We keep hearing about the “shortage” of STEM graduates, and how much money one can make with a degree.
I know a lot of people who have engineering degrees, and are working at jobs that could easily be done by high school students. Many jobs in STEM have either been outsourced, or are being performed by H1B holders instead of Americans. Why is the value of these degrees being overblown?
An H1B visa will cost the hiring company anywhere between $3-7,000. If they could hire qualified Americans why would they pay the additional cash to sponsor a foreign applicant? There’s a demand that isn’t being met by American workers. (This isn’t to say your thesis is faulty. Maybe STEM degrees are over hyped. I know welders can make a whole hell of a lot of money with barely a high school degree.)
It would be helpful in terms of a debate if you quoted some specific authorities who you think are lying. Then provide some non-anecdotal data to support your thesis that something is being overblown.
This is just a subset of the situation of college degrees in general where a lot of the jobs which require college degrees could be done by high school graduates.
Yes, they’re overvalued.
I think its easier for politicians and the media to pretend there are tons of great jobs out there, but the people don’t have the right training than to admit that due to income inequality, outsourcing, insourcing and automation, there are far fewer jobs and the jobs that do exist aren’t paying that great.
Well, it’s true that there’s a lot of demand for STEM degrees. But there’s also a large supply of them (largely due, of course, to a lot of high schoolers who were told by their guidance counselors of the high demand). And there’s also the difficulty that a lot of that demand is for highly specific skillsets, of which there are many, not just some vague general STEMminess: Database management and biophysics are both STEM, but if an employer is looking for a database manager, a biophysics degree isn’t going to help you much.
Take a gander at this. I’m not particularly familiar with this website, but the general statistics are similar to any other source I have seen on the subject. Personally these findings have given me food for thought. The salaries are quite high - averaging over $90k - but a majority of engineering graduates do not end up employed in the field they majored in. I wonder why that is. $90k is a decent sounding salary, but are there mitigating factors to this such as extremely long work hours, available employment only in high cost of living areas etc.?
The answer to the OP’s question seems to be a simultaneous yes and no.
FromAdvanc-Ed:
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And then there’s this from theUS Dept. of Labor:
I also find it disturbing the way STEM is being forced on girls. This is not the same as encouraging girls who are interested in those fields.
The blogger Chemjobber often makes the point that STEM is really TE. The conversation is always about technology or occasionally engineering, but never about the actual sciences or mathematics. Sure, you can find discussions about the over-supply of chemistry doctorates, for example, but only in trade publications and blogs and not the mainstream media.
I’m about to end this thread:
Software Developers/Engineers https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm
Here’s BLS fastest growing occupations:
About half of that list is STEM or healthcare ( I would include genetics counselor in both ).
But who cares about fastest growing if the number of jobs goes from 1000 to 2000? Yeah, the number of jobs doubled but that still isn’t many jobs.
Here’s BLS list of top 20 most new jobs:
3 of the top 5 paying most new jobs start with a STEM education. The highest paying is software developers.
This country needs more STEM in its workforce. The trick is you need to get the basic information to make the right choices in getting into STEM work.
I agree with the point that you need to get an internship before you leave college.
The OP is baseless. This thread is done.
Of the fastest growing vocations, the top 2 are installation and maintenance of renewable energy. The rest are mostly health care positions.
Maybe 6 of those fastest growing positions are STEM related, and they aren’t science based. they are based on engineering, math, technology.
I find it far, far more disturbing how girls are being forced away from STEM. It’s more subtle than the encouragement, maybe, but it’s much more widespread. If STEM really were being forced on girls, at a level greater than just encouraging those who are interested, then we would see more women than men in STEM. Spoiler alert, we don’t.
Forced? I’ve met many girls who had to fight hell, high water, family, extended family, boyfriend… in order to study a STEM field. I’ve met others who didn’t study in a STEM field but ended up working in one because the job they were doing (business analyst) is open to, among other things, people with Business Management-related degrees; each of them said “it’s not what I had in mind but I’m liking it!”. Never met one who said she was forced into STEM work.
As for “ending up in your field”. My initial degree was in ChemE; I currently work as a business analyst in the areas of Production, Quality and Maintenance. Sometimes people ask me “oh, wouldn’t you rather work in your field?” “I do, I’m a process engineer!” Why should the “chemistry” part be more important than the “engineer” part?
When STEM degrees are promoted, it is often in a way that implies such positions are highly in demand right now, and highly paid, as that focuses attention quite well.
However, arguably the reasons for promoting such degrees are not really this. Or not only this.
For governments, they see the writing on the wall: technology is moving ever more quickly and they don’t want to be left in the cold. So it’s a hedge against the future. Whether all the people studying STEM degrees in the future will receive high salaries is by the by.
