Gen Z, Work and College: What Are We Willing to Build Next?
We Inherited the System. What Are We Willing to Build Next?
Every generation inherits something.
Institutions.
Workplaces.
Education systems.
Economic realities.
Social expectations.
Technology.
Cultural norms.
Some of those systems serve us well.
Others were designed for circumstances that no longer exist.
And some may have been flawed from the beginning.
But eventually every generation faces the same challenge:
It is one thing to identify what isn't working. It is another to decide what we're willing to build instead.
That idea became the foundation of my conversation with Addey Morrison, a second-year Colorado State University student studying political science and history, in Episode 90 of the Her Resources Podcast.
I didn't invite Addey onto the show to be a spokesperson for Gen Z.
No individual can represent an entire generation.
I wanted to hear from one young woman standing at a fascinating point in her life—old enough to question the systems around her but young enough that she hasn't spent decades becoming accustomed to them.
And I wanted to listen.
Not debate.
Not prove that my generation had it harder.
Not ask her to defend hers.
Just listen to what she sees from where she stands.
The result was a conversation that made me think differently about work, education, technology, success—and what generations owe one another.
Maybe Success Doesn't Mean What It Used To
For many previous generations, the markers of success were relatively clear.
Get an education.
Find a good job.
Build a career.
Buy a home.
Earn more money.
Move up.
Retire.
That path was never guaranteed, but it provided a recognizable destination.
For many younger adults, success appears to be becoming more personal.
Purpose matters.
Relationships matter.
Flexibility matters.
Quality of life matters.
Meaning matters.
Money certainly still matters. You cannot simply remove economics from the equation.
But the assumption that a bigger paycheck, more prestigious title or larger house automatically equals a successful life deserves examination.
And perhaps younger generations aren't wrong to ask:
What exactly are we working so hard to achieve?
But Questioning the System Comes With Responsibility
There is another side to this conversation.
It's easy to identify what's wrong.
College is too expensive.
Housing is unaffordable.
Entry-level jobs require experience.
Workplaces need to change.
Social systems are outdated.
Previous generations made mistakes.
Some of those criticisms may be entirely legitimate.
But criticism is not transformation.
Eventually we have to move from:
"This doesn't work."
to:
"What would work better?"
And then comes the hardest part:
What are we willing to do to help create it?
That responsibility doesn't belong only to Gen Z.
It belongs to all of us.
When Is a System Broken—and When Is Something Simply Hard?
This was one of the questions I especially wanted to explore with Addey.
Because there is a difference.
Some systems genuinely need redesign.
But life also contains difficulty.
Disappointment.
Failure.
Sacrifice.
Waiting.
Working toward something that doesn't happen immediately.
Not every difficult experience is evidence of a broken system.
At the same time, saying:
"That's how we did it."
isn't evidence that a system still works either.
Those two ideas can coexist.
Younger generations can question what they inherit.
Older generations can challenge them to distinguish between unnecessary barriers and the struggle that sometimes comes with growth.
That's where cross-generational conversations become valuable.
Is College Still Preparing Students for the World They're Entering?
Higher education became one of the biggest parts of our conversation.
For decades, college was positioned as one of the most reliable paths toward economic opportunity.
But today's students are asking harder questions about the return on that investment.
What does the degree cost?
What will I earn afterward?
What will I actually learn?
Will it prepare me for work?
And increasingly:
Will the job I'm preparing for even exist in the same form when I graduate?
Those are reasonable questions.
But Addey also reminded me that the value of college isn't limited to direct job preparation.
College can teach independence.
Expose students to people and ideas they haven't encountered before.
Develop critical thinking.
Create relationships.
Challenge beliefs.
Teach young adults how to navigate life away from home.
So perhaps the question isn't simply:
"Is college worth it?"
It's:
"What should college be designed to accomplish now?"
If We Could Redesign College From Scratch, Would It Look Like This?
That's where the conversation gets more interesting.
Imagine we weren't trying to repair the existing higher-education model.
Imagine we were designing it today.
Would every bachelor's degree take roughly four years?
Would every profession require one?
Would education and work remain as separate as they often are now?
Would students graduate before gaining meaningful professional experience?
Would we combine academic education, apprenticeships, internships and practical work differently?
Would lifelong learning become part of the model rather than something people return to years later?
And perhaps most importantly:
Could we design something students can actually afford?
Those questions don't diminish the value of education.
They ask us to think more seriously about how we deliver it.
The Entry-Level Experience Problem Makes No Sense
Then there's the contradiction waiting for students when they leave college.
They search for an entry-level job.
And discover it requires experience.
Where exactly is that experience supposed to come from?
We've created a loop.
