Does humanity have too much STEM education or too little

Great Debates
1

I keep hearing from the Obama admin how we have to invest in math & science to remain competitive. But it seems we already have enough scientists, IT workers and mathematicians who are unemployed or underemployed. Look at how many people fight to get a post-doc. For the record, STEM = Science, technology, engineering and math.

I understand it is even worse in places like Eastern Europe with unemployment and underemployment is even worse.

In the US there are something like 600k nurses who have dropped out of the field due to stress and job dissatisfaction (I don’t remember the exact number, around 600k or so who are trained but don’t like the job).

I can believe there is a shortage of people trained in medicine in parts of the developing world. But it seems like there might be a glut of people trained in science, technology, math, etc but there is no constructive outlet for them.

With all the unemployed IT workers, all the people fighting for post docs and assistant professorships, all the nurses who have quit and dropped out, all the engineers who can’t find a job etc. I don’t see why some people say we need more math, science, medicine, engineering and technology training to remain competitive in the global economy. What we need are decent jobs for the people who already have the training.

I get the impression we have too many people trained in STEM and medical fields who either cannot find jobs or don’t want to work in the fields due to job dissatisfaction. So the arguments that we need more people trained in these fields to remain globally competitive makes no sense to me.
In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have titled the thread ‘Does humanity have too much STEM education or too little’, since you can’t really extrapolate this to all humanity. I think parts of the developing world have too few people trained in medicine. But it seems the west and eastern Europe have too many people trained in STEM and medical fields who really can’t or won’t work in those fields.

2

IMHO, (with the possible exception of military technology) it’s a pretty fundamental economic misconception to say that there is any “we” that needs to remain “globally competitive.” Especially the more extreme position that “we” need to maintain the lead position on issues of science and technology. I can name a dozen first-world countries that are not global leaders in STEM output, and they don’t seem to have suffered too much for this. Why would we?

As an (admittedly rather biased) mathematician, I’m in favor of a good amount of mathematics education. It would probably be better to teach things rather differently than we do today. Without introducing too much of a hijack (I hope), I would try to focus a curriculum on overcoming the numerous mistakes people make in reasoning with large numbers and with probability. I suppose this position could translate into “more STEM education at lower levels.”

As for higher education in STEM, I don’t think anyone stands a reasonable chance of being able to accurately determine the future needs of the economy. I say let the companies, colleges and students sort it out for themselves.

3

Public Education is a completely inefficient waste of time. Most of the skills we teach in college could be taught by High School. So yes, we could use more STEM, we just should provide it in a more immediate and more efficient way than the way we do it now.

4

That’s the way i feel as well. Unless you are going into the field, much learning is just memorization of words rather than concepts. The basics of physics are pretty simple, but it seems that only a small percent of the population understands things like objects accelerate at a constant rate regardless of their weight, or why astronauts float around in the Space Station. It’s not “zero gravity”, it’s that they and the station are both failing at the same speed.

I’d rather see science taught conceptually: Netwton’s laws, evolution, basic astronomy, and why we have tides and seasons can all be taught without having to understand advanced math. Same with probability, there are a core set of things that people misunderstand that prevent them from making informed decisions.

5

So your position is that all education should be privatized? Or that elementary, junior, and high school education should not exist? :confused:

As someone who attended public schools all the way through college, I can attest to the quality of a state-run schools (though, really, the whole idea of privatizing education is creepy and bizarre). I would not have been prepared for college if I had not gone to a stellar public HS.

I wonder why every proposal (from either party) to improve education always focuses on science and math. I am a science-oriented person who is about to enter med school, but I do not think I would have gotten to this point in my career (and certainly not this stage in life) without the robust liberal arts education I received, particularly in HS.

Our public schools should be promoting the development of individuals, in every respect. We should not cut ourselves at the knees by confusing an education with the acquisition of a trade.

6

sleeping Your bizarre privatization rant notwithstanding…

The reason people focus on math and science is because the United States has outstripped its competitors largely due to our focus on engineering and the sciences. We are falling behind radically. Or I should say, others are catching up rapidly.

Public education by definition cannot cater to individuals.

