The Science Education Myth

xzvf writes "BusinessWeek says that you should not listen to the conventional wisdom. According to a new report, US schools are turning out more capable science and engineering grads than the job market can support. 'The authors of the report, the Urban Institute's Hal Salzman and Georgetown University professor Lindsay Lowell, show that math, science, and reading test scores at the primary and secondary level have increased over the past two decades, and U.S. students are now close to the top of international rankings. Perhaps just as surprising, the report finds that our education system actually produces more science and engineering graduates than the market demands.'"

Comments

Supply and Demand.

[SatanicPuppy]

Hey, supply and demand. I'm kinda a freak because I went to school and just studied what interested me without regard to how I was going to apply it to getting a job, but most people I know checked salaries, and went for things where they thought they could make money.

Additonally, once you get out in the field, you start getting a sense of what people make, and what you can do and would like to make, and if you figure you could make more money as an engineer, you go back to school and pick up the degree...None of this stuff is set in stone in high school, or even undergrad level college.

I'm sure I'm not the only one here who remembers the glut of 30-somethings going back to school to get their CS degree in the 90's. If there is demand, people will try to fill that demand, because doing so will profit them personally. Conversely, people who try and fill a non-existent demand will be punished by the market, shuffled into a crappy job.

And for the inevitable people who're going to say, "All the US demand for engineers is being filled by H1-B types" I say good! More engineers in this country means more engineering work has to come to this country, because that's where the engineers are, and that's where the work will be done best. More work for engineers means more demand for engineers, and more engineers with jobs HERE means countless other jobs will be created by the money they'll be spending. Would you rather they stayed where they are already, and brought the work to their country? We can afford to do that for running shoes, but if we start exporting tech industries, that's a bad thing.

Using government funding to force produce a glut of science-types is silly. Better to use the money to kick off industries that require them, and let the rest take care of itself.

Re:Supply and Demand.

[Analog Squirrel]

As far an engineering and tech types, I think I agree with you. However, I think that there is a certain segment of the science industry that really ought to be government sponsored (fundamental and long-range research that may not be carried out in private industry due to no apparent profit to motivate).

On another note, I wish I'd been more like you as an undergrad. I managed a BS in physics, and have barely even cracked a physics book since then. Hell, I'm still trying to figure out what to do with myself in terms of a "career".

Re:Supply and Demand.

[SatanicPuppy]

See, I agree with that. It goes in line with the last line of my post...Let the government pour money into pure science, and release the results to us under an open license. I've got no problem with that; it's exactly the sort of thing the free market isn't good at funding, but which often turns out to have profit potential anyway. And it creates high end jobs, which is a win-win. Better to use tax money for something like that than fricking corn subsidies.

Re:Supply and Demand.

[king-manic]

Because central planning really really works. And because PARC didn't discover anything of use, and all those Intel and Microsoft research labs popping up like mushrooms after a heavy rain don't exist, and the numerous research universities throughout the nation, with millions and billions of dollars in endowments, are really just studying not even string theory, but silly string.

A private company creating some interesting things does not invalidate the argument that academia researches things that aren't profitable. It's a complete tangential straw man. To summarize all academic research into a bland sentence about a particular area of physics is deceitful. Industry is good at bridging the last gap between an idea and a product. usually things that are within 5 years of being useful. Academia is better at doing basic research, research with no immediate profitability, and research that industry simply doesn't have a desire to fund. Laser's, the computer, algorithms, genetics etc... were all at one time just random academic ideas with no profit in sight. Once it hit a certain point industry took up that research and made products out of them. Basics research is high risk, you get results but the results are rarely usable in a product. Thus governments usually fund it as Industry is often extremely risk adverse.

Re:Supply and Demand.

[shaka999]

People really need to quantify words like "reasonable" and "lots". What many tech people consider a "reasonable" wage actually puts them in the top 10%.

Take a look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_States

This shows that 42% of people earn less than 25K a year.

The problems with their numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

The math was done by US educated researchers using excel 2007.

But no one is taking the graduates

[ztransform]

We have a problem. Management theory of late has tossed aside conventional wisdom of taking on graduates, training them within the organisation. Instead companies either contract out work, or seek only experienced "useful" staff. Trouble is those of us with experience are doing very well as the supply of other experienced individuals slows.

Those doing MBAs.. please consider the benefits of graduate staff. Yes they cannot do anything useful the day they get out into the real world. But in the long run technology companies will need experience or end up paying dearly for it.

A country cannot do badly by having too many educated people.

Tests are getting easier

[Heir Of The Mess]

When I was at university I was talking to an old engineering lecturer and he was complaining that they had to lessen the difficulty levels of the courses even more because students were getting dumber.

It's not that scores are getting better, it's that the tests are getting easier. Also there is still a very high demand for genuinely smart people, but not so great science grads are being churned out at a higher rate than what is required.

Re:Tests are getting easier

[morgan_greywolf]

Yup. When I was in college, they were doing this even in the programming classes. For IT majors, they used to teach programming classes in C. After a some complaints that C was 'too hard' they decided to switch to (bleck!) Visual Basic. I understand that IT majors don't need programming at the same level as CS majors, but for cryin' out loud, programming in C is not that difficult for someone who's career choice is IT!

Re:Tests are getting easier

[Stradivarius]

Did the students get dumber, or did his expectations go up over time?

It's possible the lecturer has been in the field so long he doesn't remember how much a new engineer simply hasn't had the opportunity to learn.

