Millennial Tech Workers Losing Ground In US

Nerval's Lobster writes Millennial tech workers are entering the U.S. workforce at a comparable disadvantage to other tech workers throughout the industrialized world, according to study earlier this year from Educational Testing Services (PDF). How do U.S. millennials compare to their international peers, at least according to ETS? Those in the 90th percentile (i.e., the top-scoring) actually scored lower than top-scoring millennials in 15 of the 22 studied countries; low-scoring U.S. millennials ranked last (along with Italy and England/Northern Ireland). While some experts have blamed the nation's education system for the ultimate lack of STEM jobs, other studies have suggested that the problem isn't in the classroom; a 2014 report from the U.S. Census Bureau suggested that many of the people who earned STEM degrees didn't actually go into careers requiring them. In any case, the U.S. is clearly wrestling with an issue; how can it introduce more (qualified) STEM people into the market?

Comments

introduce more STEM....?

[turkeydance]

introduce them all....this ain't about work. it's about wages.

Re:introduce more STEM....?

[bluefoxlucid]

The cognitive disconnect is amazing, isn't it? "Most STEM degree holders don't go into STEM jobs ... How do we get more STEM workers into the market?" You have a market oversupply, and you want to make it worse?

I keep explaining that we need to cut away the entire college education system from the Government's hands. Leave that to the market; leave it to businesses to say, "Fuck! We are paralyzed, because we have to pay $250,000 for a professional, and need more than available to accomplish our business strategies!" Businesses should never be in this position, because their mode of growth gives them more-than-adequate warning about what positions they'll need filled; therefor, they should hire, train, and send to college cheap entrant employees, with preference for the lower-risk but similar-cost investment of hiring an available professional.

People don't believe in this because the mechanism is disconnected. By giving out the ability to go to college on the public dime or on indelible loans, you are enforcing the responsibility onto every individual to educate himself and prepare for the workforce. This means individuals have to make complex market analysis across the whole body of growth of industries and of the needs of those industries, whereas businesses only need to look at their operations and growth and work performance information and cross that with their prediction of their particular market to project the next few years of staffing needs. Projecting staffing needs for more than two years out is a normal business operation; is predicting the complex behavior of the job market a normal human operation?

By creating an institution to provide everyone a path to college education, we are demanding everyone get educated or be ignored by employers. The risks they must take are easily absorbed by the rich, and not so well absorbed by the middle class; the poor have the least ability to make these complex analysis and to handle the consequences of selecting a degree that leads to oversupplied markets with few employment opportunities and many prospective applicants. Meanwhile, the onus of building a workforce is moved off the businesses, who only need stretch out their hands and grasp at the abundant skilled labor, and throw back the pieces they don't like. All power is taken from the individual, and moved to hiring managers and directors and business executives.

The disconnect in this thinking is a powerful tool. It allows us to convince the masses that these education policies are good for them, are important social institutions, that we are helping them. Meanwhile, we not only create a terrible institution of disenfranchisement of the poor and the laborer in general; but also avoid addressing the problem of K-12 education by simply claiming there isn't *enough* education, and thus publicly praise ourselves for remedying the failing education system by sending more people to college when they would have more success in life if we abandoned them to the job market after high school and simply focused on giving them every advantage of education up until then.

I patently despise our current education system. I believe we can do much better; that we can, for little cost, adjust the education system to produce much better results in the general case, churning out an endless supply of geniuses through good educational technique. In theory, we should also be able to address specific challenges in poverty-stricken districts, not satisfying ourselves with a simple general improvement in the education of the poor, but instead acting to bring them even further up to meet with the educational success of the middle class by delivering that same education in a manner more effective for their situation. This would provide much greater academic advantages to our students than extending their state education through college, even if state-supported college education programs didn't have such negative impacts on the job economy.

Re:finger pointing

[circletimessquare]

copy finland

whatever they do, we do the same

#1 thing we should copy from finland's universities:

https://www.jyu.fi/en/academic...

Doctoral sword

The sword used at the Degree Ceremony is independent Finland's official civilian sword. The sword comes with a scabbard and a black or golden holder. The University's golden symbol will also be on the sword. Other traditional swords can also be used if available.

The sword is traditionally carried on the left side. Men carry the sword in its holder. A loop for the holder can be sewn into pants and the sword will stay firmly in place because there is a catch on the scabbard. Female doctors should also have a sword. In most cases the sword cannot be directly attached to dresses, because the material is not strong enough. A belt with a loop can be used, or the sword can be attached to a skirt at the waist by taking out some of the seam, or the fastening can be hidden under the top of a two-piece outfit. There is also the option of carrying the sword in hand.

The person's name, the date of their dissertation and the date of the Degree Ceremony is etched on the sword. One does not need to attend a Degree Ceremony to purchase a sword.

To buy the doctoral sword the Promovendi can join the collective order. Additional information on the collective order will be sent later for all registered Doctors.

i mean, that's just awesome. if we gave our graduates swords, i think they would try harder, right?

all joking aside, we really should just copy finland

fuck japan, it's a closed society and a stifling culture that doesn't have anything to translate to our own

but finland, we can just copy their system wholesale

Re:finger pointing

[Keruo]

Finnish education system has been fucked for past 10 years already.
Teaching has become female-only profession and only people who are accepted to study to be teachers here are straight-a geeks(the bad kind) who lack the proper authority in front of the class.
There is/were large number of good class teachers in the post-war generations, but those people are now/soon retiring.
The trade union of teachers, AKAVA is well known joke in the union field and isn't strong enough to actually do anything that matters to improve things.