7

I’m not sure about science and technology being the cause of America’s relative fall. The fact is that there’s a lot of smart people in Asia who are now getting richer, and getting the ability to have a decent education and compete with Americans. Maybe we shouldn’t be competing head on with STEM; rather, we should try to amplify our comparative advantages in marketing, which requires more soft skills. After all, a clever Chinese engineer might be able to figure out how to make jeans for $10 per, but only Levi’s can figure out how to make people pay $110 per pair. That’s some effective value transference right there.

8

Why do people think they can second guess the market when it comes to what humanity “needs”? When the world needed IT workers, everyone jumped into IT. Now that it doesn’t need so many, they can go into other stuff.

The problem is that we are in a recession. No one needs jobs in a lot of fields at the moment. But as a rule, a STEM education is more useful than some nebulous liberal arts degree. I mean unless you want to be a lawyer or something.

9

We’d be better if we focused our science education to be more focused on critical reasoning skills rather than a set of facts. Kids might learn to recite random facts like what mitochondria does or what elements can combine to form compounds, but ask them to intuitively explain how the scientific method work or evaluate a scientific claim and they’re mostly clueless. Critical thinking and skepticism is about the most valuable thing you can teach anyone, and there’s almost none of it in our educational system. It shouldn’t be necesarily part of a science curriculum (although it’s related), but since I doubt we’re going to start having critical thinking/logic/skepticism classes, then focusing our science education in that direction is certainly the way to go.

10

Here’s what’s puzzling to me. In every debate about scientific competitiveness in the US has focused on supply side issues: The poor quality of US basic education & the difficulty of importing foreign talent. But the supply side hasn’t ever been the problem, it’s always been about demand. The job prospects in science & math have always been pretty dismal compared to equivalent fields. From a purely market perspective, we’re already pumping out too many scientists & mathematicians which has depressed their wages on the open market.

What’s needed to revive science in America is more demand, not more supply. There needs to be a massive increase in government funding of basic science research. But free market ideology has so overtaken the public discourse that this isn’t even on the table. It’s taken on faith that the demand for science in the private sector is the optimal amount of science good for society, despite massive evidence to the contrary.

There’s no way to fix America’s STEM competitiveness in the future except through massive government investment in basic science research.

11

I think the same about a public mail system. By definition it couldn’t deliver mail to individuals.

12

Damn you DanBlather I was justy about to have a go at this comment.

But to go on a little, personalised education is not about one person one tutor, there is a huge amount o be learned by class/collective work, indeed this may be the most important part of the education of any child, and the idea that private/public education has any sort of monopoly in this is nonsense.

So what is personalised education - is it all about assessing and evaluating the needs of the individual? Just what advantages does private education have?
Well, it can hire certain tutors, but it tend to be far more about networking than it is about actually learning.

The resources that public education can bring to this, especially in designing and developing further educational research far outweighs anything the private sector can ever muster, and the reality is that private edUCation relies incredibly heavily on the public sector, for its trained tutors, for the examinations and assessments boards, to the actual methods of teaching.

Without public education, we simply go back to the days of heirarchical society, where

I can only assume that Sleeping in not directly involved in education.

I think the point about critical thinking that has been well made is perhaps the most important point, and its also the current greatest weakness that we have in the UK, and looking at the output of Fox news, it is likely to be the main weakness of the US education system.

The greatest benefit of the Sciences is that it can promote this sort of thinking, but then, so can critical reflection of literature.

13

Exactly. The same calls for “more maths graduates, more chemists!” are forever being repeated in the UK, too. But job prospects for all scientific fields are abysmal, and wages aren’t exactly groundbreaking when you do find a job, things becoming even harder if you want to become an academic.

But then it dawns on you: having a massive oversupply is good for businesses, as wages can be kept depressed.

14

I agree with the rule of supply and demand which can depress incomes.

When I was at school, you got perhaps three or four O-Levels and took on an apprenticeship, then you were set for life, often with the same company for your whole working life.

A few, 5% -10% went on to do higher education A-levels that took you up to age 18, and then on to university about half of all higher education entrants.

If you went the apprenticeship way, you got your trade qualifications - City & Guilds, and if you wanted to go further, you took on more advanced vocational training, ONC, HNC through to vocational degrees.

The majority were those who simply left school and went on to unskiled manual work.

