The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage

walterbyrd (182728) writes in with this story that calls into question the conventional wisdom that there is a shortage of science and engineering workforce in the U.S. "Such claims are now well established as conventional wisdom. There is almost no debate in the mainstream. They echo from corporate CEO to corporate CEO, from lobbyist to lobbyist, from editorial writer to editorial writer. But what if what everyone knows is wrong? What if this conventional wisdom is just the same claims ricocheting in an echo chamber? The truth is that there is little credible evidence of the claimed widespread shortages in the U.S. science and engineering workforce."

Comments

Re:Want to write a kernel ?

[Sique]

A programmer.

Time shift

[StripedCow]

We had plenty of qualified workers back in, say, 1997 when the internet first boomed.
The economy was strong as ever.

Can't we just pretend it is 1997 again?

Re:There's a shortage all right..

[DoofusOfDeath]

There's a shortage of _cheap_ STEM graduates for businesses too cheap to pay properly.

I think you'll find that defining "properly" in this context runs into the same critique you made about "shortage".

Re:Want to write a kernel ?

[gbjbaanb]

There's no clear distinction between design and code any more

Looking at the code produced by the agile teams here, this is unfortunately too true :(

Re:Want to write a kernel ?

[war4peace]

I wonder... maybe that's why you don't see a lot of ninja proctologists out there.

Re:Want to write a kernel ?

[jedidiah]

...so that puts a plumber ahead of a programmer in terms of genuine credentials. A plumber is more like an engineer in this regard than a programmer is.

That certain special faction of the peanut gallery will just LOVE that. '-)