Focus on STEM education only, good or bad?

[JamesBrown]

I read that article yesterday, and admittedly went in pretty skeptical, however he does raise some very good points. I have read many similar articles that read like they were written by someone who was bitter that their degree was not held in the esteem they thought it was worth. This article is different, and is worth a read.

There are somethings in this article that I strongly disagree with. For example writing of our low math score because we are "creative" as a culture. That of course is all fine and good, however the fact we have succeeded in spite of low math performance as a country is not enough in my opinion. What could we accomplish if we were more math literate without giving up our creativity?

His facebook example is great. I have very good friends who majored in Psychology, and now work in the HMI field. These people are very successful and are applying a multidisciplinary approach that is very valuable. I also have friends who majored in Psychology and work in restaurants and retail with no desire to apply that degree. If they were able to afford college, then no harm done, but some are sitting on 100k+ of debt that they struggle to pay off. It is impossible to group these two groups together. There is huge value in the arts and social sciences when they can be applied to the real world.

I strongly support STEM (as STEM, no extra letters) as its own education model. I went to a top Engineering school, and ever social science and humanities class I took had a strong science base. Philosophy was taught through ans AI course, my writing intensive courses were related to Farms and the food supply chain. This same thing needs to be applied in the other direction. Arts, Humanities, and Social Science majors need to develop a strong technology background that can be applied to their discipline. To address Gov. Rick Scott's question, “Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists?” I think it needs to be divided into two questions. First Is it vital to the state to have more people with Anthropology degrees? Probably not. Second, Is it vital to have more Anthropologists who understand big data, can mine that data for cultural information, and apply it to decision making? Absolutely.