The acronym STEM - science, technology, engineering, mathematics. It shows up everywhere. Some ungodly fraction of new jobs will be in STEM fields. We need more STEM majors in college.
As general statements, these are true. The economy is becoming more knowledge-based, with knowledge of technology necessary to perform basic tasks - use of spreadsheets for accounting, computer-generated presentations, and even fancy espresso machines in the coffee industry. (An aside: I know that my colleagues will hate me for stating this fact, but use of most equipment used by scientists - mass spectrometer, PCR machine, thin film deposition chamber, to name a few - is not any more difficult that using the espresso machine at Starbucks. As a result, this has obvious implications for what defines "skilled" versus "unskilled" work, and resulting prestige and salaries.) We therefore do need more people trained on certain equipment, with the appropriate backgrounds.
(I will note: One problem I have with the STEM categorization is that it encompasses a huge range of positions, from glass cleaner at a pharmaceutical company to PhD astrophysicist. Not all positions are truly creative or thinking-based - in fact the vast majority are not.)
Where does this training needs to occur? Currently colleges are the bridge between high school and good jobs in the STEM sectors. However, a college degree requires more than background for a certain job, and much more that simply training on a certain piece of equipment (what many people do at a given job in STEM). As such, there is an argument that can be made to get rid of such "waste" - general education classes - and streamline the process to produce more employment-ready individuals. The implication is that understanding subjects like literature, history, and touchy areas such as systemic racism and sexism is pointless if one wants employment in the modern economy.
Is this true? If one's only goal in life is to be a drone, then it probably is true. And it is true that most employers simply want drones, who know one thing and are trained to do one task (but can be retrained if necessary for a different task) and do not think about their place in the world, in the economy, and might therefore complain. Employers also do not want to be reminded of their own systemic "-isms" which are generally taught in colleges in the US at this point in time (not necessarily true in the past). As such, they are less likely to encourage broad-based studies. But just because something is good for the business community, is it good for everyone else? It is true that some individuals are not interested in learning extraneous topics and are only interested in a decent-paying job, no matter how boring. This is fine, but these people should not be encouraged to attend a traditional college.
What is required here are vocational schools - training centers for specific jobs that take little time to complete and do not require general education. These need to be funded by businesses (who directly benefit from the training) either directly or through corporate taxes. We also need better career paths for intellectually curious college graduates - having them sit inputting numbers into a spreadsheet is boring and a waste of human capital. I do not know if I have a solution for that problem. The modern economy requires a certain amount of labor that is not automatable yet, but also does not require much intellectual skill (leading to some 70% of employees not being engaged at work, including myself in my supposedly high-quality science position at NIST).
(In an ironic twist, there are claims that certain STEM jobs are less likely to be automated, unlike paper pushers, burger flippers and such. This is not true. The unautomatable jobs and careers are all creative - author, artist, historian, museum curator, etc. - and outside of STEM. At least until we develop true artificial intelligence.)
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