It’s an interesting time to be a student in America. The action behind asking our children, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” may have more influence than we know. Turns out, Gen Z – those born from 1995 to 2012 – is obsessed with learning. In fact, it’s common for Gen Z students to spend their extra free time on homework and volunteering.

Today, the typical Gen Z student dedicates 6.48 hours per work to homework and 2.66 hours per work to volunteering. Due to a plethora of similar habits, Gen Z is on course to become the most educated and most entrepreneurial generation.

Job Availability

Yet, nearly 9 in 10 Gen Z college grads considered job availability before selecting a major. With unemployment at its lowest since 1969 – three generations before Gen Z’s time – why is our youngest generation alive so curious about their future employability?

To put it lightly, they’re ahead of the game.

Rising student debt has made Gen Z wary, and most want to know they’ll be getting their money’s worth before researching academic programs. Schools are getting involved, as well, encouraging students to take Advanced Planet (AP), dual credit, and the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program courses and exams. Today, nearly half of Gen Z high school students have already earned college credits.

Don’t fret- students are curious, not worried. 2 in 3 Gen Z students are confident they’ll receive a job offer soon after graduation. For some majors, it’s even higher. Even more, 60% of our youngest generation on the planet impressively plans to start a business one day, and 92% expect to work for less than six employees in their lifetime – Gen Z doesn’t even bother with summer gigs.

Working for Scholarships

Most teens prioritize studying to earn future scholarships over working a job. This is the main way Gen Z is reshaping how we “do” college as a society. Nearly half of American workers are living on less than $18,000 a year, and Gen Z is privy to this, so 82% think college is the way to get there. In the meantime to graduating high school, most are most focused on earning grants and receiving financial aid to afford college.

Interestingly enough, one in three 15-year-olds plan to pursue one of the top 10 most popular occupations, regardless of whether or not their desired career will still be in-demand by the time they’ll be eligible for hire. Gen Z is ahead of its time – it’s all about employment for them. As we witness our very own children reshape the college years, continue to ask them, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Infographic:  Reshaping College Years

Read how Industry 4.0 will impact students.

It’s customary to ask our kids, “What do you want to be when you grow up,” before they can truly conceptualize what “work” is; however, it’s unequally customary to provide our children with the guidance they need to achieve their adolescent goals.

Take our economical state into account- success is more obtainable after receiving your college degree. As often as we ask our children about their desired future and career motives, are we encouraging them to visit their guidance counselor, helping them search for internships, and network? The hiring market is up in the air, but we can still help our kids find their way to a successful future.

Career Choices

If your child is a science, tech, engineering, or math guru, you’ll be happy to know that 8 in 10 of the fastest growing jobs for college graduates are STEM-related.

Don’t fret- there’s also a giant market for students with other skill sets. In fact, 93% of employers agree that having soft skills are more important than completing “majors,” and believe a liberal arts education instills skills to help our children succeed in the workplace. These skills include problem solving, communication, and critical thinking. This is why 4 in 5 employers want hires with a broad knowledge of liberal arts and alternative sciences.

College to Career

In short, preparing our children for success in a career means preparing them for college. Find what your child is interested in, and career-build from there. Be sure not to wait – 54% of new graduates considered themselves underemployed and struggled to find the right job or internship in 2017. More unfortunately, graduates have faced difficulties finding successful internships from 2014-2018, and steady unemployment/underemployment has only risen from 2000-2018.

Infographic Guide to Careers

Allowing our children to be left behind is not an option. Gain more information on preparing your child for college and career.

Reading Resources

• Learn how to grow your child’s entrepreneurial spirit.
• How to guide your child to a successful career.

Familiar to those in education, STEM is an acronym for curriculum revolving around Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. In other words, students in STEM programs focus on these subjects more than others- taking their knowledge in science, technology, engineering, and math to higher levels than perhaps English, Arts, and more.

The initialism was developed in 2001 by Judith Ramaley, the Asst. Director of Education & Family Resource at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Since Ramaley’s finding, STEM-focused curricula have spread around the world. In fact, today’s high school graduates are some of the first to go through all of K-12 education with a focus on STEM.

Career Building Skills

At any age, it’s important for parents and educators to begin teaching kids about their career building skills even in general terms.  Despite the specific interest in STEM, just 15% of Americans pursue natural science degrees once reaching higher education. This is far less than in other nations. For example, 67% of Singaporeans pursue natural science undergraduate degrees, 50% of Chinese do the same, 47% of the French, and 38% of South Koreans.

More interestingly, America has seen nearly 2 million new STEM jobs created over the last decade. 86% of Americans believe that increasing STEM-trained workers is vital to maintaining the nation’s place in the global economy. While this is true, our students’ math and science scores continue to lag behind other nations. However, Americans students improved their international standing – according to PISA – from 2015 to 2018. In 2015, America’s 10th-grade students ranked 35th in math and 17th in science.