Employers want experienced workers.
Young people need employers willing to give them experience.
If no one creates that first opportunity, the pipeline eventually breaks.
And AI could make this problem even more complicated.
What Happens When AI Automates the Work That Used to Teach Us?
This may be one of the most important future-of-work questions from our conversation.
Entry-level work hasn't always been glamorous.
Research.
Drafting.
Data entry.
Administrative tasks.
Basic analysis.
Routine assignments.
But those tasks served another purpose.
They taught people how the work worked.
You learned by doing.
You made mistakes.
You watched experienced colleagues.
You built context.
You gradually developed judgment.
Now imagine AI performs much of that work.
Organizations may become more efficient.
But where does the next generation develop the experience required to do the higher-level work?
If we automate the bottom rung of the career ladder, we have to think seriously about how people reach the second rung.
AI Is Already Part of Education
For students today, artificial intelligence isn't some future workplace technology.
It's already here.
Students are using ChatGPT and other AI tools.
Faculty are trying to determine what's appropriate.
Schools are experimenting with policies.
And everyone is figuring it out in real time.
The question shouldn't simply be:
"How do we stop students from using AI?"
It should also be:
"How do we teach students to use AI without surrendering their ability to think?"
Because having access to an answer is not the same as understanding it.
And generating an essay is not the same as developing an argument.
Critical Thinking May Become More Important Because of AI
If AI can produce information instantly, human judgment becomes even more valuable.
Is this accurate?
What is missing?
What assumptions are embedded in this answer?
What source supports it?
What other perspective should I consider?
Does this conclusion actually make sense?
Those questions require critical thinking.
Ironically, the more answers technology gives us, the more important it may become to teach people how to question those answers.
That applies far beyond college.
It applies to all of us.
We Have More Information Than Any Generation in History—and That's Not Always an Advantage
Addey's generation has grown up with access to extraordinary amounts of information.
Anything can be searched.
Shared.
Posted.
Commented on.
Challenged.
And consumed within seconds.
That sounds empowering.
It can also be overwhelming.
Because access to information does not guarantee access to truth.
A polished video can be wrong.
A viral post can be misleading.
An authoritative-sounding claim can have no evidence behind it.
Algorithms can continually show us more of what we already believe.
So one of the most important skills young people—and frankly all of us—need is media literacy.
Pause.
Check.
Find the source.
Look for context.
Ask who benefits from the claim.
Consider what might be missing.
The ability to access information matters.
The ability to evaluate it matters more.
Social Media Has Changed What Participation Looks Like
Technology has also made it extraordinarily easy to publicly support a cause.
Share the post.
Change the profile picture.
Use the hashtag.
Comment.
Repost.
Those actions can create awareness.
But they can also create the illusion of participation.
We discussed what I sometimes think of as keyboard activism.
There's a difference between expressing an opinion and doing the work required to create change.
Real change may require voting.
Volunteering.
Organizing.
Researching.
Showing up.
Building coalitions.
Having uncomfortable conversations.
Creating something better.
Social media gives everyone a microphone.
It doesn't automatically give us impact.
Purpose Matters. So Does a Paycheck.
Another tension we explored is the desire for meaningful work.
Younger workers are often described as wanting purpose.
And I think that's a good thing.
But purpose doesn't eliminate practical reality.
Organizations exist to accomplish something.
Employees are paid to perform work.
Businesses have customers, budgets and responsibilities.
So meaningful work has to involve shared responsibility.
Employers should create environments where people understand why their work matters.
Employees also have to recognize that not every task will feel meaningful every day.
Sometimes work is work.
Purpose and practicality don't have to be enemies.
Do Your Employer's Values Have to Match Yours?
This becomes even more complicated when we talk about values.
Does an employee need to agree with everything an organization believes?
Probably not.
But there may be lines individuals aren't willing to cross.
Knowing those lines requires self-awareness.
What matters deeply to you?
What can you compromise on?
What can't you?
What does alignment actually mean?
We sometimes talk about finding a company whose values perfectly match our own.
That may be unrealistic.
Perhaps the more useful goal is finding enough alignment that you can contribute without continually violating what matters most to you.
Does Gen Z Need More Resilience?
This is where cross-generational conversations can become uncomfortable.
Older generations sometimes look at younger workers and say:
"They need more resilience."
Younger workers may respond:
"Why should we tolerate systems that shouldn't exist?"
Maybe both perspectives contain something useful.
Resilience shouldn't mean accepting mistreatment.
It shouldn't mean staying silent about dysfunction.
It shouldn't mean enduring preventable harm simply because someone before you did.
But resilience does include learning to navigate disappointment.
Criticism.
Failure.
Uncertainty.
