The 16th annual BrightSparks Scholarship & Education Survey recently released by the prominent scholarship platform sheds light on the educational preferences and aspirations of Generation Z. With a threefold objective of exploring students' aspirations, inspiring scholarship dreams, and uncovering career preferences, the survey gathered insights from 4,676 participants, including Junior College (JC) and International Baccalaureate (IB) students, polytechnic students, graduates, and undergraduates.
Across all demographics, respondents indicated that their primary sources of information on higher education are friends, seniors, and peers, highlighting a declining influence of print media in favor of social media and online networks. Interestingly, the majority of students expressed a strong preference for local studies over pursuing tertiary education abroad. Only a negligible percentage stated they would not pursue further education.
In terms of academic preferences, Computer Sciences, IT or Information Systems remained the top choice for all student categories, consistent with the 2022 survey. Among JC and IB students, the second choices were economics, medicine, banking and finance, and law. Polytechnic students leaned towards electrical/electronic engineering, mechanical/mechatronic engineering, health science, and mathematics/statistics for their second choices. Meanwhile, polytechnic graduates favoured health science, business administration or management, electrical and electronic engineering, among others.
Regarding financing education, the survey revealed that scholarships are the primary preference for most students, followed by financial support from parents or family. Notably, there is a noticeable shift in the third avenue of financial support.
