students

College students are rapidly losing a critical skill: reading.

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My students can’t read. It is the title of the opinion column in which Tyler Jagtuniversity literature professor, narrates the situation currently found in his classrooms. Many students are not able to read or maintain the plot of a 20-page text. He believes that AI and mobile phones are to blame. 20 pages is too much. This teacher says that he has been assigning the same task to his rhetoric and writing students for five years: reading a 20-page article. However, this year none of his students finished the work and they were not repeaters, but rather university students who had passed the entrance exams. One of them was honest and admitted that the text was too long and “constantly missed the point of the article.” Jagt acknowledges that the complaint that students do not know how to read is common among teachers, but according to him this time things are serious and there is data that corroborates it. The tests. According to the results of the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), students in grade 12 (equivalent to a 2nd year of Baccalaureate in Spain) obtained the lowest score on the reading test since the assessment began in 1992. A third of the participants reached the basic level, which means that they are likely not able to “draw general conclusions based on concepts explicitly presented in a text.” Younger students are even worse off. According to a study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation70% of fourth grade students (like fourth grade) are not able to read fluently. That is in the United States, but in Spain the situation is not ideal either. According to the OECDat least a third of the Spanish population has level 1 reading comprehension, which means that “they can only understand very short texts with a minimum of distracting information.” A report from the BBVA Foundation and the Valencian Institute of Economic Research (Ivie)Spaniards between 25 and 34 years old, who have studied more than their parents, advance much more slowly in basic skills. It’s technology’s fault. Or at least that is what the author maintains, specifically the emergence of smartphones and, more recently, AI. The idea that technology makes us stupid has been accompanying us for decades and with the emergence of AI, technological panic has intensified. That students are using AI to do their jobs is something we already knew. What is still not clear is what consequences it can have on a cognitive level. There is no evidence that technology produces cognitive damage (yes changes), but it is also true that until now we have not had a technology capable of doing everything that AI does. Debt and cognitive surrender. They are two concepts that emerged from recent studies. The first, cognitive debtcomes from a MIT research titled “Your brain on ChatGPT”. Participants who used ChatGPT had the worst brain performance when completing a task that involved writing essays. The researchers conclude that using AI as a complete substitute for mental effort can weaken our neural connections. The idea of cognitive surrender is mentioned in a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania. According to researchers, cognitive surrender arises when we delegate our thinking to AI and accept its answers too confidently. Another study from the University of Oxford saw how If we use AI and then it is taken away from us, our performance worsens. not so fast. There is an important nuance and that is that the concept of “using AI” is very varied. We can use it without checking the answers and accepting everything it tells us or we can use it as a tool in our creative process. In fact, in several of these studies, participants who used AI as support obtained scores very similar to those of the group that did not use AI. Therefore it is not whether we use it or not, it is how we use it. However, the arguments in favor of using AI in educational environments are becoming fewer and fewer. There was a study that said using chatbots like ChatGPT had a positive impact on learning, but was recently withdrawn due to “concerns regarding discrepancies”. Come on, the biggest argument of the defenders of educational AI went down the drain. The other culprit. As we said, this professor also points to smartphones as responsible for this situation. Appointment a 2017 study in which they verified how the simple presence of the mobile phone reduced the “available cognitive capacity”. He also cites another 2022 study in which they saw that reading on a smartphone was associated with prefrontal overload and decreased concentration. Tiktokize the school. The problem is not cell phones, but social networks and doomscrolling that hijacks our attention. We have become accustomed to consuming pills of information in the form of tweets, posts, reels and tiktoks. In this context, a 20-page text is much, much. Tyler Jagt is adapting to this reality by dividing work into two, so they have to read less, and assigning specific tasks so they don’t lose track as much. Image | Siora Photography in Unsplash In Xataka | “I can’t stop”: the addiction to talking to AI is already here and there are even support groups to quit it

College students are getting more A’s than at any other time in history. There is a suspect

