STEM vs. STEAM

[K-Dawg157]

Originally Posted by efoote868

I was always under the impression that the goal of promoting STEM is to encourage young people to go into STEM fields, i.e. society wants to graduate more Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics majors.

STEAM includes Art, but I doubt that society wants to graduate more Art majors. Rather, STEAM could be the description of what well rounded STEM majors need to learn, particularly the Engineering part of STEM.

I like this.

STEM is important when trying to promote future careers. STEAM is important to cover everything that goes into a STEM career.

I also think that Engineering already has Art in it. As an engineering student I was and am taught to think of how a product looks. The aesthetic is always taught to us, which is technically art, which is part of Engineering.

I like STEM because it is a nice little acronym that rounds up a group of very similar fields and puts them under one umbrella. Adding art is adding a curve ball that is not like the others.