Furthermore, it can be useful to have a more scientifically literate public; science affects numerous policy decisions and we see the result of having a scientifically illiterate public. It may sound strange promoting particular degrees for non-vocational reasons, but we’re not trying to change the mind of people already set on a different path. Just suggesting if you don’t know what to do next, consider a STEM degree. You may find it does light your fire. Or if you’re just looking to get *any *degree, to be eligible for all the jobs that basically just require any degree, then hey why not STEM?
Finally these are still areas somewhat associated with men. But history has shown the very best scientists or mathematicians say, can be either gender, so it’s worth trying to dispel any such apprehension.
I’m not making any claim about equal proportions of men and women being good at everything.
What I’m saying is: imagine you’re a young girl who’s fantastic at coding, but still perceive it to be a macho culture. You’re also somewhat OK at French language, so you’re considering doing that instead. It’s in society’s best interest that such a girl realizes (or is conned into believing :)) that CompSci welcomes all capable candidates.
Looking at those medium incomes I’d say that one doesn’t get a STEM degree if they want to get rich …
I’m a little surprised by the lack of construction trades listed, perhaps the desperate shortages are a local issue … one could skip college and high school and make that kind of money … better to have the eight years experience than any formal education … the only downside is that it’s hard work, but that’s what drives wages up, so few people today are willing to bust ass for a paycheck …
No! Minimum-wage jobs are not meant to provide a living wage! Adults in minimum-wage jobs are lazy and need to apply themselves! :mad:
Of course there are jobs that are not minimum-wage in addition to minimum-wage jobs, that people with degrees take because there are no jobs available in their field. But the sentiment I get from Conservatives is that people who work in such jobs are to blame for their situation. They can’t seem to grasp that there are people who ‘did everything right’, but have been struggling after the Bush Recession.
I know that’s not what boffking was talking about in the quoted text, that there are high-paying or haigher-paying jobs jobs that require a degree that really don’t need someone with a degree. It’s just that the quote reminded me of the Conservative rant.
Becoming a scientist in biological/medical sciences requires a PhD which takes about 7 years (often more). And a period of “training” known as a postdoc that is an additional 4-10 years. Then you have a very small chance to become a tenured scientist and finally make a living wage. But, there are WAY more postdocs than tenured scientist positions, so chances are that you are shit out of luck and have to consider an “alternative” career in science, which is an odd term for the careers that the majority of people end up in. The time to degree and the time of postdoc has increased dramatically in recent decades, because there are simply no positions for these people, so they end up in career holding patterns until they finally give up (or less likely, get a job).
I’m not bitter, because I’ve been one of the very, very lucky ones. But, of the people I went to graduate school with, only two of us are “scientists” (I’m in industry, not academia.)
There are WAY too many young scientists due to an upside down incentive structure that rewards having as many low cost graduate students and postdocs as possible, without any concern for their future.
This one is a critical aspect of the apparent disjoint regarding the STEM degrees and the job market.
As inferred in other posts it has to do with the tendency to look upon Higher Ed as “preparation for A ‘good’ job” so there’s the expectation that you’ll be matched exactly to the work you trained for. University as a Vo-Tech job training on steroids, only with added calculus, Western Civ and foreign language requirements.* As was mentioned above, too often policymakers complain that the colleges are not delivering people trained to start working today on what the economy needs right now, when the technology evolves faster than the 6 year cycle between when the kid starts considering colleges and when she graduates.**
*And in the case of the USA, with a cost of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands dollars, compounding the urgency to see a “return on investment” (and for many of the graduates, to pay back the loan debt).
** This also has to do with the unrealistic expectation I so often see that youth should be able to track themselves or be tracked by evaluators in the direction of “their life career” before they are even old enough to sign a binding contract.
Then again in the USA (and I bet there are many other societies where this is so, but this is the one I know) there is as mentioned above, an overemphasis on the TE part of STEM. ISTM, historically the American society did not revere the scientist qua scientist, but as the inventor or the builder, and tended to think of the discovery of some world-changing theory as being the result of a stroke of genius.
You pay pretty much the same thing for any college degree, so getting the one that has generally high pay can be a good thing. However, if you don’t enjoy STEM, then it can be a waste of money. Employers aren’t going to hire someone who’s ambivalent when they have their choice of so many people who are genuinely passionate about STEM.
The bigger question is if students are being lied to about the value of a college degree in a generic sense. Many jobs do not need the specific education you get from college. However, employers use the college degree as a filtering system to know that you’ve acquired a large body of knowledge and have the motivation and discipline to complete the degree. Employers know that they will generally get better performance from someone with a degree than someone without. They don’t care to take a chance on a HS graduate when they have endless people with a college degree to chose from.
With that in mind, it’s generally a good thing to get a degree–any degree–as long as costs can be contained. A student doesn’t have to rack up $150,000+ in debt to get a generic degree. Going to community and state schools while working can help minimize the cost to get a degree which will open doors and lead to higher salaries.