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Ask Slashdot: How Should a Liberal Arts Major Get Into STEM?
An anonymous reader writes: I graduated with a degree in the liberal arts (English) in 2010 after having transferred from a Microbiology program (not for lack of ability, but for an enlightening class wherein we read Portrait of the Artist). Now, a couple years on, I'm 25, and though I very much appreciate my education for having taught me a great deal about abstraction, critical thinking, research, communication, and cheesily enough, humanity, I realize that I should have stuck with the STEM field. I've found that the jobs available to me are not exactly up my alley, and that I can better impact the world, and make myself happier, doing something STEM-related (preferably within the space industry — so not really something that's easy to just jump into). With a decent amount of student debt already amassed, how can I best break into the STEM world? I'm already taking online courses where I can, and enjoy doing entry-level programming, maths, etc.
Should I continue picking things up where and when I can? Would it be wiser for me to go deeper into debt and get a second undergrad degree? Or should I try to go into grad school after doing some of my own studying up? Would the military be a better choice? Would it behoove me to just start trying to find STEM jobs and learn on the go (I know many times experience speaks louder to employers than a college degree might)? Or perhaps I should find a non-STEM job with a company that would allow me to transfer into that company's STEM work? I'd be particularly interested in hearing from people who have been in my position and from employers who have experience with employees who were in my position, but any insight would be welcome.
Should I continue picking things up where and when I can? Would it be wiser for me to go deeper into debt and get a second undergrad degree? Or should I try to go into grad school after doing some of my own studying up? Would the military be a better choice? Would it behoove me to just start trying to find STEM jobs and learn on the go (I know many times experience speaks louder to employers than a college degree might)? Or perhaps I should find a non-STEM job with a company that would allow me to transfer into that company's STEM work? I'd be particularly interested in hearing from people who have been in my position and from employers who have experience with employees who were in my position, but any insight would be welcome.
At least the OP is learning from past mistakes. It could be worse, he/she could be doubling down on liberal arts and going to law school.
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Have an English degree, found it useless. went back got my BSEE, been employed as such ever since. short version, go back and get your degree.
I would highly recommend you take as much as possible at community colleges, paying as you go. The universities in my state (New Mexico) accept community college credits very, very well. Slightly before you've exhausted the community college course load, apply to, and get accepted into, a bachelor's program in some sort of engineering (not all science degrees are equally marketable.) After you're accepted, and have completed a year or two's worth of marketable engineering courses at the community college, you should be able to get an engineering internship and continue to pay cash for classes. These student, engineering, jobs (in my state) pay more than English degree professional jobs do. I've seen this approach work with computer science students.
My state has extremely inexpensive, or free, tuition for residents and access to a huge amount of engineering resources (two national labs + tons of military bases + the initial stages of a tech start up scene) as well as dirt cheap cost of living. I realize this approach might not work well in other states, but that's the approach I talk with people about. I'm working with a guy that studied music, but is getting into web development. His goal is to get accepted into a master's program, and spend an extra 2-3 semesters in it taking undergrad courses. If he can get funding (as a research assistant, or teaching assistant) that will be a great approach too.
If you want be an engineer then you need to go back and get a degree. However, working in STEM and being a STEM are two different things. You have an English degree - what about technical writing? Many of the writers I worked with were not engineers (thank god) and that would be a way to see if STEM really interests you. You can always do night school if it does.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
The solution is simple. Study a STEM topic at a real university. If you live in the US you also need proper funding. In many EU countries you could just enroll. And starting studying with 25 is not too late at all. You could still finish MSc in 5 years.
If you find a professor that you like and likes you, you can get a graduate degree without new debt, and folks won't care what your undergraduate degree is in once you have an appropriate graduate degree.
The choice of professor is critical for you for several reasons:
1. You need someone in the department to help get you accepted despite your out of area undergrad degree
2. You will be doing what your professor wants with most of your time- so choose wisely
3. You are going to need good advice on which classes are critical to actually take to fill in your knowledge gaps vs which ones you can pick up relevant material quickly on your own.
