<p>All I know is that engineers have the highest starting salaries of almost any field of study. That’s not a myth, it’s reality. Investment bankers do okay too. Graduated with STEM degrees arein high demand … and are highly compensated.</p>
<p>^^only true in math/physical sciences, KatieMom. There are thousands of bio majors who are scrambling for any lab job that they can find.</p>
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<p><a href=“Indian name - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_name</a> indicates that at least some Indian names indicate the bearer’s ancestral ethnic, religious, village, and/or caste origin.</p>
<p>Caste discrimination is supposed to be illegal in India, but it is apparently enough of a problem In India that there are affirmative action measures like college admission quotas for members of castes which are more commonly discriminated against. Lower caste Indians are probably underrepresented among highly educated Indians for reasons similar to why black Americans are underrepresented among highly educated Americans.</p>
<p>Of course, whether or not Microsoft employees of Indian origin discriminate against Indian applicants on the basis of ethnic, religious, village, and/or caste origin is another matter entirely. That there is such discrimination in India does not necessarily mean that those who have move to the US have the same views on the matter.</p>
<p>There are still caste system in India, take it from the current president. He is from a lower caste.
<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/hindu-nationalist-narendra-modis-party-heads-to-victory-in-indian-polls/2014/05/16/c6eccaea-4b20-46db-8ca9-af4ddb286ce7_story.html”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/hindu-nationalist-narendra-modis-party-heads-to-victory-in-indian-polls/2014/05/16/c6eccaea-4b20-46db-8ca9-af4ddb286ce7_story.html</a>
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<p>Whatever, Microsoft must overcome and deliver better product than that Windows 8. A piece of C R A P!</p>
<p>Katiemom, people have short memories. The tech boom of 1999/2000 ended with the tech bust of 2001/2002. I know dozens of engineers who were let go and struggled for years to retool their skills in order to get rehired. Back in the 1980’s, math PhD’s were driving taxis since they were otherwise unemployable.</p>
<p>It is ludicrous to look at a two or three year survey and conclude that your kid should become a petroleum engineer because history shows that those salaries are higher than anyone else’s. History shows nothing of the kind. And history also doesn’t show what happens to kids who graduate with a 2.4 GPA in engineering because in fact-- they are lousy at engineering.</p>
<p>Every survey I read suggests that nursing is a sure-fire, can’t miss STEM career. Except in my own city, where one hospital bought the other a few years ago, and hundreds of nurses were let go. My neighbor- a highly trained surgical nurse with decades of experience, has taken shift work at a nursing home to “ride it out”. She makes a small fraction of what she made and is incredulous that her sure-fire, can’t miss career has gone to hell. Her former colleagues are working per diem’s for school systems, spending the summer at boy scout camp handing out ADD meds and supervising benedryl for the allergic. There is nothing wrong with those jobs- except the pay is lousy, there are no benefits, and they can’t compare with full time, professionally supervised roles at a regional hospital in terms of training and advancement. The camp nurse isn’t going to professional conferences to enhance his or her skills using the latest technologies</p>
<p>Yes- we should all tell these nurses to relocate to part of the country where there are nursing shortages, which is great advice for a 30 year old- not so great for a 50 year old whose mortgage is under water.</p>
<p>Every economic cycle tosses out a chunk of workers. Whether it’s the civil engineers (when there are no infrastructure projects being funded, nobody needs someone who designs bridges and tunnels) or the nurses or the pharma researchers… it’s so easy to be shortsighted and tell your kid to major in STEM. Except STEM is not a major. And someone who is certified as a neonatal nurse can’t retool as a chemical engineer, and someone who has graduated from an ABET certified university in nuclear engineering isn’t qualified to design internet security systems for HP or Cisco.</p>
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I think this is a misperception based on a cultural divide. The average American–if by this you mean a person born in this country, and whose parents were also born in this country–is told that he should study the subjects that interest him the most and should pursue the career that he thinks would be the best for him. If this doesn’t happen to be a STEM field, that’s OK. This is not the attitude of people from some other cultural backgrounds.</p>
<p>The caste system is alive and well for SOME Indians. Just went to dinner and heard pontification on the matter fo some Brahmins. It’s like saying racism is gone in the US and inter racial marriage is now fine here. Not so a lot of people. I agree making a sweeping generality about any culture, country, anyone is not going to hold in all cases, but to say these issues are completely cone is not true either. One needs to acknowledge realities. </p>
