NYT: Subsidize STEM and defund liberal arts?

[Zinhead]

first, two thirds of Americans age 25-29 don’t have a bachelor’s degree. That doesn’t square with your argument that too many people are “pushed” into college. (Frankly, more should be, given the clear correlation between level of education and earnings.)

Please correlate your argument with the New York Fed finding that at least 30 percent of college graduates have jobs that do not require a college degree.

https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/current_issues/ci20-1.pdf

Second, a huge percentage of those who do have a bachelor’s did it at relatively affordable state schools/community colleges.

It might have been affordable to them, but state/community colleges cost the government money.

Third, did you ever hear the adage, if you think education is expensive, compare the cost of ignorance.

I would not call someone who graduated high school but did not go to college ignorant. That is reserved for college graduates that end up working the front line at Starbucks or some other retailer.

Fourth, ever hear of the humanities grad who went on to study business, law or medicine? I have! And guess what… their LA degree didn’t seem to hamper them… but being forced to study something they didn’t like may very well have.

Yeah, I am one of those people.

I love how people yell that government should be smaller – and then demand greater government investment and oversight.

So you are arguing against government oversight of the money they spend? Given that the national debt has risen from 5.7 trillion in 2000 to 19 trillion in 2016, you have a lot of sympathizers. Sheesh.

[Gator88NE]

And Jimmy Carter was a nuclear engineer.

Yes and no…

He graduated from the Navy Academy with a Bachelor of Science degree (in 1946), but not in nuclear engineering. He did get involved in the Navy’s initial roll out of nuclear power ships (as a junior officer), and did begin the Navy’s 6 month nuclear power school program, but had to leave early when his dad past away to take over the family business.

[ucbalumnus]

@katliamom

first, two thirds of Americans age 25-29 don’t have a bachelor’s degree. That doesn’t square with your argument that too many people are “pushed” into college. (Frankly, more should be, given the clear correlation between level of education and earnings.)

Perhaps too many weak students from wealthy families are being “pushed” into college, while many strong students from poor families are not encouraged to go to college.

[katliamom]

@Zinhead, there’s a difference between doing a job that doesn’t REQUIRE a college degree and working for an employer who weeds out prospective employees by REQUIRING a college degree. A very common tactic to whittle down the applicant pool. Been there, seen that.

Fine, so you were forced to study something you didn’t want to. What, I’m supposed to applaud this? Emulate it? There are 3 doctorates in my immediate family. All in the pesky non-STEM fields. All gainfully employed and loving what they do. Thank god no one around them had your attitude.

[Zinhead]

@katliamom -

there’s a difference between doing a job that doesn’t REQUIRE a college degree and working for an employer who weeds out prospective employees by REQUIRING a college degree. A very common tactic to whittle down the applicant pool. Been there, seen that.

Since you obviously did not read it, from the NY Fed paper:

To measure underemployment, we utilize data from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Information Network (ONET). ONET contains information on job-related requirements for hundreds of occupations, collected from interviews of incumbent workers and with input from professional occupational analysts. We use the following question from the O*NET Education and Training Questionnaire to determine whether an occupation requires a college degree:

**“If someone were being hired to perform this job, indicate the level of education that would be required.” We consider a college education to be a requirement for a given occupation if at least 50 percent of the respondents working in that occupation indicated that a bachelor’s degree is necessary to perform the job. ** We then merged these data on the educational requirements for each occupation with data from the decennial Census, American Community Survey, and Current Population Survey on individual workers and their occupations. A college graduate is considered underemployed if he or she is working in an occupation that does not typically require a bachelor’s degree.

We calculate the underemployment rate as the number of graduates underemployed divided by total graduates employed. In Chart 3, we report the underemployment rate from 1990 to 2012 for two different groups: all college graduates and recent college graduates. For college graduates as a whole, the underemployment rate has held steady at around 33 percent over the past two decades—meaning that about one in three college-educated workers typically holds a job that does not require a degree. The fact that the rate has remained fairly uniform at different points in the business cycle suggests that it is not unusual for a significant share of college graduates to work in jobs that do not require a degree.

If over a 20 year period, 33 percent of college graduates are employed in jobs that do not require a degree, it suggests that one out of three college graduates aren’t going to get much a return on their education. Also, if employers were doing what you suggest and requiring college degrees for jobs which do not truly need, then the 33 percent underemployment figure is low.

Fine, so you were forced to study something you didn’t want to. What, I’m supposed to applaud this? Emulate it? There are 3 doctorates in my immediate family. All in the pesky non-STEM fields. All gainfully employed and loving what they do. Thank god no one around them had your attitude.

I was responding to being a humanities grad who went on to study business, law or medicine.

