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If you major in STEM, it doesn't matter where you go

Seymour

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I think you made a good choice.

Of course, at many if not most major research universities, many undergrad courses are taught by grad students, while at many regional schools, professors are more likely to teach undergrad courses.

That was my impression from talking to folks who went to research universities. I actually got one-on-one time with faculty when I wanted it (and occasionally when I didn't). So that was a real plus. They were there primarily to teach.
 

Coriolis

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I need to disagree. Maybe decrease the liberal arts majors, but I find one of the great faults in most American universities is that they have largely done away with basic liberal arts requirements. As such, someone can graduate without anything but a few pop culture classes masquerading as higher education. Most schools no longer require history or civilization surveys, language or literature surveys, or science survey courses.

A proper liberal arts education helps someone to learn to think. Not everyone needs it, but it really transform the youthful and ignorant and narrow-minded to a critical thinker.

STEM majors especially need this, because too many are lacking in the skill sets naturally. But all majors generally are greatly benefited by a good and solid basis in understanding the world around them. It can't really be done before college for most people due to cognitive development factors. As such, most need to have a broad base of education to help them gain perspective.
I agree with all of this (even the dig at STEM majors). Too many universities, especially the ones with strong STEM programs, are turning into glorified job training programs. Nothing wrong with job training, but that is NOT the primary purpose of a university. A university is meant to provide an education with both breadth and depth (one's major). It is supposed to turn its graduates not simply into accountants or lawyers or teachers, but "educated men and women", as my graduating class was told.

Ultimately, the university model of requiring some general liberal arts classes followed by rigorous training in a specialty field is good, but execution today has been ruined. I suspect much of the current disconnect politically can be traced to the lack of developing critical thinking skills, rather than just developing a narrow skill set.

Now, I do believe more rigorous high school requirements would be better, but efforts to install reasoning skills at a very young age seem destined to failure. My children have lots of these things, and it just causes confusion. They don't want them to even just memorize simple things like multiplication tables, because they want them to solve the problems each time rather than just spit out answers. So I work with my children at home to compensate for the failings of the schools. It is annoying that they want to run before they can walk and they end up being able to run or walk.

So, ultimately, make college more rigorous all around, especially by bringing back those un PC topics like history, literature, math, science, and art for all majors and not allowing them to substituted with "the sexuality of Lady Gaga".
I think the whole idea that everyone should go to college is misguided, and a huge part of the problem. If you just want a technical education so you can get a job, then you need a technical school, or even on-the-job training, like an apprenticeship. Before we can do this, though, we need to get rid of the idea that college-educated people are somehow "better" than anyone else, and put careers not requiring college on a par with those that do.

Yes, this means more rigorous requirements in high school, and lower grades. Just because some kids aren't ready to learn things like critical thinking skills doesn't mean these subjects should not be taught to anyone. Colleges shouldn't be forced to make the freshman year a remedial experience for so many students. We don't water down college because too many incoming students can't take it or aren't interested. We send them to more suitable programs, and leave universities for those who can and want to benefit from them.

Finally, if you stay in a STEM field long enough to go to graduate school, then your choice of advisor and research topic become more important than which university you attend.
 

ceecee

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I think the whole idea that everyone should go to college is misguided, and a huge part of the problem. If you just want a technical education so you can get a job, then you need a technical school, or even on-the-job training, like an apprenticeship. Before we can do this, though, we need to get rid of the idea that college-educated people are somehow "better" than anyone else, and put careers not requiring college on a par with those that do.

This is very true. Both my sons did apprenticeships (one started in the military) and have skilled trade careers they are very happy with. The money is better than many of their college grad friends that have entry level jobs or jobs outside of their field. I got my degree at an affordable state university, my husband did the same. I don't think either of us lack anything with our education and we're both in STEM fields.
 

sculpting

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If You Major in STEM, It Doesn’t Matter Where You Go to College - The American Interest



Very interesting for those of you looking at college majors and colleges. If you are going STEM, just find a decent state school and get the education and get a job without the massive debt..... Other fields, not so much. Nice to see some data on this.....

Very true from my experience. I went to a state school for undergrad of commuter quality, then did grad school at a much higher ranked state school. Make sure not to go to grad school at your undergrad and step up a tier for grad school. lol, then get into the business side because that is where you can rapidly grow upwards in your career-folks know your smart and you know how to think and solve problems.

