inspired by this thread, in which DSeid says:
and then bump says:
Is there data somewhere showing how many individuals are graduating these days (or in years past) with certain kinds of degrees? For an example that speaks to bump’s scenario, more people than ever may be going to college these days, but are they all choosing English instead of STEM fields?
Behold, a table of degrees granted by year and field of study, courtesy of the Department of Education:
I’m still looking through it to see how it compares with the hypothesis, but thought I’d get it out there in case anyone else wanted to have a look.
Based on percentages (columns 11-17), things look remarkably steady over the years. Apparently it’s the marketplace that has changed, not the distribution of degrees being pursued.
Thanks for digging up the data. 
Per the table posted, the percentage of humanities degrees at the undergraduate level has declined slightly (17.1 -> 16.6%), the social and behavioral sciences has declined rather more (23 -> 16%), math/science/engineering/comp.sci is close to the same (16.1 -> 16%), education has plummeted (21 -> 5.9%), business is up quite a bit (13.7 -> 20.5), and the real growth has been in the “other” category, which includes everything from agriculture and communications to health sciences. (And I’d guess a fair bit of that is due to the health sciences, where e.g. a registered nurse is now expected to have a bachelors degree.) In other words, the hypothesis doesn’t withstand data.
(With the caveat that this doesn’t indicate U.S. resident versus foreign student degrees.)
You’re quite welcome. I saw bump’s post and was wondering about it myself.
This is pretty much what I was going to post. A more accurate narrative might be that people who used to become teachers are now getting business degrees. This is borne out in the advanced degrees - at the Masters level, the percentage in Education fell from 37.2% to 23.6%, and that in Business rose from 11.2% to 25.4%.
What struck me was the rise in Business and the fall in Education.
When I went to college back at the beginning of that chart, the word was that a business degree was worthless. You didn’t need one for an MBA and it gave you no skills for the business world. It zoomed up to its highest percentage during the huge “greed” era of the mid-80s, just because business was the “in” degree. Today it appears to be a catch-all degree for anyone needing that box checked off.
Education used to be the default degree everywhere except the elite universities because the one gigantic profession that demanded a degree was teaching. That fell off a cliff at the same time that business was hitting its high because nobody wanted to go into low-paying teaching jobs; they all wanted to be rich on Wall Street.
They ironically learned better, but the comparatively horrible conditions, pay, and total lack of respect for teachers mean that the brighter students avoid it just when we need them most.
I am somewhat confused by the issues being discussed here.
I was recently told by a guy I know who works for a head hunting company that they have several thousand people with MPC and E degrees on the books.
These people are unable to find jobs in their related fields; ie: not just whatever they specialized in graduate school, but in “science” in general. So they are working at Walmart, Starbucks, etc.
Yet, we are told that there is a shortage of MPC&E qualified people, and we have to import them.
Can anyone clarify what the reality is?
What is MPC and E?
Mpc and e? What’s that?
Management disposition and remarketing?
Materials processing corporation?
Monterey peninsula college?
Minnesota population center?
Music production center?
I give up
I’m gonna speculate that MPC & E is Polar Iceman’s homemade abbreviation for Math, Physics, Chemistry, & Engineering. IOW what the USA commonly terms “STEM”: Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math.
Or MCP&E may be the normal equivalent term in whichever country he calls home. Although his writing style looks American to me.
As to the question he raises …
All evidence points to the “shortage” being entirely a product of corporate propaganda. Any time there is the slightest upward pressure on wages due to demand beginning to move towards supply, the corporate cry goes out to import yet more workers from low-wage countries. The goal of course is to nip any wage increases in the bud.
One of the reasons why there are so many foreign scientists is that to advance reliably in much of science, you need to get a PhD, and getting a PhD requires working for year upon year for almost no pay. It’s not actually a great deal for people with other options.
Q: What does the English Major say to the Science Major?
A: “Do you want fries with that?”
When I went to college, mid-70’s, any contemporaries who didn’t have the personality (or lack, rather) for STEM took English or History because mom and dad wanted them to be college grads. The really smart ones were just trying to get the grades to get into law school, the arts equivalent of medical school and almost as tough to get into by the mid to late 70’s. Those that could, did, and those that couldn’t, became teachers, as the baby boomers started having kids.
Many of my fellow students became teachers - this clogged up the system and filled it up during years of expansion. Then by the late 80’s, the number of new children and demand for teachers plummeted, school boards like other government agencies hit the budget crunch, and nobody was hiring. Many teaching grads during the late 80’s and first half of the 90’s were even unable to get jobs. This has not really recovered and I assume this is what’s behind the dip in education degrees in the statistics.
To be fair, in the other thread, I wasn’t trying to say that there were more English majors by percentage than ever before, but that there are more English majors overall (more people going to college), and that the jobs they’re qualified for haven’t grown at the same rate.
The “Other” category is interesting. The sidenote says its everything from agriculture to law enforcement. Interesting at the Phd level its over 60%.
As a STEM graduate myself (BS Computer Science, Texas A&M 1996), it always seemed to me like there were the science/engineering degrees that were industry-ready out of the gate (the computer science degrees and most of the engineering degrees), and there were the ones that were more intended to be a stepping stone to a graduate degree and subsequent employability. Stuff like chemistry, physics, geology, etc… all seemed somewhat commercially useless if you only got a BA or BS in them.
What they mean when they say that there’s a shortage of STEM graduates, they’re really meaning there’s a shortage in a few narrow fields. If I had to guess, I’d think the computer science/computer engineering/electrical engineering are all in high demand, as well as petroleum engineering and chemical engineering.
I doubt say… ocean/marine engineering or mechanical engineering are in super-high demand right now, nor do I think nuclear engineering is super hot either.
Polar Iceman, you are an enigma.
That can be solved here.
For crying out loud!
I may be an old fogie, but I’m not that old!
When I was in graduate school in the early 1970’s, everybody knew what MPC & E was.
Ie: Math, Physics, Chemistry and Engineering.
I know we are a superior species here in Houston, but geeze!
Since I retired some years ago, and am out of touch with the employment market, my question still stands.
Not trying to start a bicker …
When I was in grad school in the early '80s in SoCal it was (IIRC) not a term anyone ever used or had heard of. It seems several other posters from around the US hadn’t heard of it either.
This message board has posters with a very wide variety of ages, locations, & lifestyles. For me at least, much of the fun is learning just how parochial everyone’s life experiences really are. Certainly including mine.
“Everyone knows …” is actually “Everyone from roughly my age group, educational level, income, and local area knows …” Because IRL, those are about the only kinds of people we routinely interact with. Unlike here.
OK, now that we have the semantic issues sorted out…
Does anyone have any credible knowledge of the employment prospects for the STEM/MPCE graduates now coming off the production line?
Are the implications arising from the guy at the employment agency correct? Ie: there are way more graduates than jobs.
Are we, in fact, producing an excess of STEM/MPCE graduates?