SINGAPORE: ‘Gen Z graduates are often cited as presenting with significantly different priorities within the workplace, and/or their work life.’
The Queensland University of Technology says there has been a six-fold increase in the number of students reporting “neurodivergence” since the end of the Covid pandemic and graduates are seeking to delay full-time employment.
This tracks with a startling rise in young people reporting mental illness and disability, as Labor tries to wrestle through changes to limit the growth of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
“Since 2023, QUT has seen a 500 per cent increase in the number of students who present as neurodivergent,” the university told a Senate inquiry on graduate outcomes. And its mental health services have been in unprecedented demand, it said.
“QUT student services has seen a 30 per cent increase in counselling, mental health nurse and psychology appointments, with depression, anxiety and stress remaining dominant themes, with increasing acuity as well as prevalence,” the university said.
Deakin University said young people were expecting different things out of employment compared with previous generations.
“Gen Z graduates are often cited as presenting with significantly different priorities within the workplace, and/or their work life,” the university told the Senate. “These include active mentoring, recognition, leadership access and purpose-driven work, as well as a strict focus on work-life balance.
“All are reshaping graduate recruitment and retention practices.”
QUT said some graduates were now actively delaying employment “to take a ‘second gap year’.
“For some, seamless progression to professional employment is the ideal, but this is by no means the preferred trajectory for a great many graduates,” QUT said.
At the same time, the proliferation of increasingly powerful AI tools was driving an upsurge in cheating and forcing universities to respond, the University of Melbourne said.
“The university is undertaking institution-wide assessment reform to ensure that our curriculum meets two new assessment principles,” it said.
“These are either that 50 per cent or more of the total marks in a subject are based on secure assessment, or that a form of secure ‘programmatic’ assessment is adopted within a degree.”
“Secure” assessments included oral exams that could limit AI cheating, the university said.
This comes as Labor tries to pass through NDIS reform that would move children diagnosed with mild autism off the system after an explosion in numbers.
There have been other blinking alarm lights relating to young people and their relationship with the labour force. For example, The Australian recently revealed there had been a five-fold increase in the number of young men who say they are “permanently unable” to work in the past 20 years. Young men are also over-represented in jobseeker figures, with intellectual or developmental impairment apparently twice as common in young men as in young women who receive welfare.
The University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney) told Labor to put in place a “lifelong learning entitlement” to be funded by federal debt or a business levy to cover tuition and living costs for people to continue studying.
The university justified this by citing the rate of job change expected in the future, especially given the diffusion of AI in the workforce.
“Embedding lifelong learning as a social and industry norm will ensure workers remain relevant and productive,” its submission read.
“Targeted programs should be designed in close partnership with employers to ensure training is directly relevant to workforce needs and delivered flexibly to support participation by individuals at all career stages.
“This could be funded through a HECS style scheme … or issuing a lifetime learning levy for large businesses, which would incentivise them to invest in upskilling their workforce and support the expansion of existing programs and initiatives.
“A lifelong learning entitlement covering tuition and living costs could also help to ensure workers can continually upskill and re-skill, (thereby) sustaining productivity in a changing economy.”