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Study Says US Needs Fewer Science Students
cremeglace writes "It's an article of faith: the United States needs more native-born students in science and other technical fields. But a new paper by sociologists at the Urban Institute and Rutgers University contradicts the notion of a shrinking supply of native-born talent in the United States. In fact, the supply has actually remained steady over the past 30 years, the researchers conclude, while the highest-performing students in the pipeline are opting out of science and engineering in greater numbers than in the past, suggesting that the threat to American economic competitiveness comes not from inadequate science training in school and college but from a lack of incentives that would make science and technology careers attractive. Cranking out even more science graduates, according to the researchers, does not give corporations any incentive to boost wages for science/tech jobs, which would be one way to retain the highest-performing students."
I think it's kind of interesting how the economics of this work. The supply of scientists and engineers is steady, but it seems like there are fewer who are good in the market. What this means is that if you are good and in the field, you are in extremely high demand and thus salaries can be lucrative for you. So, the field may only attract those who have a genuine interest and more likely to innovate.
Then again, money is a strong factor and may siphon away people. I work in the embedded software field, and I get paid fairly well for someone only a couple of years out of college. However, I often think how nice it would be nice to be making well into 7 figures and have a nice home and possibly a Lamborghini (I love cars) after going into lawschool instead of "just" 6 figures and trying to cobble together a 20% down payment for a decent home in Northern California.
As noted in the article, Wall Street is a major draw for the top students. While in grad school, even my professor mentioned to me on several occasions that I probably would make a lot more afterwards if I left research and did investment banking, private equity, patent law, management consulting, or any of a number of other jobs, though he hoped I would stick with academic chemistry. I am looking for an academic post now, but I certainly can see the draw of the more lucrative fields. For one example, when McKinsey was recruiting PhD's at our institute a few years ago, first year total compensation was estimated at $130-165k. That's quite a bit higher than what the total compensation would have been at the time for the coveted entry level PhD positions at the top pharmaceutical companies, and the compensation in the business world would rise much more quickly in subsequent years. Doing good science is hard, and during the tougher times in grad school, it was extremely tempting to jump ship.
The summary implies that reducing the number of science graduates would provide an incentive for companies to increase the pay of scientists and engineers. I counter that a reduced amount of science graduates would simply increase the number of H1B visas granted which will in turn drive down the pay for native scientists and engineers.
The summary got at least one sentence right. Incentives to stay in science are very small. I finished my graduate work not to long ago, and I'd make more money in almost any field compared to staying in physics. I know a number of people who left the field to do finance or something else. The thinking is: "If I have to work 80 hour weeks, I might as well be making several hundred thousand." Go to any of the top colleges/universities, and a large amount of the students want to go into finance or some other money making field.
"Adjusted for IQ, quantitative skills, and working hours, jobs in science are the lowest paid in the United States."
I studied Math. Not the worst possible choice for an undergrad, really: the level of conceptual abstraction and logical rigor make it difficult, maybe even somewhat more so than some other technical fields, but in terms of sheer number of hours of coursework, it's considerably shorter than engineering, which allows a student to take a lot of other courses and still graduate in a reasonable amount of time. And it's a pretty good education, too.
I don't think I'd do it again.
It's exceptionally clear that not only does the marketplace value other skills (law, finance, business adminstration, plumbing) more highly, but that 90% of the population doesn't even understand what it is you learned. I'd have been far better off to pick a Math minor for core skills and rigor and pair it with an Econ or Business Major. And let's not even go to the Electrical Engineering degree I originally considered. Unless you're doing it for sheer love, it's a waste of time.
That's the general prognosis. As a career choice, STEM fields offer mediocre to middlin' rewards. Particularly when you consider the alternatives.
Tweet, tweet.
I was on an evaluation team that was charged with determining how well a government program had addressed a "shortage" of a specific skill set. On the committee was an economist from a big university. He opened the meeting with the comment: There is no shortage; the government is just not willing to pay market value.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
I would LOVE to go back to school, get a doctorate in physics and work in the field doing ANYTHING related to physics.
Instead I'm a Engineer hiding in a marketing dept happily making between 150-200k/year and I spend my lunch and weekends madly reading about physics, politics, ancient history, all the things that I really love, and would love to get paid to do.
