Making Learning Matter for the WHY Generation

College has never cost more, or the payoff more uncertain. As students question the value of a degree, many are disconnecting, skipping class, ghosting assignments, and drifting through their education. Faculty, meanwhile, are working harder than ever to re-engage them.

Enter Mark Perna, bestselling author of Answering Why and a leading voice on generational motivation. He believes today’s students are ready to invest when they see clear, compelling relevance. As he argues, the path forward doesn’t require a full reinvention of higher ed, just a smarter, more intentional way to frame what we’re asking students to do, and why it matters. 

Because if we can’t clearly answer “What’s the point of this?”— how can we expect them to? 

Guest Bio

Mark C. Perna is a bestselling author, speaker, and international expert on generational engagement. As founder and CEO of TFS, a strategic communications firm, Mark has spent his career helping educators, employers, and parents connect with the passion and potential of today’s younger generations. His award-winning book, Answering Why, offers a blueprint for motivating Gen Y and Z with purpose and relevance. A frequent keynote speaker and Harvard guest presenter, Mark’s insights are reshaping how we think about education, work, and the future of talent. Learn more at MarkCPerna.com.

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Transcript

Purpose Over Faith In Authority

SPEAKER_01 0:02

If they're not doing what you want them to do as a parent, educator, and employer, it's simply there was no compelling relevance and purpose to do it. So instead of doing it on faith, which is what previous and older generations did growing up, they do nothing on faith unless there's a compelling relevance and purpose. And so that's where we sit today and we're grappling with young people as opposed to unleashing their passion, purpose, and performance.

Meet Mark C. Perna And His Thesis

The Why Generation Explained

SPEAKER_00 0:28

What you just heard is classic Mark Purna. Sharp, provocative, and grounded in deep respect for the potential of young people. In his best-selling book, Answering Why, Unleashing Passion, Purpose, and Performance in Younger Generations, Mark challenges us to rethink how we engage with students, not by demanding effort, but by making the effort worth it in their eyes. Because when young people see the purpose behind their work, they lean in, they commit, they thrive. So in this episode, we ask, what does it take to create that kind of clarity? Not just about school or career, but about life itself. Welcome to Higher Listenings. Mark, welcome to Higher Listenings. It's wonderful to have you with us. Oh, it's an honor to be with you guys. A lot of people are struggling these days, right? Lack of direction, anxious about the future. The big one we've seen over the years is just the level of disengagement workers feel in the workplace. So when you look at this moment in society, how does that idea of purpose, finding your why, help us make sense of some of the issues that we're seeing?

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Well, I think it's finding your purpose, but I think more importantly, for parents, educators, employers, it's helping understand where younger generations are today. When I speak across North America, I talk about two generations and I lump them together as the why generation, W H Y generation. And it's basically everybody 30 and younger. And they're different. We're struggling. As parents, educators, employers, we're looking at them and we tend to look in negative terms, like lazy, entitled, and this kind of thing. And it's completely the opposite of who they are. They're actually the most extraordinary, in my opinion, they're the most extraordinary generations to come down the pike. I think they're the most innovative, creative, intelligent, you name it. And they will move heaven and earth to go after something they want. The challenge today is that we're not creating compelling relevance and purpose to the things we're asking them to do. And as parents, educators, employers, so this isn't just a teacher thing or an employer thing. It's across the board. And that really is the ability for us to help guide purpose in younger generations, is they have to know why this is important. Why is it worth my time? If they're not doing what you want them to do as a parent, educator, and employer, it's because they see no value or return on the investment of energy and time in doing what you want them to do. It's simply there was no compelling relevance and purpose to do it. So instead of doing it on faith, which is what previous and older generations did growing up, they do nothing on faith unless there's a compelling relevance and purpose. And so that's where we sit today and we're grappling with young people as opposed to unleashing their passion, purpose, and performance.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

So, Mark, I waved goodbye to 30 a long time ago. But in my youth, I dropped out of med school to pursue a PhD in philosophy. I was in search of a meaningful career, a meaningful life. I watched my son go through a similar process when he went to college. He changed his major in the first month of his undergraduate education and has not regretted that career path that he's chosen. What is it about this generation or these two generations that makes it the case that this is uniquely a purpose-driven generation and not just the same thing all young people are in search of?

