<p>
[QUOTE]
In November 2007, a number of people testified before
the House Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation
that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Michael
Teitelbaum, vice president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation,
outlined the litany of the conventional complaints,
which I’ve summarized below:
1. The U.S. suffers serious shortfalls or shortages of scientists
and engineers, and this bodes ill for both creativity
and international competitiveness.
2. The number of newly educated scientists and engineers
is insufficient to fulfill employer needs. Thus the need
to hire from overseas.
”
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
2. There are substantially
more scientists and
engineers graduating from
U.S. universities than can
find attractive career openings
in S & E fields. Indeed, the S & E opportunities
seem unattractive to many holders of S & E degrees.
“Into the Eye of the Storm” (no doubt a pot shot at
the National Academies), a paper by Lindsay Lowell
of Georgetown University and Harold Salzman of the
Urban Institute, found roughly three S & E graduates
for every new S & E job (not counting openings created
by retirements).
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
5. The post-doc population, which has grown very rapidly
in U.S. universities and is recruited increasingly from
abroad, looks more like a pool of low-cost research lab workers
with limited career prospects than like a select group
enrolled in a high-quality training program for soon-to-be
academic researchers. The British science journal Nature
called the condition of newly graduated scientists “indentured
servitude.”.
<p>
[QUOTE]
The Real Science Gap
It’s not insufficient schooling or a shortage of scientists. It’s a lack of job opportunities. Americans need the reasonable hope that spending their youth preparing to do science will provide a satisfactory career.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>I don't know why people continue to drink the kool aid.</p>
<p>One of the headlines said it all – fear. Fear of not getting a job. People go for something that seems safe – a sure thing – which lately seems to be STEM. This has been happening for decades – students pursue a major or course of study for a field that seems to always have jobs.</p>
<p>I think we need to redirect the whole discussion of education and careers for our kids. We should tell them they are preparing for a life of employment, which may include some periods of unemployment, some periods of entrepreneurship, some periods of staying home to raise a family, and their life may even include going back to school. I believe a broad based education prepares people the best for the ups and downs they will experience.</p>
<p>Lack of job opportunities during a downturn doesn’t meant people should suddenly stop majoring in STEM areas. Do you think Arts & Humanities would be any better? </p>
<p>There were huge surpluses of STEM grads before the economy turned drastically sour and it still hasn’t changed. Also, what makes you think those jobs we sent overseas are coming back? They aren’t. The US economy won’t recover when the problems it has are deep rooted and structural. R and D is constantly being cut and manufacturing in this country doesn’t exist anymore. The CIA world factbook even now classifies the US economy as mainly service driven. More STEM grads? We have too many already. Show us the jobs first before demanding more. The ones clamoring for more STEM grads are employers that want to keep wages low and other special interest groups that make money off of keep STEM in the toilet.</p>
<p>What this whole thread ignores is that a lot of STEM grads don’t have their eye on a job in the STEM Field. Anecdotally, after my dad got a STEM PhD from Harvard, the first employers crawling up his ass were McKinsey and Monitor. Consultancies and especially investment banks loves people who can do hard math, hard analysis, and hard work.</p>
<p>I was speaking with a friend, physics professor at Harvard, and he was amused at how one of his students got an advanced degree in Physics and went to work for Goldman at 600k just after. </p>
<p>My point is, there is a pretty serious disconnect between STEM degrees and their ambitions, many of which will be out of STEM.</p>
<p>
As far as graduate employment and further education are concerned, I can think of few areas in which an Arts or Humanities degree would be more helpful than a STEM degree unless someone wants to pursue an academic masters in that field.</p>
<p>Opportunities are still very good for computer science grads from at least the universities with the higher ranked programs. They frequently have multiple job offers in hand and typically start anywhere from $60K-80K or so. It’s been like this for quite a while.</p>
<p>If a company wants to hire one of these grads they need to make sure they’re in line at the right time or they’ll find a lack of new grads to be able to hire. This is true even now.</p>
<p>No, in a down economy, the job market will be very poor for many educated people across the spectrum but for a few niche fields that not everyone is intellectually suited for, or trained for.</p>
<p>Job market is poorer for uneducated people.</p>
<p>Job market is better for people with Harvard degrees, who are absolutely irrelevant to the general jobs picture. Most STEM majors went to Podunk. </p>