[katliamom]

That’s what it SAYS. That’s NOT what’s going on in the market place. For example, the Fortune 200 company where I worked for a decade. Proof readers were required to have college degrees. As in, is Thnak You misspelled? Yup, they wanted a college grad to do that. Those with an eye for detail and knowing how to spell basic English words wouldn’t have even gotten an interview without a 4 year degree. The HR person said, the requirement whittled down the applicant pool.

As for your career. So sad to hear you had to waste four years of your life studying some useless humanities before you redeemed yourself with going into business, law or medicine.

[Zinhead]

That’s what it SAYS. That’s NOT what’s going on in the market place. For example, the Fortune 200 company where I worked for a decade. Proof readers were required to have college degrees. As in, is Thnak You misspelled? Yup, they wanted a college grad to do that. I know plenty of high schoolers who would have done a fine job in this position.

I did this for a summer between high school and college, and it is very tedious work. You work in a team of two, and take turns reading the text to your teammate. However, according to O*NET, this is a job that now requires a college degree.

http://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/43-9081.00#Education

So here you have a job that could be done by a high school graduate, but they used a college degree to filter applicants. If anything, your example illustrates that the 33 percent underemployment rate is likely understated as alot of jobs that previously could be obtained with a high school diploma or secretarial school certificate now demand a four year diploma.

[katliamom]

Well, I personally think we’re a NATION of the underemployed, but that’s a whole OTHER story. My example was used to refute your idea that too many people are being "pushed"to go to college. And I say, even more should be pushed to go to college because because college today is what high school was a couple of generations ago. The bare minimum at many companies.

[saillakeerie]

We don’t have enough jobs for college grads today (particularly when you factor in college kids who are underemployed). How will having more help?

And maybe we should do more to make a high school degree meaningful again.

[Zinhead]

As for your career. So sad to hear you had to waste four years of your life studying some useless humanities before you redeemed yourself with going into business, law or medicine.

The snarky comments aren’t really necessary.

[katliamom]

@saillakeerie, agreed, high school should be more rigorous. There should be more options for students of all types of skills, including vocational and technical training. But we as a society aren’t interested in paying for these options and upgrades, so that’s not likely to happen.

And I actually think that the problem isn’t enough jobs – but underpaying your work force. The pay gap between the worker-bee and the middle manager vs. the upper manager or CEO – these are now chasms. If we could curtail greed, tax dodging and offshoring, there would be a lot more money to employ more people, and pay them livable wages.

[saillakeerie]

I agree that education isn’t always a priority. If we put as much energy, effort and money into math and science as we put into youth sports, we would be a whole lot better at math and science. But that is a whole 'nother discussion.

And we are already paying for the failures of our current educational policies. Kids who do not belong in college are going (and we are all paying for it in terms of various subsidies) because there are no viable other options. Seems to me it would make more sense to pay for viable options rather than continuing on our current path.

On what basis can you determine that a work force is underpaid? How much of a gap between line employee and top management is acceptable and who gets to determine? Does it vary based on industry?

What is a livable wage and who determines it? Tax dodging is something of a red herring politicians like to banter about. If we tax income of foreign subs, won’t US companies be encouraged to reorganize so they have a foreign parent, all US entities as subs of that parent (all of which would be subject to US tax) and foreign subs as subs of that parent (who would not be subject to US tax)? What should be do about offshoring? Ban it? What will that do to prices for pretty much everything we buy? What portions of any gains will be eaten up by higher prices?

[cobrat]

It is scary to think college is looked at as merely job training instead of getting an education. Government should not be deciding majors based on funding.

I agree.

Unfortunately, a part of this is a continuation of long-standing historical contestation in US society between those who favor intellectualism(learning for its own sake as primary) vs anti-intellectuals who feel any form of knowledge which cannot be directly translated into a job/career or a commercial product shouldn’t be bothered with. A phenomenon which even Alexis de Tocqueville referenced in his chapter on Americans preferring practical/commercial oriented scientific research to theoretically oriented scientific research which well-educated long-term thinkers have long argued serve as the bedrock upon which applied research/knowledge is based.

In short, if research, learning, knowledge cannot be immediately translated into profits, those in the latter camp tend to feel it isn’t worth bothering with which has been something those in the former camp have been vociferously pushing against.

One manifestation of this has been the fact a critical mass of Americans who were notable innovators in STEM and non-STEM areas in the last 100 or so years tend to be immigrants/refugees. Especially Nobel prize winners and other awards and in certain key areas such as the American nuclear power/weapons, jet aviation, and space programs*.

• Most of the top critical scientists in those areas tended to be refugees from war torn countries before/during WWII and/or former German/Nazi scientists** with valuable intellectual knowledge and accomplished research years and possibly even decades ahead of what the US scientists had before the late '40s.
  