AI, Anxiety, And A Flat Labor Market

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Where we sit in the world as it sits today is literally the landscape of education, workforce development in this country is shifting as we speak. We are in a different world today than we were two weeks ago. Like, literally, look at just the landscape of what has shifted in just a two-week period of time. We used to sit there and go, things have changed over the last year or two. No, now it's weekly. And what's happening with AI and automation and all of these things that are going on, young people, and this is based on all the questions I get in open dialogue and Q's A's from 200 students to a thousand students in performing arts centers where I speak. But what I've really garnered from the questions and the answers and the comments, the thousands of comments I get afterwards, is that young people today hope set an all-time low. They may not be able to put it all in terms, but they're looking at a world that's shifting. The labor market is shifting. I get lots of questions. I'm afraid to pick a career field because I think AI might might take that career field. So what else do I do? And where do I go? And how do I create something in my life? 84% of Gen Z want to be entrepreneurs, they want to own their own company. 53% want to do freelance because they view that as control choice and voice in what they do because they're not having a lot of faith in our labor market. I just wrote an article at Forbes that just dropped and published this week, is that the labor market is going to be predicted across the board in 2026 as flat. Which means what opportunities do I have with the degree that I'm going to get or the knowledge that I'm pulling together or the certifications that I'm going after? What do I do with that? You know, it because I you may come out of college in the near term and like many, not be able to get a job. The labor market doesn't support the degree that you have or the field. And so I think that has a lot of underpinnings in why young people today are looking and changing and trying to adapt because they're trying to figure out what am I building and how do I succeed at it?

Making Purpose Practical In Education

SPEAKER_00 5:47

The idea of purpose to me could include this. Yes, I want to be a doctor or I want to run a marketing agency or something like this. But I remember years ago doing some work on purpose, and a phrase I landed on through that process was to bring texture and meaning to life. It was very broad, a little bit vague, but over time, that's really been quite a useful signpost for me and also figuring out what lights me up and what actually sucks my energy. But I think for a lot of people, the idea of finding your why seems vague. We talk about it a lot, but how do you actually go about doing that?

SPEAKER_01 6:26

That's a great question, Eric, because when I speak around the country, I talk a lot about reframing the purpose of education in vast terms and basically underpinning not curriculum, not changing curriculum. Engineering is engineering and med is med and philosophy is philosophy and STEM is STEM and all of those things. But I'm how we frame what young people are learning and what are they really trying to build? So whether it's at a two-year community technical college, whether it's a four-year university, whether it's going off for certifications and licensures and apprenticeships in military, whatever it is, that there's opportunities to build what I call a competitive advantage, a personal competitive advantage. We have to reframe the purpose from pre-kindergarten through college and into workforce development that young people are truly building what is a competitive advantage to them. And I'm gonna give you this example because I use it around the country. Why do straight A 4.0 students show up at any level of education? They show up every day, right? They're poetry in motion. They literally show up every day and they do everything we're asking them to do. And we we adore them, right? As parents. We adore them as educators. We love that. They're not the ones we have to pile on our back and carry through the semester or through the year. At the end of the day, straight A students believe there's a competitive advantage in getting straight A's. I'm gonna have more opportunities, I'm gonna live a better life, I'm gonna get into a better school if I'm I haven't already made an educational decision. So they're showing up because they believe in competitive advantage. But once you wrap your head around that's it, then you have to ask yourself this question: then why do three point, two point, and one-point students show up every day? See, they don't look at life the same way. Far too many threes, twos, and ones believe education is their problem and they're just trying to survive this. And so when I talk about building purpose, I'm talking about reframing the purpose of education away from just getting great grades to building a competitive advantage that includes three critical things, and that's academic, robust academic knowledge, but also technical competencies and then professional and life skills, things like work ethic, punctuality, leadership, communication, work-life balance, stress management, critical thinking, problem solving, and building those things. Like for me, algebra in high school didn't mean much to me. Full disclosure, guys, in school, I was in the half of the class that made the top half possible. I was not that kid who was engaged. Yeah, see, it's a fact, but it's a funny fact, right? But half the student audiences I talked to are in the bottom half of their class, half are in the top half, right? So when I speak to them, I go, I was in that bottom half of the class, I wasn't engaged, but I didn't understand that algebra was all about critical thinking and problem solving. I just showed up and I started doing whatever they asked me to do. But algebra is all about critical thinking, it's about expanding your opportunities, it's about the neural pathways in your brain, it's about your prefrontal cortex to developing in a way that allows you to adapt to whatever the world throws at you. And I would challenge most people in America that students have no idea that that's building competitive advantage. That it's not about learning algebra and regurgitating algebra for the rest of your life, unless you're in a STEM field, engineering, et cetera, et cetera, or physics. But it's all about building the competitive advantage of adapting to what the world throws at you. Because I talk to students, they don't know that this reality exists. That to me is purpose.