Instead I write white papers, talk at conferences, run tests on hardware that I love, and I do for the most part love my job. But I would SOOO much rather being working for the DOD, or a school, or anyone, doing research. But I can't live on what they make.
And so I remain an engineer hiding in marketing eagerly awaiting Brian Greene's next talk :)
The Study of Math and Science shouldn't always bring you directly to an academic type of work. Colleges and University tend to forget (at least after they are done with they're advertising) that most students are going to school so they can get a good job. Schools do a horrible job providing students an idea what type of work is available outside college. In my Computer Science Program they told me my options were Programmer, or Teach Computer Science. (Which is better then other majors) What do you do with a History Degree well you teach history. What about Physics... In some ways colleges idea of Majors is rather outdated, and designed purely for a career track in education. Computer Science and Business, Computer Science and Art. Physics and Engineering. History and Mathmatics... However most people can't do a double major. But colleges should really create custom type majors to help students with a career path. Also really letting people know what type of jobs are out there to do. Computer Science and English for technical writers.
We need more Math and science not less. We are in a society where people are afraid to looking at problems objectively or blindly taking a look at numbers without really understanding them.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Smoking cigarettes makes it less likely you will ever get parkinsons (source). Which chemical is it, nicotine, harmaline, what? At first noone knew... its probably nicotine. How is it doing this? Theres a crapload of different versions of nicotinic receptors, is somehow interacting with a specific protein that makes up one of them (seems most likely) or even sticking to some other thing in your body and changing what that protein/whatever does (less likely)? Probably nicotinic receptors... which kind? Theyre made of combinations of 5 different proteins that arrange together to form the receptor, theres 17 proteins that could be part of these that could theoretically arrange in any combination you want...someone had to narrow down the possibililties. So ok theres only like 6 different combinations of these subunits we find in the parts of the brain that are supposedly involved in parkinsons (knowing which parts were involved was its own whole multimillion dollar expenditure) which one (or maybe more than one) of those is what nicotine is interacting with to make smokers less likely to develop Parkinson's? Probably ones containing a4B2 (alpha4 and beta2 are names for 2 of the 17 possible subunits). Whats special about those? What type of neurons are they located on? Is nicotine doing this at the cell surface... or getting into the cell and doing something before these receptors even reach the surface? Is it increasing synthesis of these, or decreasing degradation? Where exactly is it sticking... how is the binding site shaped and what amino acids are involved... and what chemical and structural properties should a chemical have to make this anti-parkinsonian effect happen?
Once you know that, you can design a drug to fit, but then you also want to figure out how to make it also have chemical and structural properties that make it not altered to some nonfunctional form by your liver enzymes, pass the blood brain barrier, etc, that way people can just down a pill rather than get shots... or worse need to get the drug injected into their central nervous system in some way.
Its all very boring to anyone who doesnt like a good, complex mystery... but someone should be doing it because there are ways to figure out each step of the way (it might take a couple years and a bunch of money but its doable). And this isnt even my field.
Well, theoretically, management is a worthwhile discipline all on its own. Unfortunately, management also tends to control their own salaries, which is clearly a conflict of interest for the company.
Ideally, a manager wouldn't make any more money than a scientist or engineer of comparable skill and experience - they're all 'professions', after all, and they're all doing work that more or less benefit the company equally. The only reason they're seen as being desirable jobs is because management all too often has the ability to affect their own compensation, whether through influencing the board or simply ingratiating themselves to other, higher-level managers, who have no real desire to limit their own pay.
Once we get decent robots (and they can now pick loose nuts out of a bin), 99% of jobs (even low skill ones) go away.
Buy a grocery shelf stocker robot for $50k and let go 6 people. It's never sick and works on holidays.
50 stockers lose their job and are replaced by one repairman-- but with proper design, even he is a minimum wagejob ("check code: A5, replace module 3")
If you can read a piece of paper and enter numbers, your job is threatened in the near future.
We have to find a better way than scarcity to distribute time at the beach, good food, and other resources or it is going to get extremely ugly within the next 20 to 30 years.