4. A good professor will have research or teaching funding to pay you while you're spending your time doing what they tell you to.
5. A good professor has connections that will help you find a job after your degree.
Yeah, Microbiology to English to "STEM of some kind." Not a good sign of ability to actually follow through with anything or act decisively.
So, here's my advice, if there is something specific you wish you were doing, start doing it. Maybe by going for a degree, maybe by joining some freelance group (like the OSS suggestion).
If there is nothing specific you'd rather be doing, but you aren't happy with what you are doing now, check a psychologist, you might be showing some very mild symptoms of pending clinical depression. Even in the likely case that there is nothing explicitly wrong with you, they might be able to point you to a better "what should I be doing" test than the lame 12-question ones on Facebook. Once you have a goal in mind, you can get more useful advice about how to get there.
When I was interviewed for the now defunct Hughes Aircraft, one of the questions was, "do you have a problem with the fact that what we do here is basically kill people".
Nope, not one bit.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Unfortunately STEM is quite broad. I'm an Electrical Engineer by degree who has worked in software development and testing his whole career. In that time I've seen people from various backgrounds get into dev work. Fresh out of college I worked with a systems integrator who specialized in AMX and Crestron development who had a liberal arts degree. I know a few MCSE's who were high school teachers who now work with Microsoft Sharepoint. None of these people went back to school for more formal (expensive) education. Most either fell into it or did this sort of thing on the side as a hobby, and the hobby took over. My suggestion is look at what you can already do and start pursuing that. If you repair computers for friends and family start looking for entry level tech work. If you write code and can produce some sample applications (or even better publish some useful apps for IOS or Android) then use that as a stepping stone to apply for code work. I do not recommend you head back to school or join the military for this purpose. There are better resources at hand. If you're looking to code codecademy.com is an excellent resource. If you're looking for more STEM education coursera and kahn academy are excellent resources to brush up with. I would recommend certs to prove your worth. Find jobs you are interested in and see if they require certain certifications. Get certifications that are affordable and in your wheelhouse, but don't go after a $2000 certification that only a few places want you to have. In most cases your skill should get you in the door, and a company should be willing to get you certified at their expense to sell your services.
Coffee: The lifeblood of intelligence in civilization.
Carefully
What I know now is that I would have been happier and/or richer being either:
(a) a banker, or
(b) a programmer.
Most of engineering is very, very dull indeed.
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
All of the high-end coders I know, have the following traits:
1. They learned how to teach themselves ... but they seek out mentors.
2. They learned when it's time to find someone to teach them things
3. They play with the code, they build things, experiment, etc.
4. They aren't afraid to try a new tool, and be a noob
5. They understand that the quality of their work is important... and seek out the processes and skills it takes to increase quality
Over my 20 year history, the folks with these traits have always managed to build things that last, and work well, and were easy to maintain.
Very few of them went to school for "Computer Science" degrees, everything from Poly Sci to Construction.
I say:
1. find (or start) an interesting open source project
2. learn how to use git
3. start building tests
4. code.
5. play.
meh
Nobody uses a frickin' buzz word to describe their academic goals. STEM means nothing, it's a meaningless term. Do you mean engineering: something like Electrical Engineering or perhaps Chemical Engineering? Do you mean science: Physics, Biology, Chemistry? Or did you mean Computer Science?
When you say "STEM-related (preferably within the space industry" it clearly underscores that you are not seriously asking a question.
How the hell did this get past the editors.
Yeah it's kind of actually BS that students with degrees are given a fair shake while people without degrees are shafted for programming jobs. It should be taken on merit. Why would an employer want to turn down a self-motivated candidate that spent his weekends reading documentation with a portfolio full of projects for a fresh out of college kid who spent his weekends getting drunk with a small portfolio of school projects?
That's funny. One of the people I deal with is a professor in the humanities and regularly posts stereotypical and atrociously biased criticisms of STEM people. To be fair, as a literature professor, his ad hominem attacks are much better written, even if trivially proven to be based on false premises.