Competitive Advantage Beyond GPA

SPEAKER_02 9:43

A lot of the conversations I've had with faculty in the past year with the emergence of AI has really been to try to help them see that the rise in plagiarism that Gen AI has created for students is a signal, it's a symptom of a failure to do exactly what you're saying, to help them see that what I'm offering as an instructor, what this course is offering as an opportunity and should be of value to you as a student, that you should see that there's good stuff to be gained from applying your effort here as opposed to hitting the easy button. A little more complicated than that because some of the traditional uh things that we ask students to do perhaps wouldn't bear that scrutiny. But if we're designing the course properly and offering it to students, but not helping them see that it connects to something that matters, then we're making it more difficult for them to make that commitment. Is that what you're saying, or does it go a little bit deeper than that for students?

SPEAKER_01 10:38

I think it is, but what you said is so accurate and the way you frame it, just to give you an example. So some of this stuff is generational markers, and of course, anytime you talk about generations, it's a huge bell curve, and there's always outliers to these things. But when it comes to AI and automation, and you talk about those are those become ways that you can cheat, if you will. Well, 30 and younger in America are the first two generations in history that absolutely require, as part of their daily grind, is looking for the cheat codes, hacks, and shortcuts on everything they do. They want to shortcut it. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is the way we raise them. We as parents, educators, and employers need to look in the mirror, and including myself with my own kids. My God, they want to they want to cheat. I'm like, have entire game systems that they're looking for the special hack, the shortcut to get things done. I talk to a lot of faculty and teachers across America and say find a way to build them in. So this doesn't work for everybody, but it depends on the environment. But it's like, hey, it's Monday. By Friday, we need to get this big pile of stuff done, and this is what I would love to get accomplished. But if everybody's all in and everybody's willing to commit to this, I can scrunch about eight things off of this and get it done by Friday, but everybody's got to be here, everybody's got to get it done, everybody has to commit to it. But we can shorten this and get it done. Are you guys in? Now, what you basically said is, are you willing to take the cheat code shortcut and hack that I just created? What are they gonna say? If they say no, you're still teaching the same thing you were teaching the whole time anyway. But if you find a way to shortcut it, it doesn't need to be eight things cut. Maybe it's one thing. Maybe it's I could find a way to save 30 minutes, an hour, but everybody's gotta be all in. You're getting commitment, they'll jump all over that. And they become partners in the process. Because something else that's really important from a generational standpoint for kids is they want some kind of control choice and voice in this. Something. It doesn't have to be a lot, but it's got to be something. I was like, all right, I had some voice in this. It's not happening to me, it's happening for me and in collaboration with me.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

That's great advice in terms of offering students choice, and we know that that's a powerful approach. But if I'm an instructor teaching a large class, I've got two to three hundred students. It's not realistic to think that I could sit down with each and every student, offer that one-to-one mentorship, that support, the guidance, talk about my experience with them to help them see and appreciate their direction, their purpose, their why. So how would you advise an instructor in a course like that to support students given those constraints that I just mentioned?

unknown 13:14

Yeah.

AI, Shortcuts, And Student Commitment

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Especially in a large, a large forum like that. So a couple of hundred big lecture hall kind of stuff where there's hundreds and really you don't have that personal human connection relationship. I would recommend a couple of things. One is building a human connection and relationship with those you do come in contact with, because young people today have the ability to quickly realize whether there is an enthusiasm for knowing the audience. I think that's an important part of it. You can get up in front of people, and nobody needs to be an inspirational, motivational speaker. There is extroverted enthusiasm and there's introverted enthusiasm. Both are enthusiastic, but they're come from different perspectives and they're both meaningful. Have you ever met somebody who has quiet enthusiasm? But gosh darn, you look in their eyes and the way they speak, they love their topic. That's an important piece. It can be a part of that. In a large lecture hall kind of thing, yeah, you may not have a personal relationship with each person, but you can frame, and this is where competitive advantage as a framing really helps, is because if you can answer this simple question, why is any of this important? And the question I ask a lot of faculty is, why would anyone do this? Why would anyone do it? Like you're teaching X, why would anyone do this? And I don't mean as a career field, just why would anyone do this? Why would anyone do the work? If the first knee-jerk reaction from anybody teaching any, this could be training and workforce development and employment, if the first knee-jerk reaction is great question, wow, I don't, I'm not sure. Wow, right there's the issue and the challenge, because if you can't answer the question effectively for yourself, you're asking two or three hundred people to answer it on their own. I'll tell you something else that I do. Now, I'm not telling faculty members to do this in a large lecture hall facility, but I can tell you what works great for me is I stand at the door and say welcome to everybody that comes in. Now, you don't need to do it every week, but every once in a while, to simply stand there and just say good morning or good afternoon or good evening, even just as they're passing. You don't have to have a personal conversation, but it is a human connection.

