The STEM shortage is a myth?

[dmmm]

There is just a lack of STEM students that are willing to work cheaply according to a recent study.

 

Thoughts? If true, would it change anything about how or what you are teaching?

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/study-there-may-not-be-a-shortage-of-american-stem-graduates-after-all/2013/04/24/66099962-acea-11e2-a8b9-2a63d75b5459_story.html

[Crimson Wife]

Students who did a STEM major are in high demand even for non-STEM jobs because finishing a STEM degree with a decent G.P.A. is often used by an employer as a proxy for intelligence.

[ElizabethB]

Students who did a STEM major are in high demand even for non-STEM jobs because finishing a STEM degree with a decent G.P.A. is often used by an employer as a proxy for intelligence.

Now it all makes sense, thanks!

 

I had read that article and wondered. I have friends and family that work in engineering fields and they do have trouble finding quality applicants, so I wondered at the disconnect.

[Farrar]

I'm curious if all the people who are out there have the specific skills for the jobs that exist.  I mean, it's one thing to have "IT" training but something else to be able to do the specific programming job needed by the specific company.  It's sort of alluded to in the article that STEM fields are often more specialized, but I wonder if we're graduating enough people in enough fields or if it's really just that IT guys are a dime a dozen.

 

I also wondered if we're educating enough STEM people to be innovators and create their own jobs.  Like, okay, we have "enough" engineers, but are we training those engineers to compete globally and innovate?

 

I don't know the answers...  those were just the things that occurred to me reading the article.

[regentrude]

This statement

 

there’s an urgency that justifies allowing companies to bring more foreign workers into the country, usually on a short-term H-1B visa. But those who oppose such a policy argue that companies want more of these visas mainly because H-1B workers are paid an estimated 20 percent less than their American counterparts.

 

is incorrect: when an employer wants to hire a foreigner, they have to do a labor certification and prevailing wage certification that certifies that the employer could not have found a qualified US citizen for the job and that the foreign hire will be paid prevailing wage for this job- precisely to eliminate price dumping.

 

Now, of course, there are people who argue that Americans simply won't take the jobs because they deem the pay too low, for instance in academia. Over the last fifteen years, every single new physics professor hired in our department has been a foreigner, and in the searches I recall for the last ten years, even almost all candidates who ended on the five person shortlist (i.e. the most qualified out of 100 or so applicants) have been foreigners. Since the hire is solely about qualification, the conclusion can only be that either there are not enough qualified Americans to fill all positions, or that they do not apply because they do not wish to work for the salaries paid in academia and have no trouble finding higher paying employment.

 

 

[regentrude]

I'm curious if all the people who are out there have the specific skills for the jobs that exist.  I mean, it's one thing to have "IT" training but something else to be able to do the specific programming job needed by the specific company.  It's sort of alluded to in the article that STEM fields are often more specialized, but I wonder if we're graduating enough people in enough fields or if it's really just that IT guys are a dime a dozen.

 

It is actually not that easy to find qualified IT personal for specialized applications. There are a lot of people with some sort of IT "training", but specialists in parallel computing, network and systems administration, cyber security etc are hard to find and well paid.

Our computer science graduates have no trouble finding jobs. Most of them are hired before graduation.

 

From the article:

The study found that among IT workers, 36 percent do not have a four-year college degree. Among the 64 percent who do have diplomas, only 38 percent have a computer science or math degree.

 

And I would assume those 38% with an actual comp sci degree are the ones who get hired - not the student who took a few computer classes at community college. Those are, to quote farrarwilliams, a dime a dozen.

Which again shows how useless it is to lump all "STEM-degrees" together - they are not all created equal.

[K&Rs Mom]

I'm curious if all the people who are out there have the specific skills for the jobs that exist.  I mean, it's one thing to have "IT" training but something else to be able to do the specific programming job needed by the specific company.  It's sort of alluded to in the article that STEM fields are often more specialized, but I wonder if we're graduating enough people in enough fields or if it's really just that IT guys are a dime a dozen.

 

I also wondered if we're educating enough STEM people to be innovators and create their own jobs.  Like, okay, we have "enough" engineers, but are we training those engineers to compete globally and innovate?

 

I don't know the answers...  those were just the things that occurred to me reading the article.

 

 

This is what dh does, so I get to hear him rant about it. ;) "IT" doesn't really mean anything - it's a group of about a zillion smaller categories, and they're all VERY specific.  So you're exactly right, that lots of people are trained in lots of areas, but when a company needs that one area, only a small percentage of all the "IT" people would fit.  There is a problem with many companies not being willing to train, though: if someone has mastered a couple of programming languages, it won't take them long to pick up another, but they'll keep looking until someone has exactly what they're advertising for.  I think part of this is a result of the HR system at most bigger companies: the workers in HR don't know how similar some things are, they just see a resume that doesn't include some of the magic words from the job requirements, so toss it, where the IT manager might have given it another look.