** Werner Von Braun anyone?

On the other hand, STEM people need to take humanities classes and be able to think critically about the societal impact of their work. (I work specifically in the history of eugenics so I’m biased about STEM solidly needing a humanities and ethics backbone)

A supervisor at one of my first startup jobs after college was an engineering major in the '70s and he recounted being part of the first class with far greater writing and humanities/social science distribution requirements than previous classes at his engineering college.

Reason for those increased requirements?

Torrents of complaints from engineering/tech employers to the engineering college dean decrying past graduates’ poor written communication skills and ability to deal with people outside those in engineering/tech. Especially senior executives and clients.

Incidentally, this issue also affects many undergrad business programs which was a critical factor in why one financial firm I worked for made it a point to not hire undergrad business majors unless they came from the most elite programs at the Wharton, NYU-Stern, UMich-Ross, Berkeley-Haas, UVA-McIntire tier. In contrast, they had no reluctance in hiring Arts & Sciences majors from the same colleges from whom they wouldn’t hire undergrad business majors.

Also a friend who is himself an engineering graduate from a school at the MIT/Caltech/CMU/Stanford/Berkeley tier posted the following story as an example of why pre-professional majors including engineers should be required to take MORE humanities/social science distribution requirements:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/17/san-francisco-tech-open-letter-i-dont-want-to-see-homeless-riff-raff

[katliamom]

I know two English majors from Stanford who work for tech companies as writers. CEO discovered it was easier to get English majors to understand enough technology to write well about it, than engineers to write well about their own subject. But, of course, we all know humanities majors are losers. (Sarcasm.)

[cobrat]

Then again, not that many STEM majors have served as President of the United States, either. Two come to mind: Herbert Hoover was an undergraduate geology major who later worked as a mining engineer. And Jimmy Carter was a nuclear engineer. There may have been others, but not many, I’m sure.

Presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower graduated from West Point in an era when the curriculum was such everyone was effectively an engineering major. Same with the Annapolis until sometime in mid-late 20th century.

Fun fact: West Point was one of the first…if not the first engineering colleges in the US. A critical mass of US educated engineers for most of the 19th century were West Point graduates.

[ucbalumnus]

Re: http://www.census.gov/dataviz/visualizations/stem/stem-html/ (following up on #17 and #18)

Note that the large “non-STEM” occupation groups of health care and education, as well as smaller groups like sales, production, services, construction, and agriculture, include some occupations where college education in a “STEM” subject is relevant (e.g. math or science teacher, sales of technical products and services, contract/consulting in “STEM” areas, industrial engineer, construction engineer, agricultural engineer). Of course, going into management is a common career move for someone who started as an individual contributor in a “STEM” area.

Also, note that “STEM” here includes psychology and social science majors.

So it rather misleading to say imply that 3/4 of “STEM” majors go into occupations where their majors are irrelevant.

[samlan16]

How about we all stop thinking of college as a diploma mill to feed employers? That will totally happen, right?

[saillakeerie]

A lot of people don’t think of college as a diploma mill to feed employers now which is the problem with broad generalizations.

[DecideSomeHow]

“How about we all stop thinking of college as a diploma mill to feed employers? That will totally happen, right?”

“A lot of people don’t think of college as a diploma mill to feed employers now which is the problem with broad generalizations”

Whether we admit or not, college is a “factory” that puts stuff/skill/knowledge/etc. in a students head that an employer will value. It plays out on the boards here everyday with stories of a student with a kids that graduated with a degree in “this” and got a job doing “that”. Sometimes the two a clearly connected to the casual observer, and many times the connection is far from obvious (I will admit I scratch my head from time to time, and say to myself “hmm, how about that?”).

“just” noticed I have a “lot” of “quotes” in this post, and “felt” like adding “more” “”"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

[fallenchemist]

@ucbalumnus

“liberal arts” includes science and math.

There is generally a differentiation between the term “a liberal arts education”, in which the student is supposed to be exposed in a meaningful way to everything from Shakespeare/Keats/Dostoyevsky to chemistry/physics/math to architecture/history/anthropology (more or less literally, obviously the exact topics can vary). Subjects that are generally considered to be in the “School of Liberal Arts”, however, are the kinds of things being differentiated here.

As far as this proposal, it never worked well for the Soviets or Chinese and it isn’t at all the way we should do things here. For the exact same reasons, which generally boil down to things like: the politicians are not nearly smart enough to pick winners, they cannot predict the future, and they constantly overlook unintended consequences.

Somewhere in all this I think it is very relevant that Steve Jobs constantly referenced the calligraphy class he took at Reed (a Liberal Arts College in the sense @ucbalumnus meant it) as critical to the success Apple enjoyed. Beyond the direct applications that resulted from what he learned in that class, the principles he learned drove everything he did in product design and many other factors. Frankly, anecdotal as it is, it is all the proof I need that these kinds of proposals, as well as our not exposing current STEM majors to more liberal arts courses (the other definition from what @ucbalumnus mentions), are completely. 180 degrees the wrong way to go.