None proves it, but the question was how to break in to the field, this implies an interest in being successful in the field, not cheating your way to a diploma. There are many STEM careers that are hard or impossible to get in to without going back to school and getting the specialized degree. EE, CompE, Chemical engineering are all tough to break in to on your own. You could of course read a lot of books, but it's probably tough and you're unlikely able to get the kind of focus you need on the areas you will use on your specialization. A dirty secret is perhaps that if you go to school for say EE and you study RF, you may have a very hard time breaking in to computer engineering later, or even the much more closely related power systems. These areas end up being super specialized and your school+work experience ends up binning you into your niche. Later in life your "experience" is expected to be pretty fine grained and deep, so the breadth that's frequently touted as an advantage for liberal arts is actually a drawback for STEM fields outside of academia.
The trick is getting past the resume screen, that's tough to do without the degree in the first place. Then once you do, prepare for an 8 hour long interview that is going to make many PhD defenses seem trivial. There's no risk taking in the hiring process, they will be looking for you to demonstrate a large set of active knowledge on the spot. If you make it through there, be prepared to be learning hte rest of your life and never let yourself get comfortable. The fields change fast, your niche may disappear or more likely be outsourced, so you want to be able to shift focus believably and keep your eyes on trends.
In theory some software programming jobs are easier and don't necessarily require a degree, but I would absolutely be prepared to demonstrate expert knowledge on the language they use (exclusively C in my line of work) and if you're in to systems programming you better know hardware really well too. A CS degree really only helps with the social factor, even if you already know how to code well and have some documented experience on open source.
None of what I said sounds like it should be the case, but it absolutely is. It strikes me that degrees are being used as professional training program (ex. med school, law school) not for general education, as they should be.
I had a roommate who went through 20 majors in five years, graduated with a business degree, became a stockbroker, got stressed out, became an alcoholic and lost his job, went to A.A. meetings, and became a tech writer.
I started my STEM career as a technical writing intern (I was an English major at the time). I shifted into full time programming before quitting school completely. It's a little harder to get a foot in the door on technical writing gigs these days, but marketing yourself as a tech writer/product support person to a small or midsize firm, and taking on intern level programming tasks might get you on the path to a software engineering degree. With a microbiology background (even without the degree), a small biopharma firm might take an interest in you. Be creative.
I got a degree in mathematics, and didn't go the teaching route. after working for a while in the geophysics industry, I got bored and wanted more options- I realized the best way to open up a lot of options is to go the engineering route (every job posting I found interesting required a BS in ME)
so, go back to school. start at community college (get calculus, diff eq, physics, chemistry out of the way), and make a good impression on your professors there (evaluate the ones worth making an impression on). this isn't hard- you don't need kiss up to them, just volunteer to answer questions, sit up front, ask questions, etc. then go back to them and ask for letters of recommendation (masters programs usually require three)
then, (now this is key), get a 4.0 in your undergrad engineering classes (you'll need to take a few in order to 'catch up' to other grad students; but you won't have to waste time with classes outside of your specialty- I focused on thermofluids, and skipped advanced materials/vibrations stuff). Alternate between co-op semesters, and class/research semesters. Your degree will take a bit longer to complete, but you'll have a lot of fun, make important contacts, and have the chance to do really cool stuff (I joined formula SAE and EWB, and it was a blast)
After your first, or second semester, hit the job fairs. Try to get a coop/internship (maybe with an aerospace firm?). This will help finance your schooling- save your money, and use it for books/rent/food (not tuition, take out loans for that)
BUT this is assuming you want an MS in mechanical engineering. you say you want to go into STEM, and something space related. That's still incredibly vast- you could design fuel systems, airframes, engine components, heck (if you're good at it) you could make an entire career out of analyzing drag on nose cones!
