My definition of “job loser” is someone who is underemployed to be able to support an adequate lifestyle for their stage of life. What constitutes “adequate” lifestyle is another issue.
the dismissive nature towards CS/engineering/stem in general on these boards and in the elite of american society is super disgusting for me. STEM may infact be the best way to develop critical thinking skills and creativity, I at least certainly feel that studying math extensively has had this effect for me.
Well, there’s a difference between being dismissive of STEM, and questioning its place as the apex of all fields of study. I see a lot of the latter on this thread, and effectively none of the former.
On another thread, a parent was arguing that employers like to hire philosophy majors bcs of the students’ critical thinking skills, as if philosophy has a monopoly on critical thinking…
@dfbdfb Well, while not everyone should study STEM, we need more students to do so on the whole to keep/retake our place as the world’s premier technology/research powerhouse which is pretty much the only way our economy can adapt to the realities of the 21st century. Too many people dismiss the value of a STEM education in my opinion.
You always hear people say that you can study a humanities degree and then pursue whatever career path you want, but I’ve never heard anyone say that for a STEM degree. I strongly disagree with this, as I believe a rigorous STEM degree instills the critical thinking skills that are necessary for any successful career. I myself don’t plan on staying in the technology industry forever.
Actually, the study of S (science) in STEM is common enough that many S graduates find limited demand for their skills (particularly biology, but even physics majors often have to find other work in such areas finance or computers). So, while the study of S is necessary to produce the next generation of scientific researchers, it is not like there is generally a shortage of such.
The job market for E (engineering) graduates is much more in balanced, though economic and industry cycles do affect what it is like at the time of graduation. M (math) graduates seem to have job prospects heavily slanted toward finance, which seems to be growing to a larger share of the economy as time goes on (whether or not that is desirable is another subject entirely). Not sure what the job markets are like for the relatively uncommon T (engineering technology) majors.
But perhaps the biggest deficiency is the lack of understanding of STEM subjects by those who do not study STEM subjects as their college majors. General education requirements and courses in STEM subjects for other majors are often too limited or not well done so that such students may not get enough understanding of STEM subjects as they may relate to their own major fields or to subjects encountered in life in general.
This is a strange thread to me because I believe that there is no such thing as a winner or loser in the world of work. One person gets paid more than another but it’s rarely great foresight that got someone to where they were. Computer geeks were just geeks when I was in school. Nobody wanted to be them. All of that has changed and now they sit at the top of what one should be. Before that, computer geeks were mamas boys, wimps, pale and pasty homebodies.
I’m not trying to be mean, just to capture the feeling of the time. There is a reason Revenge of the Nerds was a movie. The point is, those computer geeks pursued their passion even though it was totally uncool to do so. They were the losers at the time. Everything has changed now.
And guess what…it will continue to change. I remember when becoming a lawyer and doctor was the sure thing to big money. Read all about it, physician pay is declining while expenses are skyrocketing and law schools are barely staying afloat, lawyers are working as baristas and jobs in law are rapidly contracting. People went to those jobs to make big money, to be the winners - they are quickly losing now.
All this while art sales are ridiculously profitable for the moment. Art is booming (probably a bubble) and people are getting rich…until they don’t anymore.
The winners are the people who love whatever they are doing so much that they would do it for free and money is just a bonus on top.
I’ve got one STEM/CS kid and one who majored in IR. The CS kid certainly had an easier job search - summer internship led directly to a great job offer. My brothers are both in CS and survived the popping of the last CS bubble, but I’ve seen their business go up and down. The company where the older brother worked is long gone even though it was one of the leading companies in the field when he graduated.
The thing is you’ve got to do what you are good at. My younger son could never do what the older one does, though it turns out he’s better with computers than he thought he was. In a summer job he taught himself to do simple programming on Excel and that’s turned out to be a skill that he’s been able to use in his internships as well.
I think the most important skill is to be nimble and develop multiple skills. Also probably to see the writing on the wrong and know when it’s time to jump ship if your current job looks to be in danger of disappearing.
That’s why Carnegie Mellon requires CS majors to have a minor - though I think many CS majors don’t really take advantage of that and just end up majoring in something easy (for them) like math or physics.
Actually, “loser” can be well defined as anyone who is involuntarily unemployed or underemployed for more than a short period of time, who cannot sustain his/her life (and that of any family/household whom s/he contributes support to) with the work that s/he can find (i.e. eventual bankruptcy), or who detests the work that s/he can find. And, in this context, “winner” is everyone else.
Note that this definition is not solely dependent on pay/benefit levels. To the extent that pay/benefit levels matter, they have to be in context of what the person needs to sustain his/her life. If two people are in the same job making the same pay/benefits, one may be able to sustain his/her frugal life, while the other may not be able to sustain his/her spendy life. So one may be a “winner” and the other may be a “loser”. In addition, the longer term career growth as it relates to longer term personal goals (common ones being raising a family, saving for the kids’ college costs, and retirement) also count toward whether the work is sustainable in the longer term.