Stem in Schools – Infographic: 

As technology grows, specific skills become obsolete. 2.4 million STEM-related positions went unfilled in 2018. Continue reading for more information on the rise of STEM in schools.

Explore how to give kids a head start in higher education by teaching computational thinking.

With the ever-changing and advancing technology in today’s world, the majority of our lives are embedded within the virtual world. With this, so much is happening concurrently around us that we sometimes don’t notice. Especially for the non-tech savvy, a lot is going on within our devices and we don’t take notice.

Yet, as much as technology as brought with it benefits to help make our lives efficient, it also brings with it disadvantages such as risks of malware and potentially unwanted programs.

What is a Potentially Unwanted Program?

Potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) feature broad descriptions.  A PUP is basically a software that a user doesn’t use or want but consents for it to be downloaded anyways. These programs include adware, spyware or even certain features within the downloaded program you may have consented to without knowing. For example, when you are downloading a program, you may come across a pop up window a few steps before installation.

This pop-up window will have some terms and agreements asking you to consent or boxed options that may already be ticked. The majority of us normally consent to these otherwise suspicious requests without even taking the time to read the information. Sometimes, the programs may be malicious or simply take up extra space. However, generally, PUPs are not designed to penetrate your device to steal personal data or alter personal settings.

Does is Matter if Remove a PUP or Not?

Some proprietors of these programs don’t want them to be termed as malware because the device user or owner normally consents to their download and installation. PUPs do not act like classic malicious programs that damage, lose or steal your data. Thus, many users may ask themselves if it is actually worth their time to remove the PUPs from the device. The answer is yes. You should absolutely remove PUPs from your device.  

These programs are not beneficial to your device in any way, in fact, they simply bring on a nuisance. Plus, there are more reasons to support this recommendation. As much as potentially unwanted programs don’t pose dire risks to your devices, they can still be involved in an array of suspicious and unwanted activities within your windows device.

A PUP will sometimes function as a form of adware. It will do so by adding pop up adverts to clean webpages, post websites with their custom ads and sometimes, even prevent the user from closing down the pop-up ad until a video ad is finished.

Other PUPs will work as the classic adware by watching your online activities and trends, then selling the data to advertisers. Other PUPs change the default homepage of your browser then install a browser toolbar with no value and add bookmarks without the user’s knowledge. Additionally, PUPs can even work to hijack your searches and functions within the device.

These programs do this by redirecting you to their website when you are trying to visit a competitor website. The potentially unwanted programs go as far as changing your search results by inserting their favorable options into the search engine. So yes, PUPs can sometimes be destructed! And so, you must try your level best to prevent them from infecting your device.

How To Prevent PUP infection

The one key difference that PUPs hold compared to other “classic termed” malware attacks is that without your consent, they will never penetrate your device. Consequently, it should be relatively easier to prevent a PUP infection. The first step to reducing the risk of PUP infection is to always take extra precautions when installing free software and programs.

However, due to the lucrative and monetary gain, much of the legitimate software programs that are available for free on Windows do come with PUPs. Thus, if you pay extra attention during the installation process, you can opt to prevent the PUPs from being downloaded as well.

Opting Out of Installing Potentially Unwanted Programs

You should know that there are two ways you can download your software either through a standard or custom installation.

When you pick the custom installation option, the familiar ticked boxes will appear. Take the time to reviews the information that is next to these boxes to ensure no unwanted feature is installed along with the software.

No matter the installation option you are presented with, the custom option is always the best. This is because, through this option, you really get to know what you are installing into your device.

How To Get Rid Of PUP

If by any chance you have downloaded PUPs unknowingly, there is still a way you can remove them from your device. Removing potentially unwanted programs from your windows device isn’t exactly rocket science. There are two very simple ways you can get rid of PUPs. The first option is to invest in an anti-malware program that detects and removes PUPS as well.

Antimalware programs are designed to scan through the device, automatically detect PUPS and delete them from your device instantaneously. Antimalware programs such as Malware Fox is excellent for removing PUPs for your device.

Manual Removal of PUP

The second option is to remove the PUPs from your device manually. To do this, hold down the ALT, CTRL and DELETE keys to bring up the lock screen. Choose the “Task Manager” option, then, enter the “Processes” tab and examine the background applications that are currently running on your windows system.

Take note of the PUP name when you notice it and close down the task manager. The open up the control panel, head to “Uninstall Programs”, type out the PUP name and uninstall it. You should be good to go.

As much as the topic and concept of technology are broad, there is always a way to figure things out. Now that you have found out about PUPs, researching more the topic offers a lot of information on how to tackle the problem. To tackle PUP threats, anti-malware programs also offer detailed tips on how to prevent and address the PUPs on their sites.