However I wonder how much this reflects pre-med problem at the undergrad level and the "I need an indentured servant" at the grad school level. In both places you end up with a huge surplus of people for jobs available, thus the entry level salaries fo chem, bio and biochem are all depressed as a result at the BS, MS, and PhD level.
 

iwakar

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I earned my B.A. in English back in 2006 because I very much wanted to. However, I went through that program with a lot of people who "didn't know what they wanted to do, and just ended up here," and frankly, it showed.

Now, having worked in a community college for two years, I've seen a lot of students who have graduated from high school just because the H.S. wanted to have a strong pass rate and not because these kids had ANY business being passed. So many of these students end up in remedial EVERYTHING (INRW which is Integrated Reading and Writing, EDUC, which is Educational/Life/Job Skills, GUST Developmental Studies/Student Success) and the CCs don't mind because they can then make them go through those pre-req courses, charge fat $$$, and the students aren't even getting into the credit-hour coursework yet.

And these students, who have no clue what to do with their life, have been traditionally shepherded into the Associate of Arts programs from which they transfer to a 4-year and just proceed in that general direction with really no vision for the future. Public awareness of this problem has been growing thanks to vocal critics, and tradeskills and work certification programs are now starting to recapture some of this group who had no business doing the 2+2 academic degree plan. The academic advisors have also been helping to actively redirect some of these students who are not academically-inclined into these 2-year programs that lead to solid-paying blue-collar jobs.
 

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I'm in psychology right now (heaven forebid) and yeah I'm not having as much fun thinking I want to pursue it though.

I'm thinking of going back to chemistry or biochemistry again, those are the only subjects that have given more interest in anything academic wise. It was kind of stupid of me that the books I enjoy that were psychological in nature would actually help me in college. Yeah it made me look like a genius in the class but the subject when it become academic kind of killed the pleasure of it. Especially they wanted it to put into statistics (nothing wrong with that) and being a skeptic is all very good and all but idk chemistry is way fun because it's like what your learning will apply in whenever it is applicable not that there is a chance from 0 to 99% lol.
 

entropie

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In the US, STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. I only recently learned about this myself, as well.

Ah ok, the non technical Students at my places, who have no clue that these things are actually different, call it MINT. Math, Engineering, nature Science and Technology. Guss it is their nice Word for NERD :)
 

SearchingforPeace

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Moved from Rant about Fi Thread... since it doesn't fit there. Only slightly edited to remove non-necessary information. It fits here since this was already a STEM topic. There is real question if STEM really is good thing to do, especially pursuing PhDs, given the stuff I found. Of course, avoiding college may be the best thing as previously mentioned by other posters in this thread.

As for your STEM jobs argument, I'm not sure where you are getting your statistics. You can start by checking these publications:

Short on STEM talent

Brains not brawn

America desperately needs more STEM students

And finally this one, which starts to explain the conflicting views on this topic.
Debating the STEM crisis

The two main reasons for disagreement as to whether STEM graduates are in short supply is (1) whether to count health professions (if counted, this vastly inflates the number of available grads); and (2) failing to account for the not insignificant number of students who start off in a STEM major, but switch to something else before graduating.

All the statistics I hear from the professional societies to which I belong, at scientific conferences I attend, and even in my own workplace agree that there is a shortage of US citizens qualified to take many of the STEM jobs that are out there. In many industries, e.g. those that are defense-related, taking foreign applicants is simply not an option.

Oh, well. 3 US News blurbs and a Forbes piece... interesting. Google produces very different results than Bing (which pulled up some of the same articles you got), for the exact same question.... always nice to test credibility of search engines by finding which is giving puff pieces and which is giving accurate data.... anyway

And much of the shortage issue is a wage issue. Here are some articles I found instantly.

For example, Michael S. Teitelbaum, vice president of the Sloan Foundation, opined that there are no general shortages of scientists and engineers. He went even further, to state that there is evidence suggesting surpluses: there are significantly more science and engineering graduates in the United States than attractive positions available in the workforce. Similarly, B. Lindsay Lowell and Harold Salzman have pointed to the disproportionate percentage of bachelor’s degree STEM holders not employed in STEM occupations.

