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How's that STEM education working out?
Much of the public enthusiasm for STEM education rests on the assumption that these fields are rich in job opportunity. Some are, some aren’t. STEM is an expansive category, spanning many disciplines and occupations, from software engineers and data scientists to geologists, astronomers and physicists.
What recent studies have made increasingly apparent is that the greatest number of high-paying STEM jobs are in the “T” (specifically, computing).
Earlier this year, Glassdoor, a jobs listing website, ranked the median base salary of workers in their first five years of employment by undergraduate major. Computer science topped the list ($70,000), followed by electrical engineering ($68,438). Biochemistry ($46,406) and biotechnology ($48,442) were among the lowest paying majors in the study, which also confirmed that women are generally underrepresented in STEM majors.
So study cybersecurity, not slime molds.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @08:12PM (5 children)
Equality is the idea that all people are the same, with the same inherent ability. Diversity is the idea that all people have their own, unique strengths and weaknesses.
If people are equal, and women are truly equal to men, and all races are equal, then what difference does it make whether an office is full of white men or black women? So there shouldn't be a problem with a group's representation.
But if diversity is such a huge deal, then that admits that there are inherent differences between men and women and members of different races.
So it turns out that equality and diversity are at odds with one another, yet both are being paradoxically pushed together.
So, my question: are men and women equal, where each has the same natural aptitude for any given task, or are they diverse, each with their own natural strengths and weaknesses? In one scenario, it doesn't matter who is represented, since all will get the same job done just as well. In another, one group is naturally better than another at a given task or field.
Riddle me that.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Aegis on Friday November 03 2017, @08:20PM (4 children)
Reasonable people might wonder why the demographic makeup of that population differed so widely from the general population if everyone was truly equal.
They might wonder what the statistical likelihood of that occurring was. And, whether a confounding factor is a more likely cause than random happenstance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @12:46AM
And we're all reasonable people here, of course.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Saturday November 04 2017, @03:16AM (2 children)
What, like the representation of women plumbers, miners, electricians, ditch diggers, high-rise construction workers, crane operators, longshoremen, deep sea welders, arctic fishermen, whalers, dry wall hangers, ... ?
Oh, how about teachers and nurses?
Watching your mind go from 0 RPM to RACISM! is astounding.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @04:41PM
You triggered fools are a sight to behold.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Saturday November 04 2017, @04:57PM
For starters, in this case we're talking about sexism, not racism.
Also, you are right that we should be doing the same sort of shift for other professions. And there has been: For example, there has been an increase of women in mining [minesmagazine.com], and an increase of men in nursing [modernmedicine.com].
There's currently no evidence to suggest that men are inherently better than women at most STEM professions. There is substantial evidence that women are discriminated against trying to get into and work in STEM professions. Which means that women who are smart enough to help build rockets are getting pushed into teaching a bunch of 5-year-olds instead. This actually happened to my step-sister: She was trained as an engineer, aced all the exams, and found that her biggest problem was not her training but the customers deciding they weren't going to listen to that "chick" and then blaming her when things broke exactly the way she had predicted. The disrespect and discrimination was bad enough that she gave up and switched to early childhood education.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.