SPEAKER_02 15:18

If I'm a faculty member, I want to help students move in this direction, particularly maybe not students who are sleeping, but just they're struggling. They just don't know how to begin almost like a learned helplessness. They've been schooled and they just don't know how to turn the experience of trying to do whatever's being asked of them by whichever instructor they're facing into seizing that as something they can own and gain mind for, purpose for their own ends. How do you help them get started? What's something I could give to a student to say, look, think about this way or do do this self-work? Spend a weekend thinking about this. What's the first step? Give us a glimpse of what that process would look like for me as a student.

Teaching At Scale Without Losing Humanity

SPEAKER_01 16:01

I think what it is too is I'm gonna go back to what I talk to young people about, is I talk to them about spending less time trying to find their passion and way more time finding what they're good at as step one. Yeah. Find what you're good at. You may be good at a lot of things. A lot of people are good at lots of things. And you may find that certain things you're good at you don't like doing. That's an important nugget of information. You may also find that there's a bunch of things that you're really good at and they cluster together in something. And I tell them when you find that, there's hundreds of careers and occupations at all levels of education experience that sit there. And onetonline.org is an excellent place to go. ONetOnline.org. It's the U.S. Department of Labor site. It's you don't need any user credentials to use it, but you can look up any career field, search, sort, and filter. It'll tell you everything you need to know. It'll tell you how many opportunities there are in the labor market for where you are. There are lots of ways to connect to that. I we need to do significantly more career exploration in middle schools and high schools. We need to allow people to recognize that at almost any grade point average, if you're also building technical abilities and professional skills, you have the ability to adapt. You can be wildly successful in America today with a 4.5 grade point average, but you can be wildly successful in America with a 2.5. The difference is in the technical abilities you also carry, the ability to do things in your head and with your hands, and the ability to have the professional and life skills that are necessary in order to be able to thrive and contribute to wherever it is you wind up. So the ability to start having those kinds of conversations with young people, and that's why when I speak to them, I connect it all to their lifestyle goals and aspirations. And no matter how grand, modest, or laid back they view their life, they're going to need to build a personal competitive advantage to achieve whatever that view is in their own mind. We need to start having those kinds of conversations, and they can be in group format, they can be in small group format, they can be in individual formats, and we can do this with our own kids in our own homes. We need to send way more of the right kids off to four-year universities for baccalaureates, masters, PhDs, MDs, et cetera, JDs, et cetera. We need to send more of the right kids to two-year community and technical colleges for associates' degrees. We need to send way more of the right kids for certifications and licensures and apprenticeships and military and entrepreneurship. And that's where we sit in America today. Enrollment is down. We're hitting the beginning three years of the enrollment cliff in higher education in America. There are three million fewer students in higher education today than there were just three short years ago. Part of that is population connected, and part of that is value proposition connected. And we have to cover that and recognize we have to shift.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

A lot of our conversation to this point has been about individual students and individual instructors in their courses. This sounds also like an institutional opportunity. So is there a way universities or K-12 systems should be orienting or serving students better by clarifying the competitive advantage opportunity that their institution is providing? Is there a shift that needs to happen?

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Absolutely, yes. But it's but here's the best part of that. Our universities or two-year community technical college, so many of them are doing so many great things. They're doing extraordinary work and they're connecting the dots. They're already helping young people build a competitive advantage in lots of ways. All I'm saying to you is we need to consciously reframe how we deliver the day-to-day so that young people know that they're building a competitive advantage. And it can't be just because I say it. We have to be able to define it. We have to be able to understand that no matter what course of study they're in, they're building the ways to adapt to a world that's changing out of control. We can't say it once. We can't put it in a PDF marketing piece. It has to be something that we, as faculty, as staff, as career recruiters, as counselors and administrators and deans and even provosts and chancellors, et cetera, and presidents, we have to recognize that this is the notion of how we build this. When I went to school, I went to a private Jesuit university, and I went there and it was about$5,000 a year. And that was staying on campus. If I messed everything up, it wasn't catastrophic. Today, that same university is$65,000 a year. And if you mess that up over a couple of years, you are carrying that with you for the rest of your life. And we just have to recognize this is a dynamic. I'm not saying it's good or bad. I'm not saying it's pro or con. I'm saying it's just the fact that this is driving downward enrollments. It's because the value proposition against the time investment, the labor market, the return on that investment are at odds today. And so our universities simply have to recognize this is the way it is. It has to be a cultural thing. This is what we talk about. This is how we build it. This can be this can be an avenue that an entire university or college takes as part of their marketing communications on a daily basis. There's lots of ways to connect this dot, but it builds relevance for young people so that they can go do a lot of different things.