<p>My friend was an engineering major who graduated in the late 70s and he will tell your right out that he was no scholar, no brainiac. Nor were many in his graduating class and program at a major state university, yet they managed to get through the program and are successful engineers. That same program today is comprised of mostly Asian and a lot of international students. The Americans, the caucasian males are simply not taking up the program like they used to do so. (Females and certain other groups never were prevalent in the program and the numbers may even have improved for them). Friend just shakes his head a this drop in numbers. Many young people just don’t want to go the STEM route, even though the job market is far better for a number of the selections within that field (no, not all of them, I agree). Master’s programs in Engineering are comprised of nearly all international students these days at a number of colleges. </p>
<p>As usual, Blossom nailed it.</p>
<p>There is no magic major and no surefire golden career path. When I entered pharma research 20+ years ago, my grad school professors told me I should be set for life…because we’re always going to need new drugs, right? Trouble is, we don’t necessarily need to make them in this country under the same infrastructure that the pharma industry had created 100 years ago.</p>
<p>When my research site was closed, more than 200 chemists were out of work (all of whom at one time thought they had a golden career path.) Today, about 20% of them are still doing pharma research somewhere; the other 80% are either out of chemistry altogether or working in smaller labs with MUCH smaller paychecks. There is very little demand for organic chemists right now (which explains why my old pharma colleagues are now teachers, consultants, petting farm owners (!), restaurateurs, and temp/contract workers instead of chemists). Yes, it’s discouraging - who gets a PhD (and a postdoc) only to work as a $10-per-hour lab tech?</p>
<p>And yes, many of my chemistry (and biology) colleagues sold their homes, uprooted their families, and relocated to another part of the country for another job in pharma - only to lose that job a year or 2 later when another consolidation/merger wave swept through. </p>
<p>A STEM career is no guarantee of anything. Sure, things might looks rosy for X career right now, but no one has a crystal ball and no one can predict what economic forces and global shifts may do to your dream job. Personally, I’m interviewing now for jobs as I start my third career - so much for being set for life!!</p>
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<p>Easier to get into the US to get a master’s than a bachelors, and a masters is unnecessary for those who have a bachelors in the US already. The opportunity presented by adding a US masters is lesser for those already in the US than those outside of the US. This shouldn’t be surprising. </p>
<p>I wonder if it’s better to think in terms of current and future needs in relation to STEM careers. Things like security, fraud detection, petroleum engineering, etc. seem to be pretty stable. I will say that I feel very fortunate to have a M kid who it appears will get hired at a ridiculously high salary (at least by my modest standards) upon graduation. But he knows things can change. </p>
<p>I think the most successful people are those who have quant/analytical/hard skills as well as business knowledge as well as soft skills. Generalized ones, ideally. No major can set you up for life, so keep that in mind. IMO, economics, statistics, and programming are almost liberal arts skills now (equally as important as the traditional ones of reading, writing, and critical thinking). Toss in analytical thinking as well.
Oh, and McKinsey loves PhDs, especially those from quant/analytical disciplines.</p>
<p>@ topaz- </p>
<p>I would be careful about saying that the poster is wrong about hiring and the way that Indian managers will hire in the tech sector. Companies claim to want diversity, but several big name companies, including Citgroup, have been cited in their hiring practices and what they found was that their hiring was heavily biased towards Indians, in large part because their management in IT is heavy with Indians. I believe Microsoft has been cited in this as well, several of the big investment banks ran into trouble as well. Put it this way, you walk into many IT shops and it will be very, very difficult to find non Indians of any kind. No, it isn’t true across the board, but there are places where there is true. </p>
<p>I think that in part the “STEM” crisis has been sold by tech companies, not because they face shortages of people, but because they want to increase the number of H1B visas being granted, claiming ‘shortages’. Put it this way, since the 2008 meltdown, congress has been attempting to double the number of H1 visas granted, to roughly 160,000 (which during a recession is supposed to be illegal), and the primary reason is that H1 visa holders are a lot cheaper, they cannot easily work for another employer, and their wages despite claims to the contrary, are less than a comparable green card or us citizen would be getting. Harvard Business school did a study of this, and they came to the conclusion that the H1 visa program depressed wages in the tech fields. </p>