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Some already call it “grade inflation.” It is a phenomenon that should make us happy—what grades our young people get—but that is increasingly worrying in the educational world. University students have never gotten as many A’s as they have until now, but in reality the credit is not theirs. Using ChatGPT and other AI tools It is distorting its capacity and putting the educational system at a global level in check (again). Note inflation. Igor Chirikov published in May 2026 a study in which he talked precisely about how artificial intelligence is causing grade inflation. In his research, he analyzed the data of half a million students in 319 subjects at the University of Texas, and detected something surprising: since 2022, when OpenAI launched ChatGPT, the number of outstanding students at that institution has grown by 30%. But not everyone gets the same grade. In his conclusions, Chirikov explained how “these increases” in the grade “were greater when homework had a greater influence on the grades, which is consistent with the theory that AI is replacing the student’s work, and not improving learning.” The effect is greater, for example, in courses such as Economics or Journalism, where there are many written assignments to be submitted, but also in Computer Science courses and others in which programming subjects are taught. Both ChatGPT and other AI models are an increasingly popular (and effective) tool for students who want to improve their grades at all costs. perfect homework. The researchers indicate that a displacement of cognitive tasks is occurring here. The student no longer uses technology to support the learning process, but rather completely delegates many of the tasks that he should do to the AI. Essays, research papers and programming practices What should they give to teachers? They are becoming more and more perfect. Mirage. That theoretical brilliance is a mirage. Controlled studies like this one reveal that students who systematically use AI in their assignments end up suffering a 17% drop in their grades when they are subjected to a classic in-person pencil and paper exam on the same subject. ChatGPT becomes a superpower, but without it, grades drop clearly. The problems grow. Grade inflation is not a new phenomenon. In the US, university centers suffer structural pressures: if they are strict, they receive criticism from students, which jeopardizes future students wanting to attend them. This contributed to the fact that at Harvard, for example, A’s went from representing 24% of grades in 2005 to 60.2% in the spring of 2025. ChatGPT, write me my TFG. In Spain and Europe the panorama is similar. 89% of university students admit to using AI to write reports or Final Degree Projects (TFG), according to a recent GoStudent survey. Meanwhile, 61% of teachers confess that they do not have tools or software to confirm that whoever has done a job has not done it with AI. They are all too good students. When the outstanding becomes something totally normal and so frequent, this grade loses its power of differentiation. The filter previously made it clear which students were exceptional, something that was also vital for companies’ search for talent. Now those looking for these talents have reacted: in the US, job portals such as HandShake show that job offers that require a minimum GPA (average score of the university degree) of 3.5 out of 4 have skyrocketed from 9% in 2020 to 25% in 2026. As all university students are exceptional, companies look for the most exceptional among the exceptional. No more A’s. This distrust of job and homework qualifications has made some institutions prefer to return to the past. harvard will apply a notable reform in fall 2027 and will limit outstanding grades to a maximum of 20% per course, while honors enrollment will also depend on a certain percentile instead of via grades. 85% of the students opposed to these measures, but at Harvard they will continue with the measures although they indicate that they will review their application three years after the start of their application. everyone cheats. At the prestigious Princeton University the phenomenon is equally worrying. About half of its students They used AI to write their essays. 15% admitted to using AI to cheat in school, and 65.5% “knew a classmate was cheating and did not report it.” Everyone seems to be cheating at the university, as indicated in an article in The New York Intelligencer as early as May 2025. The university has just approved a proposal that would allow supervised exams, something that would break a 133-year tradition in which the students themselves monitored each other to prevent others from cheating. The “Code of Honor” of this institution has not been able to with the avalanche of AI. Image | Christian Lendl In Xataka | Something is happening in the computer science major in Silicon Valley: enrollment falls for the first time in 20 years

from a student’s idea to real research

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Take a week-long trip with a cabin suitcase In winter it is an art that not everyone can match. Traveling to Mars with a spacecraft in which each extra kilo can mean very expensive amounts of fuel, is a problem. Therefore, it is not enough to put socks inside shoes and replace the filling of the cervical pillow with T-shirts. In these cases it is better to travel light and try to take advantage of the destination’s resources later. A destination that, let us not forget, is the most inhospitable. Still, science is developing proposals as interesting as the one published this year by a graduate student at the University of Arkansas: 3D printing tools directly on Mars. A brilliant student. Zane Mebruer was an undergraduate engineering student when he had an interesting idea. Could metal tools be printed on a 3D printer, taking advantage of the main gas in the Martian atmosphere? He communicated the idea to his teacher Wan Shou and together They set off to check it out.. Typically, when making 3D prints with metallic materials, it is necessary to use a chamber with a protective atmosphere of argon, as this gas prevents oxidation. However, we have said that we do not want to take a lot of luggage to Mars: neither the tools, nor the argon. The Martian atmosphere is made up of 95% carbon dioxide, so it could be that this gas is a good substitute for argon. They did the relevant tests and, indeed, it could be a good option. It is true that argon gave better results, but carbon dioxide also turned out to be a quite acceptable option. Background. It should be noted that these scientists have not been the first to propose 3D printing to avoid having to take a lot of luggage to Mars. In fact, it is something that worries NASA so much that in 2015 issued a challenge to companies and universities to try to print a complete habitat. They were offered a succulent prize of $800,000, which in the end went to a team from the company IA Space Factory. In your case, they used as materials a mixture of basalt fibers extracted from Martian rock and bioplastics. They also wanted to take advantage of materials from the neighboring planet. The new. The materials proposed by that team would not be as useful for printing tools. In that case, metals would be a better option. To do this, Mebruer and Shou proposed using a printing technique known as selective laser fusion. To begin with, this consists of spreading a layer of metal powder on a plate. A laser beam then heats the powder and fuses it onto the plate. When this is ready, the plate is lowered, a new layer of powder is dropped and the procedure is repeated. Layer by layer, the piece of metal hardens and enlarges. The problem is that, in this process, the material is very exposed to oxidation. If it oxidizes, it doesn’t fuse properly, so the result is not as good. That is why a protective gas is needed. Microscope proof. These two scientists carried out the 3D printing in three different conditions: with argon, with carbon dioxide or with ambient air. The result was then analyzed under a microscope in search of any imperfections. It was seen that the best result was obtained with argon, but that with carbon dioxide a hardened, resistant material with few imperfections was also achieved. Much better than with ambient air. Only the metals would be missing. We already have the printing method and the protective gas. Only the metal would be missing. For that, other scientists have proposed recently travel to the asteroid belt and use it as a mine. That’s another story. For now, we wanted to check if printing is viable on the red planet and the answer is clearly yes. Image | Mebruer et al/Magnific In Xataka |Growing lettuce on Mars is NASA’s great challenge to colonize the planet. We already have a “shortcut” to achieve it