We sometimes see this phenomenon in industry when interviewing new college grads ... your interviewers are often engineers who have spent years in the field, and it's easy to forget just how much you didn't know when you were fresh out of college. So we tell them to try to look for someone who has solid fundamentals and is smart... if they're smart, they can learn the rest of what they need to know quickly. If they're not... you probably don't want them even if they do know a particularly technology X, Y, or Z.

(Somewhere else in the thread someone was complaining about CS grads not knowing x86 assembly. Is that really a surprise? If they've done assembly for any architecture, and are reasonably intelligent as more CS grads probably are, they'll pick up x86 just fine. But to expect that they've been exposed to x86 assembly specifically seems a little unrealistic, especially given that most CS grads will never use any assembly language after graduation)

Re:WHich market

[Metaphorically]

I think it's about the cheap market here. Relentlessly trumpeting that "we can't hire enough skilled talent" encourages more people to get a degree or enter that job market which increases the supply and drops the cost of acquiring talent. A more honest statement would be: "we can't hire enough skilled talent for the wages we want to pay."

It's really no different from the claims in the hospitality and service industry that seek to keep employees there cheap.

really???

[Lumpy]

Why is it then that almost every recent college grad we get at the office tends to not understand high level math?

Also their English is atrocious. It's like they teach in communication classes to talk like a street person. you do not submit a proposal to a customer with the words "plug up" when regarding their networking equipment...

and I quote... " We will plug up your networking gear for performance." WTF??? this is a college grad!

Re:really???

[Fred_A]

and I quote... " We will plug up your networking gear for performance." WTF??? this is a college grad! As long as they write it politely, as in "Yo, we will plug up your networking gear for performance, man", I suppose it's acceptable.

Re:really???

[sammy baby]

As long as they write it politely, as in "Yo, we will plug up your networking gear for performance, man", I suppose it's acceptable.

I believe the correct usage in that case would be, "We will pimp out your networking gear," etc.

Alternatively, one could use "trick out," "style," or "smack that bitch up."

Werd.

Re:really???

[Bamafan77]

"Why is it then that almost every recent college grad we get at the office tends to not understand high level math?

Also their English is atrocious."

Here's an experiment you should try - increase the offered salary by 50%. You'll still get people who don't understand "high level math" and don't speak good English, but if you can sift through those, you'll find good people. Perhaps your offered salary is too low for what you want. I want a 2007 BMW 5 Series, but nobody wants to sell me one for $15k. There must be a shortage! :)

No one's arguing...

[Shotgun]

that our schools are graduating enough competent scientists. The problem is that we're not graduating enough extraordinary scientists with an extensive patent portfolio willing to work for subsistence wages.

Sheesh! I thought everybody knew that.

The Downside

[MSTCrow5429]

"Perhaps just as surprising, the report finds that our education system actually produces more science and engineering graduates than the market demands."

Foreshadowing a critical shortage of French Lit. majors.

I'm sure this study comes as no surprise...

[penguin_dance]

I think that MOST of slashdotters working in tech have known this. It's all about the MONEY. Studies have shown time and time again that the reason businesses are bringing H1-Bs over here by the boatload is not about lack of qualified US graduates--it's about $$$. Only a couple of month's back the Programmer's Guild exposed a video that advertised a class on how to weed out qualified Americans so your company can employ cheaper H1-B workers.

Unfortunately, as long as US workers don't see it happening in THEIR field (or are blissfully unaware), they do nothing. I'm afraid when Americans DO stand up, it will be too late.

I like this article.

[gurps_npc]

Particularly, it's discussion on the flaws of various studies.

Often people boil things down to a single number, and then misinterprete what it means.

The 'education' studies usually do things like compare US % of High School graduates going on to get a College degree with another country. Sounds like we are doing pretty bad, until you do a little bit more reasearch and find out that 85% of US citizens graduate high school, while only 30% of the other countries citizens get that far. Big surprise, there. They picked their richest and smartest 30% of the population and compared it to our "everyone except the worst 15%".

Then there are studies that show things like "US has worst prenatal care records in the world". But they leave out the obviously imporant fact that it is almost entirely caused by teenage mothers. If you ignore teenage mothers, the US has one of the best prenatal care records in the world. Our problem is entirely in the fact that we treat pregnant teenagers like scum instead of doing our best to help them.

You need to look beyond a single number, they are not helpfull.

The report fails to mention that...

[MeditationSensation]

..while we are turning out more science students, all of them believe the Earth is 6,000 years old.

We need sci education for EVERYBODY

[arete]

I haven't read TFA yet - this is /. after all.

I have heard parent's point repeatedly - that we're making tests easier.

I can attest that in recent years it has become administratively inappropriate to give negative comments to or flunk students, so we continually pass students who haven't really learned along to be with their peers. That they didn't really learn isn't THEIR fault, but until someone can figure out a way to teach them, moving them up to the next set of material isn't helping them at all.

However, when I think about the impact of the trends I see, it isn't "there's no one left to do research" it's how big and poorly trained everybody else is.

I'm consistently amazed by how they let anyone who ISN'T in a hard science/math program get away without really ever understanding anything about science or math. A huge number of people don't have enough backing in the scientific method to have a basic sense of what is or isn't a fact - even in simple real world cases they can physically deal with. (Like how to fix household items, how to tell if a circuit is blown, how to debug RCA connections to their TV, etc.) And don't have enough backing in math to convert measurement units or tell if they got the right change.

The entire idea that anything could possibly have or not have empirical verification is lost on a very, very large number of people...

And to be clear, while I think higher education ought to take some responsibility for ensuring that the graduates have at least a small degree of well roundedness, I think the main problem in US education is much, much earlier.