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Forbes
20-05-2025
- Health
- Forbes
A Student's Guide To Postsecondary Education And Career Planning
For middle- and high-school students, life after high school may seem like a distant dream. But for many, graduation comes far too quickly and without a plan for the future. To enable students and recent high school graduates to plan an education-to-career pathway tailored to their interests, strengths, circumstances, and life goals, American Student Assistance (ASA) and Jobs for the Future (JFF) have created a Pathfinder Guide and Checklist. The guide and postsecondary training program checklist include questions, topics for consideration, and tips to help students navigate their career journey. It helps students: What are career interests? They can be specific jobs, like a nursing assistant, or broader industries, like health care. Many teens may still be exploring their career interests, and that's okay. They can start narrowing down their options by considering what classes, extracurricular activities, and hobbies they enjoy; volunteer, work, or community service experiences that give them a sense of accomplishment; and advice from their teachers, counselors, family members, or neighbors. Using free online tools like ASA's Futurescape and EvolveMe, students can then see which careers align with their likes, strengths, and goals, gain access to real-world experiences like virtual internships, and connect with career mentors. Note, some students may have multiple career interests that they want to explore further while others may feel drawn to one in particular. Either situation is fine at this stage in the process. Almost all careers today require additional education or training after high school. For each career interest, students should identify at least one postsecondary training program aligned to it. For example, if a young person is interested in becoming a nursing assistant, they will need to identify and enroll in a state-approved training program and pass an examination. To find this information, students can talk to trusted adults like guidance counselors, network to find professionals who work in their area of interest or do online research using free tools such as My Next Move or Career Village. To evaluate the pros and cons of each training program, this four-step checklist includes a useful rubric. After listing one or more postsecondary training programs aligned with each identified career interest (Step 1), students are asked to respond to a series of prompts about each training program (Step 2), covering areas including but not limited to entrance requirements, structure and logistics, cost, time to hire, and success indicators. Step 3 of the checklist then delves into career readiness/placement, prompting students to reflect on whether their career interest will help society, be something they enjoy doing, allow them to earn a living wage, provide them with employment stability, and give them opportunities for advancement. To answer these questions students may need to supplement their online research with informational interviews with professionals already working in these roles. Once students complete Steps 1-3, they should have the information they need to evaluate each postsecondary training program. Step 4 guides them through this process with reflection questions including how well the program meets the needs of leading employers in the student's area of interest and their placement track record, aligns with student requirements (costs involved, time to completion, scheduling flexibility, etc.), and prepares them for a career that is a good fit for the student's personality and goals. After this analysis, a student may find a specific training program is not a good fit. If that happens, there is no need to be concerned. It is just part of the process and gives students the opportunity to find better pathways that will get them closer to their ideal career. Graduation should be an exciting time for teens, a celebration of their past accomplishments as they look forward to the next chapter in their lives. Yet it can bring stress and anxiety to those who don't have a plan for the future. The Pathfinder Guide and Checklist can help young people explore their career interests and postsecondary training program options, so they can develop a plan for life after high school which puts them on a path towards a fulfilling, enjoyable, and successful career.