So, don't say you want to go into space, quiet yet. Narrow down the field of STEM you want to work in- teaching math, researching biology, designing blu-ray players, investigating car crashes? I knew i wanted to go into ME, so I took the basic ME undergrad courses and fell in love with thermodynamics, and fluid mechanics- so I went the thermofluid route. I would've been happy designing pumps that move liquid chocolate around, but instead I get to work on the fuel system for the F-35
(also, read what color is your parachute)
your body to science
There are a lot of people with huge law school debts working as paralegals or baristas. It's not a bad job, but there are way more lawyers than law jobs.
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With your current background, you could get a job in technical writing. Every firm that does engineering needs people like you who:
* Understand the subject matter
* Can write about it readably
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
^
I remember reading recently that law schools put out some 40,000 new lawyers per year, where there's only an economic demand of about 7,000 new ones per year.
Nobody is going to care what your undergraduate degree is in, because nobody is going to hire someone with a BS/A for anything interesting. Just get into a graduate program. You (most likely) won't have much trouble getting into something STEM related with an English degree. People do it all the time. Something to keep in mind is that you're going to appear much more well-rounded to a potential employer with a liberal arts undergrad degree. You've seen the kinds of comments you're getting from the STEM-or-die crowd, people simply do not like working with one-dimensional assholes. Go for it.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Because you have to prove merit. A degree proves that you've studied the field for 4 years. A lack of degree show absolutely nothing. Thus to have equivalent background you have to show much more.
Now we have a pile of resumes. 50% of them have a college degree, thus 4 years studying the field. 50% do not (and don't have at least 4 years in the field professionally). I'm throwing out the 50% without a degree because the signal to noise ratio is too low. Will I throw out a few good hires? Maybe. But I'll throw out a lot of bad ones, and that's more important.
THat doesn't even get into the fact that school teaches different things. School teaches theory. The vast majority of self-taught programmers without a degree that I've seen are very weak on theory. They can maybe throw some libraries together, but they don't understand how to actually solve hard CS problems and couldn't explain basic concepts, causing their designs to have massive flaws. Many of them even take pride in this, their entire attitude being that they didn't need that "academic BS". These kinds of programmers tend to cost time and effort in the long run. So yeah, I'd rather have the degree and someone taught the theories behind everything than someone who thinks reading documentation on weekends will make him a good programmer. SO yeah, no degree means you better have a LOT of experience to even things out. I'm not going to hire you as anything but a web monkey if you have less than a decade.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I graduated at the end of the Cold War ('93), so an engineering degree was worthless -- all the companies were laying off their engineers as quickly as possible. Combined with the fact that the engineering jobs I interned for or heard about were not very interesting (managing a chemical factory?), I got a liberal arts degree. I went into IT for about 10 years, but in the long run I just didn't care that much about the mechanics of computers. I eventually got a PhD in biostatistics after taking the prerequisite courses. Statistics has let me get into various different research projects without having to overspecialize. I work for a hospital system now and do different research studies every day.
I know that people who worked hard for their Engineering degrees will naturally be suspicious of anyone who seems to have done less work than them, but even so I was rather amazed at the amount of ignorance and hatred in the responses here. As a Literature major who now makes six figures programming, please do ignore them.
My advice would be to enroll at Hack Reactor or a similar coding boot camp. We've hired two programmers from them: one was a Biology PhD, the other just had a Chinese Literature undergraduate degree. In both cases we didn't really care what their degree was, we cared about their abilities. Based on what I've seen, the best of the graduates of Hack Reactor are WAY better hires than an average CS graduate (and they're a lot easier to hire; the Googles of the world snatch up the top CS graduates before smaller companies like ours even have a chance).
Of course, I personally didn't take the boot camp approach. I graduated, spent a year unemployed, then managed to get a position as a web designer for a small company. It was a terrible company: they wouldn't even pay for water for employees! But as annoying as their cheapness was, it was that very cheapness that got me hired. Because I was willing to work for $15/hour and could do the work (I'd taught myself web development) I was able to get that crucial first job. You may have to hold your nose in a similar way to get your first job, if you don't take the boot camp approach.