Eric Schmidt warned young university students that AI will change everything. Response from the university students: boo him

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We are living a curious moment in daily technological life. Well, in many ways, really, but obviously artificial intelligence is something that takes up a good part of the conversation and it seems that there are no half measures. Or wild optimism about how good this technology is for humanity (for the few who are striking gold, rather) or criticism and opposition. Because while Big Tech and technology gurus evangelize about the benefits of AIthere are more and more They oppose this technology and the gluttonous infrastructure it needs to function. And nothing represents that duality as well as the loud booing that Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, received when he spoke about AI in his graduation speech at a university. Schmidt’s speech. In large American universities it is common for them to invite personalities to give the graduation speech and, in Arizona, the chosen one was billionaire Eric Schmidt who commanded Google and Alphabet. He took the stage and, in front of 10,000 students, gave a speech that addressed several topics, but focused on the impact of modern technology on society. Last December, Time magazine selected its person of the year for 2025. And this time, they were the architects of artificial intelligence. So today we find ourselves on the verge of another technological transformation. One that will be bigger, faster and more impactful than what came before. It will affect every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person and every relationship they have. I know how many of you are feeling about this. I can hear them. There is a fear. There is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written. That the machines are already coming. That jobs are evaporating. That the climate is being destroyed. That politics is fractured. And that you are inheriting a disaster that you did not create. And I understand that fear. It’s rational. And it is amplified every day by social media platforms with algorithms that have learned with great precision that fear drives clicks and anxiety drives engagement. But I want to tell you something tonight in the clearest way possible. To talk about the future as if it had already been decided is to give up on the only thing that really matters. They are giving up their ability to act. The future doesn’t just arrive. It is built in laboratories, in college dormitories, in startups, in classrooms, in legislatures. And the people who will build it will be you and people like you. The booing of Schmidt. Depending on whether you are on the most optimistic side or the most critical side of the current situation of artificial intelligence, you will imagine the fragments in which the public could react to the speech, but one thing is clear: graduates do not seem to like being reminded of the world they are inheriting, that a technology that is far from perfect is going to impact all aspects of society (already is doing so, in fact) and that, with a certain hypocrisy, the blame is placed on the social media algorithms that serve as speaker of certain currents of thought. Whatever path you choose, AI is going to be part of it – Eric Schmidt Especially from a person who was in positions of responsibility at Google and Alphabet for more than 15 years, and Google works the way it works. In his speech, the former CEO addressed other issues such as that the same tools that connect us are the ones that are isolating us and more that “the question is not whether AI will shape the world: it will. The question is whether you will have been part of artificial intelligence.” The new Industrial Revolution. The video of Schmidt’s booing is not framed in a vacuum and has not been the only one that has gone viral in recent weeks. a few days ago, Gloria Caulfield received the same treatment from graduates at the University of Central Florida. Gloria is Vice President of Strategic Partnerships for Tavistock and Executive Director of the Lake Nona Institute and hit a nerve when she compared artificial intelligence and the moment we live in with the Industrial Revolution. Glory commented that we live in a time of profound change and, unlike Schmidt, he had to stop a couple of times due to the force of the boos. In fact, he reacted by pointing out that it was evident that there was a division of opinion and that he loved the passion of the students. He commented that, in his day, his generation had the same problems with the birth of the Internet and insecurity about the future, but it did not seem to convince the students. There was also applause, of course. Weird climate. These types of positions by personalities who give speeches about AI, as we say, are not isolated. Someone very active in this sense is Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia and a person extremely involved and interested in the development of AI, who also gave a talk recently at Carnegie Mellon University in which he commented that there is no better time to start working on “the job of your life”, which AI is a positive network for humanity because it provides opportunities that favor young people and that AI “will create many new jobs and new industries.” “AI is not likely to replace you, but someone who uses AI better than you could” – Jensen Huang Another example is that of monumental anger of the graduates of calartsone of the most important universities in the world in the arts segment, when the president of the institution began to praise artificial intelligence. The problem here is that, again, young people are not so convinced that AI is going to change their future… for the better. As they point out in Guardiana recent study suggests that about half of young Americans are more worried than excited about the rise of AI in … Read more

