentlessly around intuitiveness, immediacy, responsiveness, and behavioural understanding. Their everyday experiences are shaped by platforms that minimise friction obsessively. Algorithms personalise content continuously. Interfaces adapt dynamically. Navigation feels instinctive rather than instructional. Feedback loops are immediate. Discovery feels fluid. Digital experiences are designed around human behaviour rather than institutional convenience.
Then students arrive at university.
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