Looking at the STEM labor market, Salzman and colleagues concluded that, for every two students graduating with a U.S. STEM degree, only one is employed in STEM and that 32 percent of computer science graduates not employed in information technology attributed their situation to a lack of available jobs. In 2014, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that 74 percent of those who have a bachelor’s degree in a STEM major are not employed in STEM occupations.

That is from Bureau of Labor Statistic, but I guess they are wrong....

From the same article

We found no literature proclaiming a shortage of STEM graduates in the academic employment sector. On the contrary, numerous articles bemoan the lack of permanent faculty positions—a state of affairs that forces young Ph.D.’s to take low-paying temporary positions as postdocs and adjunct faculty.

In 2010, less than 15 percent of new Ph.D.’s in science, engineering, and health-related fields found tenure-track positions within 3 years after graduation. For Ph.D.’s in the life sciences, the figure was an even smaller 7.6 percent. Most who want an academic career join academia as postdocs or adjunct faculty, hoping to vie for a tenure-track faculty position in the future.

Similarly, the National Academy of Sciences Committee, charged with identifying the needs of the U.S. DOD and the U.S. defense industrial base, found that DOD representatives almost unanimously stated that there was no STEM workforce crisis, but that there were specific areas in which needs were not being met.

One recruiter we interviewed said he found that many chemical engineering college graduates were seeking employment in software development. Among young Ph.D.’s, the situation was even worse: just 38 percent of newly minted chemistry Ph.D.’s were employed in full-time, nonpostdoc positions in 2011, down from 51 percent in 2008. New chemical engineering Ph.D.’s fared better, with a full-time, nonpostdoc employment rate of 61 percent.

Lots of unemployment and underemployment for PhDs....in STEM.....

A considerable number of physics Ph.D.’s are unemployed, accepting postdocs and other temporary positions (69 percent in 2010, as opposed to 51 percent before the dot-com bust), indicating that the demand for physics Ph.D.’s is not high.

ouch, why even go in STEM with these stats....

As the government problem with security clearances, it could be solved.

Another recruiting manager for a government research institute found difficulties hiring those with advanced degrees in computer sciences and computer engineering. Because of budget stipulations, salaries his institute offered could not compete with those in the private sector.

In the areas where they need people, they don't offer competitive salaries. Hmmmm...

Anyway, I already posted an article on Disney dumping programmers for guest workers, but no one posted on it. It came from the NY Times.... The entire H1-B scam is largely a fraudulent effort to keep wages down and get programmers who can't complain or leave. Very feudalistic...

Here is another source http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/the-myth-of-the-science-and-engineering-shortage/284359/, which I read 2 years ago. The author wrote a book on the subject.

The truth is that there is little credible evidence of the claimed widespread shortages in the U.S. science and engineering workforce. How can the conventional wisdom be so different from the empirical evidence? There are of course many complexities involved that cannot be addressed here.
...
A compelling body of research is now available, from many leading academic researchers and from respected research organizations such as the National Bureau of Economic Research, the RAND Corporation, and the Urban Institute. No one has been able to find any evidence indicating current widespread labor market shortages or hiring difficulties in science and engineering occupations that require bachelors degrees or higher, although some are forecasting high growth in occupations that require post-high school training but not a bachelors degree. All have concluded that U.S. higher education produces far more science and engineering graduates annually than there are S&E job openings—the only disagreement is whether it is 100 percent or 200 percent more. Were there to be a genuine shortage at present, there would be evidence of employers raising wage offers to attract the scientists and engineers they want. But the evidence points in the other direction: Most studies report that real wages in many—but not all—science and engineering occupations have been flat or slow-growing, and unemployment as high or higher than in many comparably-skilled occupations. bless

Because labor markets in science and engineering differ greatly across fields, industries, and time periods, it is easy to cherry-pick specific specialties that really are in short supply, at least in specific years and locations. But generalizing from these cases to the whole of U.S. science and engineering is perilous. Employment in small but expanding areas of information technology such as social media may be booming, while other larger occupations languish or are increasingly moved offshore. It is true that high-skilled professional occupations almost always experience unemployment rates far lower than those for the rest of the U.S. workforce, but unemployment among scientists and engineers is higher than in other professions such as physicians, dentists, lawyers, and registered nurses, and surprisingly high unemployment rates prevail for recent graduates even in fields with alleged serious “shortages” such as engineering (7.0 percent), computer science (7.8 percent) and information systems (11.7 percent).