<p>The average undergraduate student in the U.S. last year was 24.8 years old. Twenty-one year olds make up a very small part of the total jobs picture.</p>
<p>U.S. Dept. of Education. (Remember: University of Phoenix itself is larger than all Ivies combined; community colleges have huge numbers of older students, including former soldiers. On-line colleges have massive numbers of older students. And some four-year institutions are now catering to older students.)</p>
<p>Okay - I suppose if you want to count University of Phoenix which is comprised of a lot of people who already have jobs, ITT Tech, Acme school of medical careers, Joe’s bartender school, Suzie’s college of cosmetology, and all the others who advertise in between the hover-round ads for the medicare crowd on daytime TV then yes, the age is higher. But for a regular 4 year college degree school the age would be lower. </p>
<p>I’m not sure what the relevance of that stat you posted is to this thread. What’s your point?</p>
<p>The point is that the “regular 4 year college degree” is now the exception, not the rule. Liberal arts (which includes the vast majority of so-called STEM majors) has been a tiny minority of college degrees for a very long time. </p>
<p>When we talk about the job market for B.A.s, that job market includes all those folks who went back to school to complete them, and (as you note) already have significant job experience. In some states, even the flagship state university has large percentages of community college transfers, many of them older and with some job experience. The twenty-one year old new STEM graduate without significant job experience is the exception when looking at the total job market. Their unemployment rate is likely MUCH higher than those who have significant job experience (of whatever variety.)</p>
<p>Top Harvard majors in just about any field will either find jobs, or go to graduate or professional school and find jobs thereafter. That is a relatively small number of people, even though they sometimes lose jobs too, at least temporarily, when economic bubbles burst. However, the fact that the economic, social, academic, etc. elite do well even in hard times is hardly news. When few others can get jobs, then the country has a problem.</p>
<p>The average age of a student at a community college is 26 years old. That heavily skews the average age of all undergrads.</p>
<p>Only 40%+/- of students get their degrees in 4 years, and it’s only slightly higher for obtaining a degree in 5 years. Many people take a very long time to complete their degrees, especially if they go the part-time route.</p>
<p>^In terms of salary, I find these comparisons interesting (of course take payscale with grain of salt but I"m sure we can find similar stats elsewhere to compare):</p>
<p>Harvard grads…mean starting salary54k, and mid career salary of 116k.</p>
<p>But it’s not really different than the stats for those going to technical schools such RPI (59/107), SUNY Maritime College (57/107), New Jersey Institute of Technology or NYU-Poly (61/113). </p>
<p>Well in the realm of elite education, there is a reason that MIT, Caltech, and Harvey Mudd consistently churn out higher median salaries than do Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Engineers, scientists, and mathematicians have a far steadier job market than do their social science counterparts and always have finance/law/business to fall back on if they need.</p>
<p>Hmmmm… I appreciate the list posted by starbright showing the Best Engineering Colleges By Salary Potential, but it is a woefully incomplete list. If it shows the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, then why not CSU Maritime which has excellent salaries and one of the highest employment rates among all schools. Where are the University of California schools like UC Berkeley, UCLA and UCSD all of which have higher starting and mid-career salaries than most of the schools on the list. Where is Cal Poly San Luis Obispo which has highest starting salaries and among the highest mid-career salaries among all California schools. What about other first tier schools like Virginia Tech, the University of Michigan and USC? What about the military academies like West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy? Sure, many of these folks go into the military afterwards at lower salaries, but later on the jobs they get with military contractors in the defense industry are downright amazing. It is a helpful list but certainly not the “Full List” as claimed by the authors. If they list Devry and ITT Tech shouldn’t they list some of the best public schools in the country as well?</p>
<p>^^ Maybe it’s because for the larger universities, like UCLA, UCSD, Cal, etc., those colleges have a lot of non-STEM majors as well which can drag down the stats. If it was considering only the STEM grads from those colleges they’d definitely be at a higher level than most on that list. Really though, even with including the non-STEM majors it seems like they’d show higher than some of the ones on that list.</p>
<p>I read the selection criteria and they specifically stated they exclude the military academies because of their focus on preparing students for the military although I agree with your points regarding them.</p>
</p>