Start With Strengths And Career Exploration

SPEAKER_00 21:20

The career exploration piece seems to be really important. I think you you touched on this earlier that it needs to start a lot earlier, in my mind. Because my concern, I'm a parent of two boys, they're in university right now, finding their way. There has been some major switching, like we talked about at the outset. But if you were to go to a party in my neighborhood, you would find people working in business development, you would find people who are marketing, they might be doing sales for a corporation, a lawyer, perhaps, accountants, the types of jobs that we typically think about in the corporate world. But there's but an outlier might be someone who works on a film set doing makeup, a makeup artist. And I'm like That's a job that exists. And I wonder what your thoughts are on how do we actually increase that exposure to young people so that they can think about more than what do my parents do and their neighbors and their friends do, which is actually a fairly narrow slice of what's possible.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

I tell kids to look and try to find their jam. Not their passion's something you build over time. Passion finds you. I don't believe you find your passion. I believe passion finds you. Yeah. Because that's where grit, stictuativeness, and resilience lives. But I tell them, find your jam. You walk into an algebra class to stick with our algebra example, right? You walk in algebra and you go, man, I'm good at this. I like this. Like I like, I'm really good at this. I like this. That's when I tell them there's hundreds of careers that are related to that. If you're good in sports, like a lot of people think sports is all about being an athlete. Sure, you can go that route. But I'll tell you what, you can also be a scout. You can be in purchasing, you can be in accounts receivable and payable, you can be in marketing and sports. There are lots of ways to be involved in sports. There's lots of ways to be involved in student government and getting into government. There's lots of ways to be a theater kid and be involved in theater in all kinds of ways that don't necessarily have to be on stage. So at all levels of education experience, the more we connect to here's all the ways you can use this at different levels of education and experience, it opens up a tremendous field for people to be able to connect these dots.

SPEAKER_02 23:25

So this connection at a very high level seems obvious. Yes, there are hundreds of careers connected to algebra. In the abstract, that sounds right, but okay, algebra is my jam. Now what? Like, how do I start to find opportunities in a much more concrete way that are in the market for me so that I know with some degree of confidence, not 100%, but I can be more confident that hey, if I really dedicate myself to getting a major and graduating with this degree, I'm gonna be on the path towards something I want.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

I think that comes from any faculty member or instructor or teacher in America recognizing that they have to understand what the outcome potential is for each. That's where ONETOnline.org, which is a free resource and available to anybody, can also do an extraordinary amount of searching and thinking how do you how do you how do I take this thing I'm I really enjoy and that I'm really good at, and what kinds of career fields are there? That's why that even exists. Is it a perfect site? No, but it's pretty darn good. You can search, sort, and filter anything. Even Mike Common, the CEO of a company, we came out with something called a career tree, which is a graphic representation that is customized by classroom that all these different levels of education experience, because I knew this conversation had to take place, but it's every pathway has connections to four-year universities and beyond. Every pathway has a middle ground that's associate's degrees and specialized trainings and advanced certifications and licensures and apprenticeships, et cetera. And then there's always an entry-level area where I can take what I've learned here and I can go do something immediately. And that also speaks to younger generations because it allows them to go out and get some seasoning and to try to figure out do I like this enough to go out and invest my time, my energy, and my money or my debt to get a degree in something and in a career field that makes sense to me. And it's all again bounces back to purpose, but that's the way it has to start.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

I I want to bring us home with the final question here. What does life look like for this generation, not just in terms of their careers, but their sense of themselves, their satisfaction in life based on the work you're doing?

Enrollment Cliff And Value Proposition

SPEAKER_01 25:33

What's your hope and dream for oh my hope and dream, and I know it, I know it as a certainty, is that they're gonna fix the hot mess we're leaving behind. And I think they're gonna they're gonna have to be that. By 2030, 75% of the American workforce are gonna be Gen Y millennials and Gen Z. And they're the ones who are passing the mantle. My view is that they're extraordinary. When they see something that they want, they will move heaven and earth to get there. Our challenge is parents, educators, and employers is helping them find what they want. And so what I'm talking about today in competitive advantage and how we frame things is about how we get good at creating want-to, because I've always believed this that if the want-to is strong enough, the how-to will come.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

Well, Mark, I want to thank you so much for your time and your passion and the vision that you've just finished this conversation with. I think it's it's exciting to think about if we can systemically achieve that, the power that we would unleash in the next generation. So thank you so much for your work and for your time. Thank you both. It's been an honor to be with you.

SPEAKER_00 26:36

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