<p>I agree it needs to be scrapped, the H1 originally was supposed to be for skills not readily available, if you needed someone with a speciality in solid state physics, for example, it allowed you to hire someone and bring them into the US. That changed to be ‘someone with the skills to do the job’, and it was for pretty much any job where they could claim the people they were hiring had the right background. Worse, as someone else said, most of the H1 visa slots are held, not by companies, but outsourcing firms like Wipro and Infosys, and their employees basically are sent from company to company, often on 8 month tours…and most of them, to be honest, are mediocre, the really bright ones tend to find their way to companies with their own H1b, and then go for green card status. The H1 is basically a cheap foreign worker program, and along with outsourcing, has decimated many tech and medical fields. Even in research in the financial industry, many of the analyst jobs have been moved offshore. </p>
<p>If kids are studying STEM, I can’t blame them, because they know the score, they know employers are looking to give those jobs to the cheapest ‘talent’ they can. What makes it especially insidious is that kids coming out of college looking for entry level jobs are hit hardest, that there simply aren’t all that many entry level positions open to them. It depends on the job and the industry, but competition from H1b visas and outsourcing overseas has cut into many IT jobs, for example, that would have been done here by people from here. For people with special skills, people who work in IT in the financial industry who actually understand the business and such, who are at the high tiers, it is a lot easier, but even then, the attitude of many companies is I don’t care, outsource it, get visa holders on contract, and it is your job to make it work. </p>
<p>As a result kids would rather get degrees in finance, or if in tech in things like Financial Engineering, because they know that there is a lot more upside to being the manager who decides to outsource, rather than the peon who loses their job to it, or being a financial engineer and working as a quant for a hedge fund, where the skill set is so specialized relatively few people, here or abroad, have the needed skills. </p>
<p>Sorry, but isn’t it possible that kids like my son are studying STEM because they love it? We’ve known since age 2 that my son had a love affair with math. Hasn’t changed. Yes, he’s a strong extrovert, leader, musician, all around fun guy, but to the core, he loves analyzing data and stats (which is evidenced each football season by the fact that he’s usually in at least 4 Fantasy Football leagues-sigh). He considered finance, but is really enjoying what he’s doing in, I guess, analysis. I’m glad he didn’t gravitate towards finance, but never say never, right?</p>
<p>That’s why I went into engineering - I loved math and thought it was cool to be able to design buildings using it. I have to admit I considered majoring in piano performance, but decided it would be hard to make a living in that field.</p>
<p>“The Americans, the Caucasian males are simply not taking up the program like they used to do.” That probably does depend on the school and/or particular program. I was curious so just looked at one of my son’s graduation programs from 2013 (from a state school known for engineering). I 'd say only about 15-20% of the engineering undergraduates had Asian or Middle Eastern type names . More in the master’s programs but still not the majority. The only place there seemed to be definitely more international graduates were in the PhD programs in engineering . There are still plenty of “Caucasian males” studying engineering. I had two of them.</p>
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<p>The shortage of H-1B visas for directly hiring good talent is real, mainly because the outsourcing/consulting employers hog most of the H-1B visas.</p>
<p>In the list at <a href=“http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2013-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx”>http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2013-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx</a> , it looks like 13 of the top 14 users of H-1B visas are outsourcing/consulting employers. Not surprisingly, their average pay levels are much lower than those employers that appear to be hiring talent directly for themselves (what the H-1B visas are supposed to be for).</p>
<p>Some of the companies were fined recently. I’ve found that companies that do a lot of outsourcing will eventually be outsource themselves. IBM, CSCO, MSFT all have lot of outsourcing and the companies have not been competing very well. They all just finally turned around but not stellar considering they used to be tech giants.</p>
<p>Yes SBJ, some kids major in STEM because they love it. Great. I feel sorry for the kid who would have been a fantastic (fill in the blank) who ends up as a lousy or underemployed engineer or indifferent HS chemistry teacher because he or she was railroaded into a career for which they were unsuited.</p>
<p>It is a cop-out for parents to claim that they are guiding/shoving/pushing their kid into a STEM career because “we only want what’s best for him/her”. Look around- every year the History majors and the Philosophy majors and the Comp Lit majors end up getting hired by insurance companies and advertising agencies and television networks and banks/brokerage firms, not to mention the tens of thousands who go on to get an MBA or an MD, etc. If your child has an inclination for the sciences and is mathematically inclined- that’s fantastic. But the likelihood that your not-so-great-in-STEM kid will be employable as an actuary or an engineer isn’t great- since your kid will be competing for those jobs with the kids who love the field and are actually good at it.</p>
<p>Right???</p>
<p>Plus, since those non-STEM fields are full of lazy “average americans,” a motivated student should excel.</p>