But the bottom line is, most people do not have to be a investment bankers, management consultants, orthopedic surgeons, or partners in big law firms to be “winners” by this definition.
Actually, I was referring to the opposite. H/SS and business majors often graduate with rather minimal education in STEM matters, due to many schools having minimal general education requirements in that area and poorly designed non-majors’ STEM courses (of the “physics for poets without math” and “rocks for jocks” type that are commonly the butt of jokes).
I agree. The losers in this are the people who want but can’t work and also those who have never found the joy and value of work in their lives.
But in the context of this thread, it seems like it’s focused on people who chose the wrong major or path to follow when they were 18 years old.
Can a kid be blamed for their chosen path at that age.
I’ve seen horrible parental and guidance counselor guidance given to young people and I mean horrible, wretched advising. Things like girls aren’t good at math, play football and study basket weaving, you’re not good at school, you’re smart, you should be a doctor and study engineering or business and paint or sculpt or writing as a hobby.
These are all well intentioned but rarely is advice like this custom tailored to the individual being spoken to. Advice sounds many young people down roads they later regret in life.
Also, the work world is so much more rigid and risk averse and cheap than ever. Entry level jobs require experience and training, companies no longer train employees and nobody takes a chance on people anymore. Can an English major manage a company’s supply chain? Probably but the number of companies that would take that chance are almost nil versus 25 years ago when having a degree was an accomplishment in its own right which it isn’t anymore.
One of mine did what I call a “hybrid degree” with upper-level classes in several areas that did not overlap, involved prerequisite sequences, and included “real science” even beyond the weeder cores. I would not recommend this for most pre-professional students or even for most folks who plan to enter a field where employers screen by GPA rather than competence for entry-level jobs or internships. 3.5 seems to be the new 3.0, especially in fields outside of STEM.
For most purposes, a high SAT or GRE score in the math section is enough to prove general quantitative capabilities, in the eyes of employers who are looking for this. Whether this would also predict scientific literacy is another question entirely.
Fwiw, I have heard many scientists complain that MD’s lack true scientific literacy unless they have also completed a full science major, including math classes beyond the minimum required for medical school admissions.The reasoning is that math is the language of science as it is now practiced. I suppose everything is relative.
But, I am not sure that the answer is to require that H/SS majors be required to pass through heavily curved weeder STEM classes in order to graduate, any more than I would like to see STEM researchers held back by classes that would require an ability to read and write rapidly, or master a foreign language at a high level. Frazzled kids did not in practice see STEM majors who needed to complete multiple lab reports and p-sets flocking to intensive foreign language classes or classes requiring hundreds of pages of reading per week in droves, either.
It is possible for an 18 year old to take a path that increases the risk of “losing”. For example, take huge debt to go to a dream school to study a subject aimed at a high-Gini (winner take all) job and career where most fail to enter with no backup plans that are more realistic in terms of sustainable career paths.
The ignorance and arrogance of anyone in any field assuming that (1) his or her field is the only field “worth” studying, and that everybody not studying and working in that field is “a loser”; (2) the notion that anyone in this field is a “winner” and everybody else is a “loser”: and (3) the assumption that that field will produce and deserves to produce permanent and instant wealth – that’s what’s disgusting.
That obnoxious and offensive attitude on the part of two of my students this admissions cycle, and one student two cycles ago, earned them massive college admissions rejections. If they keep up that attitude during their job search, they can expect the same results. I think at least one of the three learned some rapid humility.
Re #111
Not suggesting that H/SS majors have to take “heavily curved weeder” STEM courses. But the non majors’ courses may not be done well enough in many cases to truly fulfill the goals of a “broad general education”.
On the physician comment, there was a published medical research paper describing a technique of calculating the area under a curve…
Here is a medical research paper whose object was “To develop a mathematical model for the determination of total areas under curves from various metabolic studies.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8137688
Note the responses.
For those who scoff at humanities types taking “Physics for Poets”-type stuff instead of something more advanced, I do wonder how long a STEM major would last in an upper-division philosophy course (say, Continental Rationalism, or Diversity and Criticism in Analysis of the Arts) or rhetoric (like Classical Rhetorical Theory and Practice, or Rhetoric of Images)? Seriously, everybody needs to get over themselves—the advanced level of nearly anything is pretty rigorous.
Actually, engineering majors at some schools do have H/SS breadth requirements that include upper division courses.
And H/SS majors at some schools do have science breadth requirements that include upper division courses. I was using quite specialized courses as examples on purpose.
Which schools?