Princeton had not monitored its students in exams for 133 years due to an “honor code.” AI just broke that pact

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For more than a century, Princeton has based its academic trust on an honor code, an oath its students signed not to cheat on exams. Even the teachers left the classroom. Nobody watched, because honor was enough guarantee. That model just disappearedand artificial intelligence is largely to blame. What has happened. Princeton faculty voted earlier this week to have all in-person exams proctored starting July 1. The measure throws away a policy that dates back to 1893, when students themselves asked to eliminate supervision in exams. With only one vote against, the decision ended up being practically unanimous, making it the most significant change to the university’s honor system in 133 years. Why now. Generative AI has radically transformed students’ ability to copy without detection. According to the proposal presented by Michael Gordin, dean of the faculty, tools such as ChatGPT They allow copying in a way that is almost impossible to identify with the naked eye, especially during an exam. If before cheating required some effort (finding someone who would let you cheat, taking a cheat sheet in the middle of the exam, etc.) now there are a thousand and one ways to do it digitally. Numbers. In one student newspaper survey Of more than 500 seniors, almost 30% admitted to having cheated on an exam or assignment during their time at Princeton. 44.6% claimed to have known people who had violated the code, without telling them. Only 0.4% filed complaints. The number of cases investigated by the Honor Committee reached 60 this year, and the president of that committee, Nadia Makuc, believe They are just the tip of the iceberg. Nobody says anything. Princeton’s honor system historically relied on students themselves denouncing their peers. That doesn’t work anymore. According to the approved proposal, the fear of being publicly pointed out on social networks or in anonymous applications such as Fizz (the campus social network) discourages any complaint. Additionally, the way the AI ​​works makes the traps much less visible to whoever is sitting next to you. There are no more little papers or little glances or those stories. What exactly changes. According to account the faculty newspaper, professors will be present in the classroom during exams, but not to actively intervene. Their role is as witnesses, referring any possible infractions to the student Honor Committee if they detect something. On the other hand, the code oath (“I promise on my honor that I have not violated the Honor Code during this exam”) remains. The difference is that now there will be someone watching. Trust. Professors such as David Bell or Anthony Grafton, from the Princeton History Department, have recognized that the change alters the relationship of trust with their students. The former dean of the faculty, Jill Dolan, counted to the student newspaper that “I think it’s a shame, but it’s necessary.” AI has forced a spiral that is difficult to break. And the more people believe that others copy, the more tempted people feel to do it. Christian Moriarty, professor of Ethics and Law at St. Petersburg College in Florida counted to the Wall Street Journal that “what is at stake is not just the soul of education, but the genuine development of critical thinking.” Further supervision. Princeton has more measures than proctors to supervise the work of its students. In the last year, the number of at-home exams has been reduced by more than two-thirds. Furthermore, according to they count at The Atlantic, the Economics department will introduce oral defenses of term papers. Other teachers have also started to require that essays be written in Google Docs, to be able to review the editing history and verify that the text has been written progressively. Cover image | Roxana Crusemire and Ben Mullins In Xataka | Some Chinese humanoid robots are already going to “school”: the mission is to teach them to work in real life

Suddenly, all the papers students hand in at universities look like the same job. There is a suspect