 

You're right about not creating their own jobs too.  Again, I hear it from dh.  He owns a computer consulting business, and is moving more & more into the placement field, but things change so fast in this industry that there's a demand for consultants or people to work on one specific project, but what the workers mostly want is a "guaranteed" job (salary, benefits, etc), so finding workers willing to take a 6-month job (that almost invariably gets extended) is a lot harder.  I think it's cultural - Americans have lost that drive to be entrepreneurs, and everyone expects to *get* a job, because that's what they're told all through school: "do these things, go to college, and there will be a desk in an air-conditioned office waiting for you at the end."  It was when dh got laid off for about the 5th time in a dozen years that he admitted those "secure" jobs really weren't, and he could do better on his own (and he has).  

[TraceyS/FL]

I haven't read the article... But feel like typing at 7:30am on a Saturday. I'd rather be sleeping. Humph.

 

I was on the job trained in IT, mainly in system and network management. I was decently well rounded, we ran minicomputer clusters on a decent budget with 2 of us to do everything. Well rounded was the key.... I could crawl around on the raised floor and rewire, I could make my daily call to "my" Senior engineer on the Exchange team (because apparently we were the only ones in the country running the hardware mix we were and it had a software issue....), I could be help decking the next hour and replacing parts in printers the one after that. Then I'd have to work on my zak script.

 

After that I would be left to draw maps in Illustrator and prep publications for printing.

 

I recently went back to school for Pharmacy Tech, and had to do a "mock interview" for a career class. They set me up with the guy from a town north of me, who was an IT guy doing HR. He picked an "IT help desk" job to interview me for, and had no clue I had experience. It went well.... He hired me for the fake job - and seriously told me to call him back if I wanted to go back into IT (I don't, I hated it!).

 

My point is.... I haven't worked in the field in 10+ years. Yet, I have the "well-rounded" skills that I could probably jump into any area and figure it out. I'm concerned with the specialized focus I run into today. "I'm looking for a widget job. I studied 5 years to program widgets.†Some don't seem willing to "let go" of that dream (I guess that is what it is?) of working at XYZ doing widgets, when there is a multitude of places that need help and are willing to hire you... If you present yourself with the correct skill set.

 

So as we encourage our kids towards STEM, we cannot forget to encourage stuff outside of that....I still swear the job I learned the most at, and still use daily was my stint at Kinkos. I even learned copyright there because we did "professor publishing". Take a design class, or photography... Or something.

 

Be willinging to dig into the trenches, the experience might be more rewarding (i'da gone insane doing network admin all day....being able to mix it up made it so I old get up each morning). Not everyone can work for a fortune 500 company...but the skills are still needed in "middle America".

 

Now, that might not make any sense... Because, you know, I should be sleeping. Now I shall dream of a Micro-Vax Cluster running on Alpha Servers.... Digital... another company HP killed when they bought it....

[Spy Car]

The belief that there is STEM shortage may (or may not) be a "falsehood," but it is not a "myth."

 

Don Quixote

[vonfirmath]

Students who did a STEM major are in high demand even for non-STEM jobs because finishing a STEM degree with a decent G.P.A. is often used by an employer as a proxy for intelligence.

 

Maybe.  My husband's been looking for a job for 2 years with a Master's in Math. (but no experience except as being a TA) and not found anything. MOST jobs want 2yr experience already. Ugh.  So there doesn't seem to be a huge STEM shortage around Austin.

[marlowefamily]

Some specialties are in demand, but in general - there is no job security in computer science unless you found your own company, have moved up to management, or are constantly retraining yourself for the newest skills and working 60-70hr weeks.  There are a few factors in play here, countries that have targeted IT and technology as the means to increase the standard of living of their citizens (US company can hire a phd in computer science from India for $500/month (at least that was the case a few years ago))...Furthermore, computers are just a skill that really reached proficiency only in younger generations...gen x is the first that has seen computers most of their life, executives in older generations running companies are happy to outsource fields they don't have an intuitive feel for, and lastly the united states seems to have had a policy of encouraging globalization...our companies are prodded somewhat to take the cheapest labor from around the world, as long as we keep science, lawyers, and business executives here at home..This seems like a policy that will only cause grief down the line, since technology has been the primary growth industry for the last 20+ years and will likely be for the next 20 years...still, I don't see a national revival that values technologists and inventors as highly as scientists and lawyers anytime soon.  So, yes, we currently have a great deal of graduates in STEM fields who have trouble getting a good value for their education and I've talked to many of them that are encouraging their kids to avoid STEM fields...why work twice as hard when you can go into a different field and get the same compensation for less work and have more job security.

[shawthorne44]

I know the way a former company got around labor certification to hire a foreign worker was to find the worker they wanted first.  List the job description to precisely match that person, and make the job title extremely specific.

By specifying for the person they wanted to hire, the only other applicants (and there were still many) did not qualify.  

 

I agree with Comment#2 on STEM being used as a substitute for an IQ test.  That has been my experience.