Forbes
03-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Trends Shaping Culture And Tech For The Next 25 Years
Agentic AI The first 25 years of this century have delivered enormous changes in how we live and work. Here's what to expect in the next 25. Gen AI is poised to shape business and consumer trends over the long term, helping companies meet changes in customer preferences as they outgrow the trends of the past quarter-century. Since 2000, consumers have experienced multiple waves of technological innovation–from the dawn of smartphones and social media through the rise of ecommerce and remote work to the abrupt acceleration of all these trends during the Covid-19 pandemic. Parallel to these changes, AI researchers and scientists were experimenting with models that would lead to the Gen AI tools we see today. Now, Gen AI is ready to work at a time when many consumers feel overloaded by the need to engage with screens to work, shop, and relax. At the same time, there's a rising interest in sustainable consumption, community, and emotional connections. Futurescape, a new report by frog, part of Capgemini Invent, draws on global insights to forecast how Gen AI will help businesses design more human-centered and sustainable products and experiences over the next quarter century. 'We wanted product and service designers' perspectives on pressing issues like which consumer behaviors will change next, how technology and business will affect the planet, and what areas will AI affect that we may not expect now,' said Jess Leitch, head of frog North America, part of Capgemini Invent. 'Our goal was to get a sense of which currently siloed areas may mesh in the coming years, and what challenges businesses need to be ready to face.' Even the best designed customer loyalty experiences will run into the pervasive problem of digital fatigue, where consumers are facing growing exhaustion in navigating daily experiences through screens. As agentic AI capabilities grow, expect to see innovative brands rolling out conversational commerce agents that learn customers' preferences, anticipate their needs, and build emotional connection through natural-language conversations that take screens out of the ecommerce experience. Brands with AI voice agents that help customers evaluate product choices, place orders, and schedule deliveries through normal conversations will be able to build a form of loyalty that current points-and-rewards systems can't replicate. That will be a boon to brands, whose traditional loyalty strategies don't seem to resonate with younger consumers. According to a recent Prosper Insights & Analytics survey, only 45% of Gen-Z consumers aged 18 and older participate in any customer loyalty programs, compared to 61% of Baby Boomers. Prosper - Customer Loyalty Programs With 80% of consumers now willing to pay a premium for more sustainable products, businesses are increasingly interested in circularity to meet customer expectations and to preserve resources. Gen AI has the potential to reduce supply chain waste and strategically improve product lifecycles, and it's not the only technology poised to have an impact. 'Biodesign principles can improve supply chain sustainability by bringing natural processes into the production process,' Leitch said. 'Researchers, designers and manufacturers are experimenting with biological processes to create more sustainable products and packaging.' For example, Imperial College London researchers recently used genetically engineered bacteria to grow vegan leather that's free of plastic. The bacteria also dyes the material, avoiding synthetic pigments. The team says their findings have wide potential applications for textile industry sustainability. Agentic AI for shopping and customer loyalty is one example of active collaboration, and it's far from the only potential use case. The designers surveyed by frog expect Gen AI to improve its capacity for augmenting creative and strategic decision making. Although there's a longstanding tendency to favor human judgment over algorithmic results when making important decisions, a growing number of businesses embrace Gen AI to optimize specific types of decisions, and more are likely to follow. For example, healthcare organizations can use Gen AI now to quickly extract trends from large sets of patient data, which can enable better clinical decisions for patients with chronic conditions. In the nonprofit sector, an international financial institution's AI assistant helps policymakers see 'the impact of different interventions and identify those best suited to reach their objectives.' AI has made inroads in the wearable fitness device industry, merging what were once separate domains. Now, some wearables offer Gen AI-backed individualized coaching. Users can ask their device to recommend a workout for the day, for example, and get recommendations tailored to their overall fitness level, goals, and current health data. Expect to see the boundaries between physical and digital experiences blur as more industries develop hybrid experiences. For instance, healthcare organizations might add Gen AI capabilities to their patient monitoring tools that can generate suggestions for practitioners and patients. Retailers could take a similar approach, providing immersive shopping experiences that leave customers happier with their purchases and feeling more loyal to the brand. Gen AI may provide an antidote to digital fatigue by enabling organizations to replace some screen interactions with touchless engagements powered by AI and user biometrics. Tap-and-go payments via wearable devices are a step in this direction, but potential use cases also include building access, business and government services, and healthcare. In an example that combines interactive screen engagement with transparent medical evaluation, University of Tokyo researchers have developed a camera-based sensor that can use AI to accurately screen patients for high blood pressure and diabetes during telehealth appointments, without the need for the patient to use blood pressure or diabetes testing equipment. This approach can eliminate the need for an office visit and reduce the stress patients may feel about using a blood pressure cuff or giving blood samples. Over the next two and a half decades, we can expect easier, less screen-focused experiences while we shop, work, get healthcare, and engage with our surroundings. We can also expect manufacturers and brands to offer more sustainable products, developed with the help of AI, biodesign, and other innovative technologies. At the same time, humans and AI systems will become more closely connected as these models evolve to understand what we need and deliver it more seamlessly.