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AI has caused an earthquake in the education sector. Students use it (many times indiscriminately) and teachers try to adapt to the change reinventing homework and exams. As the years go by, its use becomes normalized and the effects are already beginning to be seen. One of them is that all students They’re starting to sound the same. When AI gives its opinion for you. They tell it in cnn. AI chatbots have become another everyday tool in university life, but it is not only that they are used as support to write a paper, there are more and more students who turn to AI for everything, even to know what to say in class. They tell the case of a Yale student who admits that during a class debate “the conversation stopped, I looked to my left and saw someone frantically typing on their laptop.” He was asking a chatbot the same question his teacher had just asked. I myself am doing a university master’s degree and the situation is not strange to me. There are many students who turn to a chatbot to answer questions that are precisely looking for a critical and personal answer. Homogeneous thinking. It is one of the consequences that are being seen as a result of the use of AI chatbots. According to a study published in March of this yearLLMs narrow the diversity of human expression in three dimensions: language, perspective, and reasoning strategies. The reason is that training data contains bias cultures and overrepresented positions. The authors of the study claim that AI models tend to reproduce Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic points of view. In a context like the university, the result is that the students’ language is generally more polished, but the responses and reasoning are similar and ends up eroding the diversity of opinions. Hallucinations. These biases in the training data also partly explain the phenomena of hallucinations and flattery. When an LLM invents an answer or agrees with us even if we are wrong, it has to do with the fact that Positive and accommodating interactions prevail in your training data. That is to say, his training tells him that it is more important to give an answer rather than its truthfulness. Cognitive surrender. It is a concept taken from an experiment we talked about recently and refers to the phenomenon whereby we stop thinking and checking for ourselves when using AI, accepting its answers with little or no critical review and adopting its security as if it were our own. Delegating part of the cognitive process to AI is not a bad thing if it is done with a critical vision, the problem is when it is done indiscriminately and without any scrutiny of the answers. AI is making us dumb. A MIT study from 2025 pointed in this direction, but we already saw that It’s a very simplistic statement. of what is happening. Whether AI makes us lazier and impairs our critical thinking depends on how we use it. It would be comparable to using a calculator to do a very complex operation or using it to multiply five by six. Well used, AI can save us a lot of time and can be a very powerful tool to shape complex ideas, always without losing that critical thinking. Critical thinking is learned. This is the real problem of the indiscriminate use of AI in the educational environment. We are talking about people who have not yet developed this skill and who are delegating reasoning to an external tool may cause them to never learn it. In front of the prohibitionist stancevarious authors have pointed out the urgency of starting conversations with students from early stages to teach them to use AI critically and responsibly. Image | Xataka with Freepik In Xataka | A university used an AI to hunt down students who used AI. The result was a predictable disaster

5,000 Stanford students have given their love lives to what an algorithm decides. And it’s consuming the university

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It’s Tuesday at 9:00 p.m. in Palo Alto and the silence of the Stanford dormitories is broken by a simultaneous notification: it’s Date Drop. In seconds, the hallways are filled with students who, according to The Wall Street Journalthey “huddle” on their screens with a mixture of anxiety and hope. Ben Rosenfeld, a residential assistant, describes the phenomenon as an “all-consuming force”: Students talk about nothing else while they figure out whether their destiny that night is a free drink date at the On Call Cafe or an anonymous complaint on the forum Fizz. What began as a simple class project has escalated into a massive sociological phenomenon that has hijacked campus social life. The numbers are compelling: in a university of approximately 7,500 undergraduate students, more than 5,000 have already surrendered their love lives to the decisions of this algorithm. From a class assignment to a startup millionaire. The architect of this obsession is Henry Weng, a computer science graduate student who coded the platform in just three weeks. As detailed TechCrunchwhat Weng started as a tool to help his colleagues has transformed into The Relationship Company, a startup that has already raised $2.1 million in venture capital. The list of investors includes Silicon Valley heavyweights such as Mark Pincus (founder of Zynga and of the first investors of Facebook), Elad Gil (of the first investors in AirbnbStripe and Pinterest) and Andy Chen (former partner of Coatue). Success. The premise has been so successful that it has transcended the walls of Stanford. The service has expanded to ten other elite universities, including Columbia, MIT, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania. Weng, who curiously took a subject called “introduction to clowning” that taught him to “delight in failure,” seems to have found a winning formula far from failure. “Our matches turn into real dates at ten times the speed of Tinder,” assures TechCrunch. Optimizing love in the age of fatigue. The success of Date Drop It is not a coincidence; It is symptomatic of an exhausted generation and an environment obsessed with efficiency. As they point out in The Wall Street Journal, It’s a very Stanford solution to a very Stanford problem. On a campus where students are high achievers (high achievers) obsessively focused on academic and professional success, organic social interaction has atrophied. “People have difficulty starting conversations in general, and much more so for romantic interactions,” student Alena Zhang explains to the outlet. But the problem goes beyond Stanford. An analysis of Forbes reveals a general crisis In the world of digital dating: 78% of users report emotional or mental exhaustion from using traditional apps. He ghosting (suffered by 41% of those surveyed) and the feeling that the profiles are a catalog of lies have created chronic fatigue. Added to this is the “Paradox of Preparation” (Readiness Paradox). Generation Z wants to find love more than any generation before it, but they feel paralyzed by the fear of “public failure.” They have replaced asking for a face-to-face date with asking on Instagram, entering a cycle of infinite “testing.” Date Drop it seems to break that paralysis by externalizing the decision: you no longer have to choose and risk public rejection; the algorithm chooses for you. Goodbye to Swipehello to the data. The application is radically different from the mechanics of Tinder. There are no photos to compulsively swipe left or right. The process, detailed on the website itselfbegins with a 66-question questionnaire designed to capture the essence of the user. It’s not just about superficial tastes, but about deep values ​​and political stances: “Is having children essential for a fulfilling life?”, “What are your core values: ambition, curiosity, discipline?” Weng explains that the system uses standard economic “matching theory” combined with an Artificial Intelligence that is trained with feedback (feedback) of the appointments that occur. However, the most innovative—and Machiavellian—feature is the social component. The platform allows friends to play Cupid. Wilson Adkins, a freshman cited by him WSJdiscovered that his friends had “conspired” through the app to match him with a girl from his residence. The algorithm validated the conspiracy with a compatibility score of 99.7%. Not everything is perfect in data heaven. Despite the enthusiasm and millions of investment, the road is not without obstacles. Date Drop It’s not the first attempt to automate love at Stanford. In 2017 he was born The Marriage Pact, a similar project which has already generated 350,000 matches. According to the WSJthe creators of this original project sent a “cease and desist” letter to Weng in November, alleging that the marketing of Date Drop It seemed too familiar to them. Furthermore, technology has limits compared to logistical reality. Gabriel Berger, another student, says that, although he had a great connection with his matchestheir schedules were incompatible: he was vice president of his fraternity and she had dance rehearsals. “We are not interacting well,” they concluded. For her part, Mila Wagner-Sanchez, freshman interviewed by Business Insideradds a note of realism: the novelty fades. After a fun first date (with a friend), and a second matches who never wrote to him, the pressure of midterms caused the app to take a backseat. “I would be open to trying again,” she says, but academic life sometimes outweighs algorithmic curiosity. Optimizing loneliness. Henry Weng has ambitious plans. He sees his company as a “Public Benefit Corporation” intended to facilitate not only romance, but “all meaningful relationships,” including friendships and professional connections. Perhaps the best summary of this phenomenon comes from Madhav Abraham-Prakash, a junior who helped bring the app to campus. Although Date Drop He hasn’t gotten him a girlfriend, he has given him connections on LinkedIn. His justification for The Wall Street Journal sums up the spirit of a generation that doesn’t want to leave anything to chance, not even fate: “I would be sad if my soulmate was here and I couldn’t find it. Or if my co-founder was here and I couldn’t find it, or if my business partner was … Read more

