"By not adjusting their grading policies, STEM programs ultimately hurt..the economy"

[noimagination]

<p>

I would argue that engineers are the backbone of innovation in the economy. After all, both Romney and Obama have publicly touted the need for the nation to produce more engineers. This therefore seems to be an area of rare bipartisan agreement.

That doesn’t make it true.

I would argue it’s the same reason that plenty of jobs nowadays (unfortunately) demand a college degree for even the most menial job, even if the degree had nothing to do with the responsibilities of the job. Engineering employers can demand engineering degrees because it’s a cheap way for them to screen for work ethic and talent. Whether you actually learned anything useful during the curriculum is unimportant.</p>

<p>After all, why do investment banks and consulting firms often times recruit at Harvard - even for humanities majors? Seems to me that the reason is that the Harvard brand allows them to screen for students who come from elite social/family networks and who have displayed general intellectual talent and work ethic.</p>

<p>But the job screening function - if that is all that a college provides - is a deeply wasteful use of society’s resources, because all you’re doing is simply distributing human capital without increasing the total amount of human capital.

A less brutal program is a less effective screen.</p>

<p>Also, I suspect that the process of surviving an engineering program does select for a certain kind of student.

If that’s the case, then we could simply increase the challenge of those other majors. For example, if American Studies - as currently taught- is simply too easy for the average cross-section of the population, then those departments could simply assign more books to read and more essays to write (and, more importantly, those who refuse to do the extra work will get an F).

What’s the point? What jobs are they taking?</p>