Once I got my foot in the door by working their a year I moved on to a junior programming job, worked my way up to being a team lead, and then moved on to my current company (a start-up). I'd imagine you could do something similar, but going through a boot camp will give you that "foot in the door", which is really the hardest part for someone in your position. After the boot camp gets you your first job, that job will get you all your future jobs.
So, ignore the negativity here. Silicon Valley really is, at least to a large extent, a meritocracy: what matters is being good at your craft, not where you came from.
No, it absolutely won't. First off- drop the idiotic lingo. All it does is make you look like a tool. Secondly- the "rockstar" tends to have a degree. That's part of why he's so good, he's studied the foundation of his craft and understand the costs and benefits of different approaches. Once again, someone with a degree is far more likely to be able to do that then one without.
Secondly, when looking for high impact workers- the things you want don't correlate to no degree. What you want is hard working, creative, a willingness to step up and take ownership, and high intelligence. Lacking a degree means he's not likely to be hard working, he wasn't willing to put in the work to go to college. It means he wasn't willing to take ownership of his own career path. And it means he was either too stupid to get into college, or too stupid to see the benefits of it. The only one you might get is creative because he "went a different way"- but he did so without thought or a good reason for doing so, which again isn't what you want.
So yeah, the non-degree holder loses again. THere's a few exceptions (although only 1 I've ever met and he had 3 years of college before quitting for health reasons and needing cash too much to return), but I'm happy to miss out on them- a given engineer is more likely to be high impact with a degree than without, so again I'm using it as a good first screen to weed out the 90%+ who are useless in that category.
Now I have found some good engineers with alternative STEM degrees and a passion for coding- physics, EE, comp eng, mech end, etc. But you have to carefully screen to see if they actually know what they should, I would expect their math to be on par (or better), but not necessarily their knowledge of CS concepts.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Speaking of debts, after you find the STEM topic that interests you most (motivation should be key to choosing what to study), and identify the kind of program you want to apply for, get as much of the requirements done at inexpensive community college or other local institutions with transferrable credits. A few years ago my local community college offered classes at $70 a credit or less - books often cost more. To me that's almost free.
And vote to elect people who will fight for less profits made off student loans, and even for more subsidies for eduction.
True, a degree doesn't mean they have those traits. But this is where conditional probability comes into play. More people with the degree will fall into this category than those without, because the degree gives them the knowledge to wield those traits effectively. That means that when looking at a resume, you're more likely to get a good hire from one with a degree than without. And several of those traits are positively associated with a degree. Additionally, the floor is higher- while even those with a degree can be a bad hire, a mistake is more likely to be a mediocre worker than a bad one. So you minimize your risks and maximize your potential gains by just dropping the other pile, looking for diamonds in the rough isn't worth the time and money. Especially since the type of person you're discussing won't be easily discernible from a resume, you're looking at phone or in person interviews at much higher cost/effort to have a chance.
One exception I would make is with a personal testimonial of the non-degreed dev's skill by a developer I trust. But you're looking at corner cases there.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
People without CS degrees tend to lack the vocabulary necessary to communicate efficiently with their peers about CS topics in situations where they are required to work on a team. Big "O" notation, names of algorithms, breadth of algorithmic knowledge, etc..
If you are not going to be working on a team (and it's the rare company who does not believe they will become larger in the future), then a portfolio of previous work is generally acceptable.
Because companies believe they will grow, you are most suited to being a consultant, or, alternately, working for a consulting firm.
I've frequently considered creating a "vocabulary test", along the lines of those multiple choice test games passed around on Facebook; the problem with doing that, however, is people would "learn to the test"; and while it would be a form of education for them, as a result they would successfully get their foot inside the door of place where they would ultimately not be successful. This would not be a service to either them, or the places which hire them. To be effective, it would have to end up growing to the point that it might as well be a certification exam. And still, people would learn to the test, instead of having any depth of knowledge necessary to communicate with those who do.