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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: 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.