Another good article from the Center for Economic Policy and Research. It even has fun charts!!!!!

Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times recently reported on the much-talked-about shortage of STEM workers, or workers in fields that predominantly deal with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). He notes that many studies indicate that the shortage of STEM workers is imagined. He also discovered that many of the companies that complain about their inability to find STEM workers are, paradoxically, laying off large numbers of them.

It is difficult to believe that there is a shortage of these workers when there is a substantial amount of slack in the labor market.
More than seven years after the start of the Great Recession, the employment-to-population ratio, or employment rate, is still down 2.5 percentage points for prime-age (25 to 54) workers.

Like other supposed labor shortages, if there were a real shortage, wages would be expected to grow. This is because employers would compete over a small number of workers, and they would need to raise wages to attract those workers.

Wage growth for all of these subdomains fell after the Great Recession and none have recovered. All are under 2.0 percent, with wage growth in the Social Science Subdomain close to zero. It’s important to note that this is nominal wage growth, so we would expect real wage growth to be even lower.

The general trend is that nominal wage growth is lower now than it was in 2009, with the exception of Computer Programmers, who saw low wage growth in 2009. Wage growth is low-to-moderate, under 3.0 percent for all groups.

This wage data suggest that there is not a shortage of STEM workers broadly, or for commonly discussed computer occupations.

One reason employers might think they can’t find workers is that they may have inflexible requirements for vacant positions.
For example, a company might require that workers work for low wages and long hours, or that they have particular certifications or unreasonably specific skills, or vague cultural attributes that favor certain types of people. There might also be an unwillingness to train new workers on-the-job, which was very common in the past.

So when employers complain about not being able to find workers, what they really mean is that they can’t find workers who meet their requirements at the wage they are willing to offer.
With the cost of living rapidly rising in areas like San Francisco, where there are many STEM employers, it makes sense that workers would not apply for positions that offer wages they find to be too low.

The story is then not that there are too few STEM workers, but that employers will say they can’t find workers in order to increase the bargaining power that they have and hopefully lower their labor costs. Employers are increasingly pushing for policies shift training costs onto the public and to expand H1B visas, which Hiltzik mentions. Some STEM employers are so desperate to reduce labor costs they even collude to keep down their employees’ wages.

The data indicate that Hiltzik is right to suspect that the STEM shortage is phony. The real story is that employers want to pay workers less.

Here are the charts

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djEIXQA.png


Anyway, the empirical data shows that there is no storage of STEM workers, but STEM jobs. Employers are trying to keep wages as low as possible. Stem PhDs are facing massive unemployment.

Instead, there is only a shortage of a willingness to pay the wage. Everything else is Kabuki theater as billionaire CEOs decry artificial shortages so that they can continue to underpay workers by radically increase the supply through guest worker and immigration.

Given the world today, if companies need foreign workers, they can easily have the work in the foreign country itself. Personally, I have worked for a Dutch company with workers in India and England supporting a project in America, on behalf of clients in Brazil...... I have also worked on a project in America for a Swiss company over a matter that was in Australia, which needed some special work for conference calls from 3 different continents.... Just another day in an interconnected world.

Of course, employers play the credentialing game as well, sometimes requiring such things as 10 years experience for a computer language 3 years old, just so they then justify a H1-B.

Anyway, whatever very narrow areas that are lacking in workers can be solved by either training people who are in related fields with limited employment possibilities, or actually increasing wages. Once upon a time in America, wages increased with productivity. Then employers started offshoring or importing cheaper labor......

The alleged STEM shortage just demonstrates the Big Lie theory. Conventional wisdom is just so often based upon lies, unfortunately. It is only a wage issue, not a supply issue, like most alleged employment shortages. Good thing real data exists.
 

