The STEM-Crisis Myth

The Chronicle of Higher Education this week has an article by Michael Anft examining the "STEM-Crisis Myth", or "The much-hyped shortage of science and tech graduates."  Politicians, business and academic leaders, and professional science societies are constantly warning of a shortage of American college students who want to study science and engineering.  The actual data backing up such claims, the Chronicle shows, is at best contestable.  The article tries to air both sides of the debate.  The president of Arizona State University is quoted as stating, "there's too much reliance on anecdotes" about the alleged poor job market for science graduates.

The Chronicle cites data alleging that about half of STEM majors leave their field within 10 years, and that 1 in 5 American scientists contemplate leaving the country.  There are dueling studies, however.  My personal experience is more consistent with the allegation that the STEM-jobs-crisis is a myth.  The industry in which I once worked has experienced a massive downsizing of its workforce in the last decade or so, including in my field.  More senior scientists have had trouble finding new positions that make full use of their talents.  Meanwhile, young graduates have trouble finding jobs, and many post-docs have been trapped in academic limbo with too many chasing too few faculty and industry positions.  Sequestration and the instability of the federal budget threatens federal funding for science across academia as well as the national labs.  Put simply, there isn't much money available for basic and applied research in the public and private sectors these days.

The 'myth' has been discussed in other venues long before this, and I am glad that the Chronicle has decided to cover it.  DTLR encourages skepticism about the alleged shortage of scientists in the labor market.  Those who have been talking up the shortage have a vested interest in increasing enrollments in universities, membership in scientific societies, and expanding the labor pool of science graduates in order to push down labor costs.  This includes academic, business, and professional society leaders across the sciences, as well as politicians.  The rhetoric is highly self-serving, because it promotes their own vested interests at the expense of the young people to whom they are serving up deceptive statements.  DTLR believes that any professional society, university, or business leader is committing fraud when they recruit youngsters into science and engineering with the promise of a bountiful job market when they graduate.  Many of them realize this, because they take an alternate tack by arguing that STEM training is a good foundation for any career, as the Chronicle notes, and the article ends by promoting the liberal arts idea of a "broader education" including the sciences and humanities.  I'm not sure there is much data to support these views.

Read the article and decide for yourself.

Reference

Michael Anft, 2013:  The STEM-Crisis Myth.  Chronicle of Higher Education, LX (11):  A30-A33 (Nov. 15, 2013).