By Dr. Swapnil Shenvi
Twelve years ago, when I entered a college classroom for the first time, I carried a chalk, a duster, a notebook and a simple assumption: if I knew my subject well and taught it sincerely, students would listen. For the most part, they did.
Today, after teaching more than 30,000 students, I walk into the classroom with a laptop, a pendrive, a presentation, videos, quizzes, case studies, AI tools, games, and sometimes even a backup plan for the backup plan. The classroom has changed. Dramatically.
A decade ago, a teacher could speak continuously for 40–50 minutes and expect students to follow. Today, many students start looking restless much earlier. Colleges are now experimenting with breaking traditional lectures into shorter active-learning segments, quizzes and discussions to retain Gen Z attention.
But attention is only one part of the story. Earlier, a student who did not understand something would probably wait for the teacher to explain it. Today, the student opens Google, YouTube, Instagram or ChatGPT, sometimes even before the teacher has finished the sentence. Earlier, the teacher was the primary gateway to knowledge. Today, the teacher competes with an internet containing billions of answers. Earlier, students would say, “Sir, please explain this.” Today, it is not unusual to hear, “Sir, ChatGPT says something different.” And honestly, I don’t dislike that question. It means students are questioning authority. But somewhere along the way, questioning authority has sometimes become questioning everything the teacher represents.
The meaning of respect has changed too. The old classroom was hierarchical. Teacher spoke, and the students listened. The new classroom is conversational. Students expect teachers to be approachable, entertaining, technologically competent and available. Research and recent commentary on Gen Z in higher education increasingly describe this shift from authority-based classrooms towards mentorship. And this is where I have a problem.
I genuinely love Gen Z for changing the workplace. They have questioned unreasonable working hours. They talk about mental health. They demand flexibility. They ask, “Why?” instead of blindly accepting “Because that’s how it has always been.”
But I am not equally enthusiastic about what some of those changes have done to the classroom. Some students want a lecture to feel like a Netflix episode. They expect constant stimulation. A serious discussion for 20 minutes can feel “boring”. Attendance becomes an obligation rather than an opportunity. Assignments are always outsourced to AI before the student has attempted to think through the problem. And a teacher who demands discipline can quickly become the “strict faculty” in student feedback.
Yet we teachers are not innocent either. The world changed. Some of us didn’t. Technology has transformed the student, the workplace and knowledge itself. AI is now entering Indian higher education at remarkable speed, with more than half of higher-education institutions reporting AI-related policies or initiatives. So yes, teachers must upgrade themselves. But upgrading teachers cannot simply mean learning another software tool. It means understanding how today’s student thinks. Perhaps the teacher of 2014 could survive by being a good lecturer. The teacher of 2026 has to be a lecturer, mentor, facilitator, storyteller, technologist, counsellor and sometimes entertainer.
But there is one role we must not lose: Being a teacher. Because education cannot become entertainment merely because entertainment has become accessible.
Students don’t need teachers who compete with Instagram. They need teachers who can make them put Instagram away and think. That, perhaps, is the real challenge of higher education today.
(The author is an Assistant Professor of Finance at SVKM’s Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS) Deemed-to-be University, Mumbai)