Sacrifice.
And the reality that meaningful change rarely happens as quickly as we want.
The goal shouldn't be to create a generation that tolerates everything.
Nor should it be to create one that believes discomfort itself is evidence something is wrong.
We need people capable of distinguishing between harm and healthy struggle.
Older Generations Have Something to Learn Too
Cross-generational learning cannot flow in one direction.
Younger generations can learn from people who have experienced hardship, change and uncertainty.
But older generations need to remain open to the possibility that:
Just because we survived a system doesn't mean we should preserve it.
That's difficult.
We tend to defend what we've invested in.
If we paid off student loans, we may resent someone questioning the cost of college.
If we spent decades commuting, we may question why someone else wants flexibility.
If we worked our way through an inefficient process, we may believe the next generation should too.
But endurance is not proof of good design.
Sometimes the people entering a system for the first time can see problems the rest of us stopped noticing years ago.
We Need More Conversations Between Generations, Not More Stereotypes
Baby Boomers.
Gen X.
Millennials.
Gen Z.
We love generational labels.
They make complicated human beings easier to categorize.
But they also make us lazy.
Not every Gen Z employee thinks alike.
Neither does every Millennial.
Or Gen Xer.
Or Boomer.
Generations are made up of people.
People shaped by family, economics, culture, geography, education, personality and experience.
The label can help us understand broad context.
It should never become a substitute for actually listening to someone.
That's one reason I wanted this conversation with Addey.
Not to ask:
"What does Gen Z think?"
But:
"Addey, what do you think?"
There's an important difference.
Human Connection May Be One of the Things Worth Protecting
Near the end of our conversation, we came back to something surprisingly simple.
Human connection.
We're entering a world with more technology.
More AI.
More remote interaction.
More algorithmically curated information.
More digital communities.
Those tools can connect us in extraordinary ways.
But we shouldn't assume digital connection automatically replaces human connection.
Talking.
Listening.
Disagreeing respectfully.
Sitting across from someone with a different perspective.
Learning their story.
Discovering that someone you had categorized doesn't fit neatly into the category.
Those experiences matter.
Perhaps one of the systems we need to protect isn't technological at all.
It's our ability to remain in conversation with one another.
Every Generation Inherits Something Imperfect
My generation did.
Addey's generation will.
The generation after hers will too.
There will never be a moment when we hand the next generation a perfectly functioning world.
That's not how progress works.
We inherit something unfinished.
We preserve what works.
Question what doesn't.
Repair what we can.
Replace what no longer serves us.
And inevitably create a few new problems for the people coming next.
That's the work.
Identifying What's Broken Is Only the Beginning
It's easy to point at the systems we inherited.
Education.
Work.
Government.
Technology.
Social media.
The economy.
And say:
This needs to change.
Maybe it does.
But eventually criticism has to become responsibility.
If college doesn't work, what should replace it?
If the entry-level career path is broken, how should employers rebuild it?
If AI threatens critical thinking, how should we teach people to use it responsibly?
If social media spreads misinformation, what responsibility belongs to platforms—and what responsibility belongs to us?
If workplaces need to change, what responsibilities do employers and employees each carry?
Those are harder questions.
But they're also where progress begins.
What Are You Willing to Help Build?
That may be the question I took away most strongly from this conversation.
Not:
What generation got it right?
Not:
Who had it harder?
Not:
Who ruined the system?
But:
What are you willing to help build?
It's a question for Addey's generation.
It's a question for mine.
It's a question for leaders.
Educators.
Employers.
Employees.
Parents.
Students.
And anyone who believes something could be better than it is today.
Because identifying what we inherited is important.
Understanding why it exists is important.
Challenging it may be necessary.
But ultimately, progress requires something more.
It requires us to take responsibility for what comes next.
🎙 Watch Episode 90 with Addey Morrison
In Episode 90 of the Her Resources Podcast, I sit down with Addey Morrison, a second-year student at Colorado State University studying political science and history, for a cross-generational conversation about success, college, careers, AI, meaningful work, social media, misinformation, resilience, critical thinking and the systems each generation inherits.
This isn't a conversation about asking one young woman to speak for Gen Z.
It's an invitation to do something we could all probably do more often:
Listen to someone standing in a different place than we are.
Then think about what their perspective might teach us.
Learn more about Colorado State University:
Colorado State University
Explore Her Resources:
Her Resources Podcast
And after you listen, try something different:
Share this episode with someone from another generation and ask them one question: "What did you hear differently than I did?"
Then listen to the answer.
Because maybe cross-generational progress doesn't begin with convincing each other.
Maybe it begins with understanding each other.
Because the future isn't something we inherit. It's something we create.