Why more and more Gen Z students prefer trades over college degrees

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Forty years ago China decided to invest in training millions of engineers who have turned out Be your ace in the hole in the AI ​​race. In fact, it is the country with the highest number of STEM graduates in the world and while ups its ante on doctoratesboth the government of the Asian giant and generation Z have begun to pay attention to vocational training. The graduate bubble. The Chinese Ministry of Education counted in November 2024 that in 2025 there would be a historic number of graduates: 12.22 million, how to collect the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. With this panorama, the competition is fierce, also taking into account that The United States has made visas more difficult for those who decide to migrate. The Chinese Ministry of Education is offering different measures and support systems in the form of recruitment events in key regions and industries to alleviate unemployment among university students. It doesn’t seem enough. Labor demand changes. On the other hand, companies are changing their needs: official data show that the demand for people with a university degree fell from 20.3% to 17.4% last year. However, the number of those who had completed vocational training rose from 8.5 to 11%. The FP is so sought after that this segment was the one that had the highest rate of job offers in 2024. It is already a matter of state. Not only is it a labor market issue, but it is also a guideline that points towards a “Strong Educational Nation.” That is the objective of new state plan in education (2024 – 2035): China makes vocational training a state priority, committing to concrete measures such as more funding, improvements in facilities and the development of a modern skills system. In short, vocational training has the same importance as academic training to sustain technological self-sufficiency. As already happened in Europein China they are also stopping stigmatizing VET as an alternative for students with fewer resources or worse grades. The return on investment is no longer profitable. Sixth Tone picks up the testimonies of several young people and their experiences such as that of Ke Chenxi, who scored high enough on the gaokao (something like the PAU) to go to university, but he chose to enroll in a vocational school. Yes, economic and family circumstances were partly to blame, but also because the Wuhan Vocational Institute program offered shorter early childhood education courses, intensive internships, and faster incorporation into the labor market. Associate Professor of Shanghai Fudan University Gao Shanchuan speaks directly from the “income effect”, that is, from the belief that by going to university you will have a higher salary: “What is changing is that young people are beginning to evaluate education in a more pragmatic way. If vocational training leads to stable jobs and a reasonable income, their social prestige will improve over time.” Zhuo Ping is a teacher at Ke School and is clear that although VET is not going to replace universities, it does encourage students to choose according to their aptitudes and not just prestige: “We went from focusing solely on credentials to more substantially recognizing ability.” Wuhan is the epicenter of change. The Chinese city is a true higher education cluster, with more than 80 universities and a strong weight of technical careers. But also where VET is emerging: those who obtain their degree in trades already find work as quickly as their university counterparts, with a successful access rate to the labor market of over 98% in some institutions. And they do so by accessing the labor market faster and with more experience. That VET centers in Wuhan work closely with local companies to design training according to the needs of the industry and not according to rigid and theoretical itineraries will surely help. In fact, in Sixth Tone they pick up the statements of a human resources supervisor, who experiments with live reality, highlighting their good performance, adaptation and skill, although they have pending issues such as teamwork. In Xataka | China promised them very happy with day 996. Until they realized that it was a shot in the foot In Xataka | China has a huge youth unemployment problem. So much so that some people pay to pretend to work Cover | Green Liu and TruckRun