Coriolis

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There is real question if STEM really is good thing to do, especially pursuing PhDs, given the stuff I found. Of course, avoiding college may be the best thing as previously mentioned by other posters in this thread.
A small minority of STEM jobs require a PhD, and a large portion of these are in academia, where competition is stiff and there is no shortage. If you are going by statistics for PhD graduates, then, it will present a much different picture than for STEM jobs in industry or government, or STEM jobs across the board. Universities also don't usually need to worry about citizenship requirements, and often hire faculty members who are not citizens. (The ones in my area certainly do.) Assuming they are hiring the best candidates, this suggests US applicants often don't measure up.

Half of STEM jobs don't even require a 4-year college degree, though. Alot of these are in manufacturing and health care. They still pay more than non-STEM jobs requiring comparable eduation (usually a professional certificate or associates degree). Only around a quarter of stem jobs require a graduate level degree, with the majority requiring only a Masters. Jobs not requiring a PhD are usually outside academia and often do go unfilled.

That is from Bureau of Labor Statistic, but I guess they are wrong....
Nothing wrong with Bureau of Labor Statistics, as long as you read the whole story.

Lots of unemployment and underemployment for PhDs....in STEM.....

ouch, why even go in STEM with these stats....

As the government problem with security clearances, it could be solved.
Again, you need to look beyond PhDs. The security clearance problem is solved by encouraging more US citizens and permanent residents to seek STEM jobs. This affects not only government jobs, but jobs in many government contractors.

Anyway, the empirical data shows that there is no storage of STEM workers, but STEM jobs. Employers are trying to keep wages as low as possible. Stem PhDs are facing massive unemployment.
Actually, they are not. Many PhDs just cannot find a position in academia, as they would prefer. Many then go to government, industry, law, etc. where they remain engaged in STEM work. I am one of these, though I did not try to get a faculty position, but went directly into another position.

As the BLS report I linked shows, the shortage of STEM workers is not universal across all fields, locations, and education requirements, but is definitely there. What this means for university students is that they should consider the prospects for the various fields they are considering, and get as good a foundation in the basics as they can, while picking up universally applicable skills like computer skills, and even more generic things like good writing and public speaking.
 

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I only have an associates degree in electronics and I am a computer programmer that worked my way above others with much more education and experience. Senior java developers make $90k+ according to different sites I have seen. I am glad I went down to this path, wasn't hard to find jobs either, was even in a turn down when I was searching. Just my experience, others mileage may vary. I suck at interviews.
 

entropie

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Maybe I can refine my 5 cents:

If you major in STEM, it doesn't matter where you go, if you are not an asshole.

99% who major in those fields never manage that. Real scientists tho do. But real scientists are rare !
 

Poki

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Maybe I can refine my 5 cents:

If you major in STEM, it doesn't matter where you go, if you are not an asshole.

99% who major in those fields never manage that. Real scientists tho do. But real scientists are rare !

The most important thing I can tell anyone in this field that will save them time and time again...no matter how much you think it "should" work, if it doesn't, it doesn't. "Should" always happens in a perfect world and the world is not perfect.

It was frustrating when another developer said JSF doesn't have any bugs or issues because its widely used. I had to correct him it "shouldn't" have any because of that as I informed him that every piece of software that is a decent size uses an issue tracking system with a back log of defects being worked on.
 

Yama

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I am one of those people who transferred from a 2-year college to a 4-year college to get a degree.

There's a reason for that.

I can't handle a STEM job worth fuck. Science and math are my worst subjects and I will never, ever be good at them. I'd rather stab myself 46 times than work in engineering.

Regardless of what anyone says, we can't all work in STEM. I don't care if people disagree with me--degrees like psychology and sociology are still important to society, and they should not be taken out of universities. If you don't like it, don't get a degree in it. Bam. That simple.
 

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I am one of those people who transferred from a 2-year college to a 4-year college to get a degree.

There's a reason for that.

I can't handle a STEM job worth fuck. Science and math are my worst subjects and I will never, ever be good at them. I'd rather stab myself 46 times than work in engineering.

Regardless of what anyone says, we can't all work in STEM. I don't care if people disagree with me--degrees like psychology and sociology are still important to society, and they should not be taken out of universities. If you don't like it, don't get a degree in it. Bam. That simple.

True, people aren't saying that the soft sciences are useless but that the hard sciences/STEM have more applicability to the job market. If you are smart enough, you can creatively extrapolate ways to make almost degree work for you. But the hard sciences/STEM would probably provide the broadest range of highly specialized skills.
 
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