Now we have around half of all school leavers going on to further education, and the expectation is that this will increase. The result is that the apprenticeship route has been bypassed (there are other reasons regarding the decline of pprenticeships as well), but it also means that there are many more folk around with Higher National and Degrees.

What this means is an oversupply of higher qualified people, once, if you had a degee - didn’t matter which one -, you were set for at least middle management, or if you went the vocational route, then a Higher National trade qualification would also put you into management.

It is very differant now, the subject of your degree or higher national is critical, not only that but there is little guaruntee that you will climb the ladder - if that is what you choose - and career paths change so much and so radically that what you learned at one time in life, may not be very relevant tweny years later as you change occupation.

In addition, there did used to be a premium in holding a degree in terms of income and this would be reflected across the whole of your working life and our student loan system was built upon this, where repayments for tuition would come from your theoretically higher income once you started work. The problem is that job security is poorer, qualifications premiums are not as high - or are even non-existant and with changing careers the process of learning is almost continuous - running just to stay still.

I now know people who have gone back to college at night schol and have completed two or three degrees in differant subject areas or they have had to formally augment what they already hold.

Those who might have taken the vocational route, by combining work and learning straight after leaving school are now not doing this, they either go into higher education, or they are left behind - with the result that practical skills are in huge undersupply - try getting a plumber, electrician, carpenter or drywaller around and see how hard it is, costs are high and wait times can be long.

15

I get the impression that most job losses are in construction, manufacturing, and other unskilled jobs. I also get the impression that science and engineering majors are still among the most in-demand majors. I get the impression that hundreds of thousands of STEM people are still coming from all over the world to find jobs in the United States. So, in summary, we do in fact have a shortfall in qualified people for STEM positions in the United States.

Now whether ‘more science and math education’ can fix the problem is a different question.

16

Also, the OP is confusing two issues which have nothing to do with each other. He’s not even saying that job prospects in medicine are bad – he’s just saying that nurses are leaving because they don’t like the job. Well, everyone knows that nursing is hard. But there are plenty of job openings in health care.

17

What a silly response.

I invite you to actually give a little bit of thought to how much attention a child needs to further their education vs how much time a letter carrier requires to drop an envelope through a slot and into a box.

If you have trouble grasping this concept, by all means continue to be impressed by your wit. :smiley:

18

I have to agree with ITR champion. When I got my B.S. (only two years ago) the engineering majors had some of the highest starting salaries of all graduates. In particular, I recall that chemical engineering usually topped the list, and mechanical engineering wasn’t far behind. Despite what Shalmanese says, the only engineering major that didn’t have a good starting salary was the one most entwined with public financing, civil engineering.

19

But nursing is hard due in large part to the nursing shortage. Nurses are overworked because there are not enough nurses. So nurses quit because they are overworked and as a result there are fewer nurses.

20

Smaller class sizes. Pure and simple. One teacher can give attention to twelve kids, but not to 35.

But to be clear, I am not lauding private education over public. I think the rote learning model where we expect 7 year olds to sit still at a desk while being given repetitive tasks that bore the mind is flawed. Private/Public is just a matter of how a flawed system is paid for. I’m not so much focused on that flaw. The problem with education as it is currently setup is that it is highly specialized. Kids should really be engaging the real world as soon as they are able. Apprenticeships and internships at companies learning the real world life skills at a young age would be great, but the situation right now is that we cannot have that, our system from neck to nuts is arranged differently. And when I say working at real companies learning, I don’t mean trade focused, I mean having some class time to introduce kids to particular concepts, and then time observing people in a trade actually using those skills in a real environment so that the kid has an immediate and complete concept of why those skills are useful and applicable. But again, it’s pie in the sky, not gonna happen that way.

Our system as it is now is flawed quite simply because of how students are expected to be still, which is unnatural for a small child. They are expected to listen to rote recitation, which is one of the poorest methods for absorbing information because the mind gets bored easily. They are given too short a time period, and are taught to arrange themselves to a Pavlovian bell structure, which diminishes the time one has to devote to a particular study.

But most importantly, the lack of engagement between the world outside of school and the world inside of school. As a friend of mine likes to point out. Most people do more research when buying a car than they do into the teacher who is educating their child.