Fewer and fewer teachers want to go on trips with their students. So in Galicia they are entrusting it to companies

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For students it is usually the best moment of the course, but if we talk about teachers, excursions are something else: a extra burden of responsibility and headaches. So much responsibility and so many headaches in fact that there are teachers who directly renounce participating in them. At the end of the day, a trip to the Prado, a few days visiting Barcelona or even a week in Rome is experienced differently if you are a kid willing to burn the night away than a teacher with the mission of taking care of twenty teenagers. For some faculty, this panorama is so demotivating that are turning to companies specialized. The objective: ‘outsource’ school trips. One trip, two ways to live it. Each student is a world. There are those in science and literature, extroverted and shy, responsible and brainless… but what the vast majority agree on is what is the best moment of the course: the excursions. Especially those that culminate ESO or high school, getaways of several days that involve spending nights away from home, leaving your region (maybe even the country) and savoring a dose of freedom that you normally don’t have in your daily life. It sounds exciting… unless you are not the student, but the teacher. Not given away. A few years ago Laura Gómez (Lauri Math Teacher), teacher and tiktoker, published a video which accumulates almost 145,000 likes and 2,000 comments in which he told what it is like to go on a school trip when you have to do it from the other side, that of the teachers who for a few days act as tutors-night watchmen. And its message is curious to say the least: these getaways are usually free for teachers, but even so, despite the opportunity to spend a few days of tourism in another country, many flee from that responsibility as from fire. “We’re going on a free trip” You know what? There are no teachers who want to go on study trips. In fact, many trips have had to be canceled because there were no teachers who wanted to go with them and, of course, if there are no teachers there is no trip,” the teacher reveals. The next question is obvious: Why? Why are there teachers who prefer to continue with the classroom routine rather than spend a few days in Paris, Tenerife, London, Rome… with a group of students? “You sleep between little and none.” The answer Laura’s story is quite simple: where kids see days and days of fun, freedom and more or less supervised revelry, teachers often see something else: “It’s a tremendous responsibility to go abroad with a group of teenagers, each with their father and mother. They get sick, anything happens to them… You sleep little to nothing and on top of that you have to be running around all day from one place to another.” The influencer She is not the only one who has spoken publicly about the issue. In 2024 I did it too through the pages of The Voice of Galicia José Ramón Alonso de la Torre, retired teacher from Vilagarcía de Arousa. In an article on the subject, he explained that it is one thing to accompany students on one-day cultural trips and quite another to go with them on trips of several days, often hundreds of kilometers from their homes. “The teachers back down, as has happened in some Arousa high schools, because they know they are at risk,” recognize. @laurimathteacher Would you go on a study trip?👩🏼‍🏫✌🏼🥵 ♬ original sound – ➗LauriMathTeacher➗ “What are they going to do?” “In the press there are often news stories about teachers legally accused of abandonment and abandonment because a student, while going down a slide into a pool, twisted his arm. Or because another was mugged on Paseo de Palma and had his phone stolen. And what are the poor teachers going to do, prohibit them from bathing, accompany each walker?” he was wondering Alonzo. “No, it is not easy to go on an excursion in front of 50 boys and girls ready to take on the world, especially the world at night.” Alcohol, scares, unforeseen events, nights guarding nightclubs and hotel hallways, run-ins with students from other schools… Seen that way, who would want to shoulder that enormous burden of extra responsibility? Outsourcing trips. So far nothing surprising. What is curious is what I revealed yesterday Vigo Lighthouse in a chronicle that explains how some teachers in the region are refusing to go on trips with their students. Given this scenario and to prevent kids from being left without the experience, there are centers in which the function is being outsourced directly. What does that mean? That trips are celebrated, but with teachers, but with other professionals. “Two years ago we had to call a company to travel with the children because no teacher wanted to go. This year we preferred to keep only the 4th year ESO excursions. In third year we would have to count on the company and we decided to stop doing it,” comment to Lighthouse Malores Villanueva, director of an institute in Vigo. Yours is not the only center that has covered the lack of volunteer teachers by resorting to a specialized company. “Pretty strict rules”. One of these businesses, Divertos, assures that it is not an exceptional practice, especially since the pandemic. “There are years when the same center calls us for several outings and other courses for nothing; and they call us again years later. There are promotions that are more complex than others,” comment to Lighthouse its manager, Marivíc García. The service provided not only relieves teachers of responsibility. It also marks the focus of travel. “We have quite strict rules and although at first they protest, they later get along well. They know that if they don’t comply the consequence is losing the trip,” explains Garcia before citing some guidelines they give to young people, such as not … Read more