Too many people- no value to society- 1% of people having stuff- 99% of people not having stuff. Historically that doesn't go well.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Ultimately, the root cause of STEM jobs not getting paid significantly or even evenly when compared to finance/management careers is because the corporations who employ the scientists also "own" the work produced by them. Hell, the article on slashdot directly above this one talks about a patent "by" Amazon. I assure you, none of the management/finance/legal personnel contributed to writing the code that allows that patent to even be a reality.
The scientist is simply working to make something, or make something better. The managers/financiers are looking to "own" the thing the scientist made in order to make money for themselves.
But of course, it's the money that had been made on the backs of previous scientists that the newest scientist had the expensive equipment and research money in order to perform the task assigned. But again, the majority of the returns from this money doesn't get back to the scientist who created the thing in the first place. A greater portion of the returns goes to the people who ensured the fact that the scientist would receive a lesser share at the end of it all.
The vicious cycle of capitalism.
-PlaneShaper
Simple Solution: Bob the janitor is now the CEO of Microsoft. The former executives were all hired by the independent MikroSoft Corp., an independent consulting firm which does nothing but manage other firms... their only client, Microsoft, pays them quite well for their valuable service. Of course all 100 of them are paid quite well.
See above. Nobody hires an employee in other countries. No. They contract out their phone center to Bangaledeshi Teleproto Corp. for a fee, and have no knowledge or interest in how many individuals are employed.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
This is silly. Good scientists are hard workers, not necessarily the smartest thinkers. Accumulating experience and data is a tedious and painstaking effort, and one which is fraught with self-doubt. It is a selfless pursuit which, while offering a small reward (learning something new) at the end, is mostly motivated by a desire to make a real and meaningful contribution to the world and the state of human existence. Science does not offer adequate living wages. I think that everyone should make around $50,000. I argue that we need to cut the salaries that marketing, advertising, and salespeople make. If competition in the marketplace means playing meaningless games to distract customers while their pockets are picked, what can be said for the number of business graduates churned out?
Over the last two years, the only jobs whose salary haven't been seriously eroded are members of the board of directors of large corporations, and government officials. Everybody else is either losing their job, afraid of losing their job, or is being faced with all kinds of ridiculous contortion to hold on to what little they've still got. Our current system seems to see the middle class as pointless and irrelevant, and is committedly working to make it vanish.
Scientist are simply one more group being loaded into the breach. There're tremendously too few young people becoming scientists, to face the challenges besetting mankind today. The fact that our society would rather devote billions upon endless billions on the most shallow and ridiculous of human endeavors, and then fail to make even the most mediocre contributions to solving the problems of our day suggests that our society's priorities and focus, and very much in the wrong place.
It's about disincentive... these kids who are good at science and math are not idiots. They can see that our culture does not value their talents and prefers to ship their work overseas to low-cost countries where scientists and engineers can be had at a slave's wages. They can see early on that corporations see them as a money hole, not as the producers of the innovative products that the world needs.
Herat and Marv used to be the center of the universe - civilization without peer. Science, art and literature flowed in the widely literate bridgehead of the silk road.
Streets were lit and clean, houses were cooled by evaporation and sewage was carried away efficiently.
Europe was a muddy horse trough, at the time.
But the Mongols came. Ghengiz Khan changed these circumstances, not in a generation, but in a year. The population and culture of the Eastern Iranian plateau have not recovered in 8000 years...
America is next. About bloody time.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
If their primary focus was education, you'd never attract good researchers. The university would make less money (since they get a piece of all the incoming grant money) and tuition would go up - way up. Without the good researchers, there would be a dramatic decrease in graduate students, which would mean the need for more instructors to teach labs - i.e. more money and even higher tuition.
Most universities I've been at recently, the large first year courses are getting more 'focus' and are often taught by dedicated instructors who don't do research or their research revolves around education (such as physics education which is actually a very large field).
Personally, I think back to the good old days when universities were for academics and research not just accepting 1000's of students so they can get a degree. I think it waters down the whole point of a degree and takes many hours of time which could be used for productive work. Yes, I admit I am an academic working as a researcher at a university and I'm proud of it. It took me many years to get where I am and yet I get paid a pittance in comparison with some of my friends who have either no degree (work in a trade as journeymen or masters) or have a bachelor's degree.
In reality, I expected to not make as much money but knowledge was its own reward... still, it would be nice to help pay some bills.