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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: 4, Informative) by Grishnakh on Friday November 03 2017, @10:17PM
But years later, it occurred to me that he hadn't suggested I be a reactor operator on an aircraft carrier. I would have been into that.
I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing there's actually a reason for that: the likelihood of you getting a carrier assignment was much lower than getting a submarine assignment, and you probably wouldn't have had a choice in the matter anyway. There's never more than 12 aircraft carriers in the US fleet, which these days equals 24 reactors (it was a little more when the Enterprise was sailing, as it had 8, but it was the only carrier like that). By contrast, there's several dozen nuclear submarines in the fleet (one site I just googled said 70). So obviously there's a lot more submarine reactors out there needing operators than aircraft carrier reactors. And the carrier reactor positions are probably in higher demand for exactly the reason you cited: submarine duty is hard, you never see the sky, you have to share a tiny bed with another dude (nasty), etc. Carriers are luxury ships by comparison, so probably everyone wants those jobs.