It makes intuitive sense.
There is always intense work on science and engineering in companies and
government agencies across the country, which require know-how most people,
regardless of intelligence or even aptitude, simply don’t have. From iPods to bridges, we can see the effects
scientific work has on our lives, and we know lots of money is being spent and
earned. The liberal arts fields have
little to match that, as Americans have known for a long time that jobs which
directly use knowledge in the likes of sociology or foreign literature are much
less common. At the same time, when we learn
the names of the highest STEM achievers, they are often Chinese, Indian, or Near
Eastern, making it even more logical to think we don’t have enough qualified
people here otherwise. College undergraduates
will consistently tell you that scientific coursework is usually more difficult
than that in the humanities. If we need yet
another explanation, hard science graduates are often seen as being smarter, more
diligent, and clearer at thinking than others.
There is only one problem with that viewpoint. It is false.
As I wrote in Choosing a Lasting
Career:
Another disagreement I have with other things you may read is
on science-related opportunities. Some score high in the chapters to come, but
the field is hardly the wide-open hiring area implied by those who say American
universities do not produce enough science graduates. Many want to work in academia, but as of
2009, only 14% of new degree holders in the life sciences were able to get
university positions teaching or researching within five years, a share
shrinking steadily since 1979, and reports published in 2010 and 2011 show that
private industry has not hired enough science doctorates to make the degrees
financially worthwhile. For one example,
between 2000 and 2012, American drug companies cut 300,000 jobs, many formerly
providing work for Ph.D.’s in chemistry.
As a result of poor opportunities, many scientists with doctoral degrees
in various disciplines have now been working as low-paid postdoctoral fellows,
customarily one- to two-year apprenticeships of sorts, for as long as ten.
A new Economic Policy Institute study, mentioned Wednesday in
Slate and The Washington Post, confirmed the true situation. It said that although there were relatively
few American STEM graduates, they often had poor career prospects, with about
half not finding jobs anywhere in science, technology, engineering, or
mathematics. The findings implied that
foreigners with these credentials were given temporary work visas because of
this perceived shortage. Such workers are
paid an average of 20% less than native Americans, which could explain, even before
considering real or imagined differences in their work, their popularity.
Another long-standing issue with vocational scientific
positions has been cyclical supply and demand.
For decades, engineering and information technology have gone through a
predictable, easily understandable pattern.
To start it, news stories appear about worker shortages in one of these
fields. Next, high school and college
career offices, along with the students themselves, spread the word, and more
and more people major in these subjects.
As a result, years later, more graduates in these fields reach the job
market than can be hired. From there, word
spreads that opportunities are poor, so fewer people start studying these
subjects. With the reduced number of new
graduates, and technological progress marching on, there is a scarcity of
qualified people again. Then, back to
the beginning. Former students from
years before who did not find work in their specialty do not help much, as they
often have moved on to other fields, and their knowledge sets have suffered
from disuse and obsolescence.
Two facts are clear from this misunderstanding. First, completing a scientific or technical major
has never been a guarantee of top job prospects. Second, such graduates are not rare. So can we do away with the idea that
Americans are somehow deficient for choosing less demanding fields of
study? We all choose the paths life
makes available to us, and even if others “should” be better, we are entitled
to know when they are not.