Korea created 10 m2 micro-flats for students. Rising rents are filling them with more than just students

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If Kim wanted to walk around her house in Seoul from one corner to another, it would take less time than it took you to read this sentence. It’s not that it’s exceptionally fast. It is that he lives in a goshiwonthe quintessence of micro(micro)flats South Koreans, tiny dwellings that in theory were not planned as homes but that necessity turns into the residence of more and more young people in the country. Kim herself is a barbaric example. Despite being 31 years old, having a job as an office worker and having lived in Seoul for five years, he has had to abandon his one-room studio to move to a goshiwonthe same type of accommodation he resorted to when he settled in the capital in 2017. He is not enthusiastic about the idea, but given the rent escalation He doesn’t have many other options left. What is a goshiwon? Microhomes. And micro can be understood in this case in the most literal sense of the word. The goshiwon (either gosiwon) are mini studios that can be rented to affordable prices and they gather the essentials to survive: a bed, wardrobes and some space to install a desk and (perhaps) a shower cabin. Of course, not all goshiwon They are the same and the characteristics can change a lot from one apartment to another. On the Korea.net platform they point out that the rooms are usually around 10 square metersalthough there are those who speak of cabins of barely 3 m2 and on TikTok you can see people showing gosiwons of less than 7 m2. There are also broader options, which exceed the 30 m2. It is not strange that they are located in buildings with common services and its tenants must share bathroom and kitchen. Another thing they don’t always guarantee is a window to receive natural light. Are they that cheap? Yes. The first thing to keep in mind is that the goshiwon They were not designed to serve as stable and permanent domiciles. Korea Herald account that initially, back in the 70s, were designed with students focused on passing their exams and who only needed a space in which to spend the nights between visits to classrooms and libraries. So clear was his approach that the name gosiwon can be literally translated as “examination room”. Hence, among the little furniture they include there is a bed and a small desk. Everything else was superfluous. The undeniable thing is that it is a much more economical accommodation option than other rental formats. Herald explains that one of those micro apartments in Jongno-gru, in the heart of Seoul, it can cost between 400,00 and 500,000 won per month, about 270-340 dollars. In university areas there are even for 150 dollars. Its management is also simple and does not require large deposits. Nothing to do with almost 7,000 dollars deposit and 500 per month that the most conventional studies require on average, according to Danabg; or of course the very high disbursements of the insurance system jeonse rental. Why are they news? The goshiwon They have existed for decades, but it takes a look at the South Korean press to see that have become in news. The reason? Little by little they are making their way among a new audience, different from the one that demanded them decades ago. The format seems to be triumphing among foreign students who spend a few months in Seoul and young South Koreans who, like kimhave been suffocated by the rise in housing prices. That is precisely what just reported the newspaper Korea Times. And do you provide data? Beyond Kim’s testimony, the newspaper provides a series of data which show a clear trend: although the use of goshiwon by young South Koreans is not yet widespread, it is becoming more frequent. In 2024, 5.3% of households headed by people between 19 and 34 years old were registered in homes that are not legally classified as such, which includes from goshiwons to houses made from ship containers. It is a low percentage, but it stands out for two reasons. The first is that if we talk about South Korean households in general, the ratio drops to 2.2%. The second is that this 5.3% represents the highest figure in the last five years, only surpassed by 2017, when it reached 5.4%. In 2020 the rate was actually 3.2%. “This trend coincides with a continued influx of young Koreans to Seoul and the capital metropolitan area and an increase in the costs of their primary housing options,” comments Kang Mi-naexperts from the Korea Research Institute of Human Settlements (KRIHS). Are there more factors at play? Yes. The goshiwons have become a good option for university students who come to South Korea to study, but the Seoul residential market is facing a scenario of rising costs that is not unknown to us in Spain. a few weeks ago The Chosun Daily published that housing prices in the capital had reached their highest values ​​in the last seven years, with monthly rents also experiencing record increases. To that is added the increase in price of leases through the jeonse system, which requires a large initial deposit. Images| TikTok 1 and 2 In Xataka | South Korea has found the formula to improve its birth rate: companies pay fortunes to their employees to have children

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