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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: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2017, @04:05AM
Ok, I've been trying to hold my tongue. It sounds like your friend did it right. I also have a CE friend who's flat broke. He's begging people for a paycheck. He learned the math and the chemistry, but he didn't learn the *real* lesson.
Anyone who's taking STEM just to get a good paying job is doing it wrong. Go get a medical degree instead. The money is insane. I know doctors (anesthesiologist) making $700K/year. He's a very happy guy, but at the end of the day, he's still on-call. His life is not really his own.
STEM is supposed to create PROBLEM SOLVERS. I was in STEM before it was even called STEM -- Mechanical engineering. I saw the CS rocket take off and I jumped on. Not because I studied CS in school, but because I was a damn good problem solver and I taught myself C (Yes, I'm that old) and got a job doing that. I went beyond what I was asked to do. I solved problems the management didn't even know were coming. I was not rewarded for it. I saw the executives soak up all that reward for themselves. This was also a problem that needed to be solved.
When the dot-com bubble burst and I got laid off and couldn't find another job. I created my own. I solved that problem. I'm a friggin problem solver. That's what I do. I took a credit card with a $10,000 limit and I bought some tools and some materials. I started a little business of my own.
It's like this -- A lot of atheists like to look down on the religious. They don't understand why the religious need to believe in something so obviously flawed. The atheist says "I don't need religion to have morals. I don't need religion to be good. Why do you?"
I feel that way about people who need a job. See, I haven't had a job in over 20 years. I buy things, fix them and resell them. I like to work with my hands. I design new things, make them and sell them. I'm creative. That's what STEM is about -- it's not about becoming yet another wage slave. It's about learning how to be CREATIVE and how to solve problems. Society needs creative people. It's the truly creative people who invent new things, who discover new truths, who change the world and make it better. I've done some of that too in my own, small way.
And yeah, five years ago I paid cash for my 2400 sq. ft. 3 bdrm house with two 2-car garages and an 80 acre back yard.
You wanna be a wage slave? Be a doctor. Better yet become a CPA. Look it up-- the most profitable, least risk small business you can have is a CPA business. You wanna take control of your own life, get creative. Do some science on your own life.
Good luck out there.