Thanks for the link. Not sure if average starting salary is the best way to determine ‘most valuable’ degree, though.
What (measurable) metric do you think would do a better job? Someone somewhere has probably tabulated it… engineers love numbers, especially ones that make them look good. 
Without having first established a metric and a rubric, plus a common understanding for what “most valuable” means, this part of the conversation is doomed to wallow in nominalist drivel.
I’m just sayin’.
I’d like to weigh in on this as well. When I was in high school (I graduated from there in 2010, and am currently at Georgia Tech working my way through a Bachelors in Computer Science), we offered a full run of “Liberal Arts” classes, drama, philosophy, art, band and chorus. This in addition to three languages (A fourth was added, and removed two years later). We obviously had the necessary English courses, histories, and social sciences which are core classes in the state of Georgia. All of those could be taken for 4 years (we had the same class all year, so effectively, you were taking these courses the entire time you were in high school) On the STEM side, we had a 4 year math program, and then a 2 year web-design program, 2-year “programming” column (Which has finally been bumped up to 3), and perhaps one or two other courses which ran for one or two semesters. It seemed to me that it was significantly easier to get into liberal arts with the abundance of classes, and resources available than the STEM fields, but that’s just me.
When I was a senior in college (1999-2000) at a “small liberal arts college” and working on my senior project my advisor asked me if I had ever taken a course in technical writing. My response was no, even though it was in the catalog it was rarely offered since there were so few students that would sign up for it any given term.
Most B.S. students, myself included, simply took the required English courses and never looked back at that department.
As a high school teacher now, I make it a point to show my students the different writing expectations and work with them to see the differences between a paper for Science and one for English.
One metric that could be looked at is job satisfaction: http://www.time.com/time/2007/america_numbers/job.html
It definitely shouldn’t be the only factor for choosing a career, but at least for me, I would call happiness in one’s career “valuable.” I know that I looked at this list before choosing a college major.
I don’t know what criteria they used to measure job satisfaction, but I lost all faith in the results after doing a little poking around.
I checked on “Airline Pilot” and saw that it was near the very top of the list. Having been one, having sat in crew rooms with many fellow pilots, and having jumpseated on countless flights, I can honestly say that I’ve never met a group of people that hates their job more. I was a second-career pilot (fairly common in that industry) and every time I jumpseated and rode up front the crew would always ask, “what did you do before becoming a pilot?”. After I said I was an engineer, the next statement was always along the lines of, “you quit that to put up this?” I would also commonly hear, “every time it comes up I try to talk my kids out of going into this profession.” You don’t hear too many people trying to convince other NOT to go into their profession.
With all that being said, I know many pilots that love it and wouldn’t consider doing anything else.
Anyway, I guess the results of any such survey are highly dependent upon which people you talk to, as well as the mood they’re in on that particular day.
I’m not sure anyone can adequately draw any conclusions from job satisfaction surveys like that one. I could go into the Clergy… but I wouldn’t be happy doing it. Theological discussions, while interesting, simply aren’t something I’m passionate about. I’d be bored, wondering what I’m doing there, and wanting to get out to do something I find interesting.
If you want high job satisfaction, do what you love, what your passionate about. I found, at an early age (5th grade), that I loved computers, and even more important, that I was good at and passionate about programming them. Throughout my upbringing, I also found that I loved helping people, volunteering and making a difference in their lives. Thus my current job - a software engineer working in the Medical device field. I come in every day excited about the challenges and the work I’m doing, and go home every day knowing that what I’m doing makes a difference in people’s lives. Computer programmers only have a 30% job satisfaction rating, according to that survey… but when I look around at all the programmers here, I’d say it’s more like 90%.
It doesn’t matter what most people in your profession say about their jobs or career. If you love what you’re doing, that’s all that matters.
They probably did it the way most such surveys do: by asking the workers to rate their job satisfaction.
I checked on “Airline Pilot” and saw that it was near the very top of the list. Having been one, having sat in crew rooms with many fellow pilots, and having jumpseated on countless flights, I can honestly say that I’ve never met a group of people that hates their job more.
As a rule, pilots love flying, and they like doing it well. What they don’t like so much is the other things that come with the job. High on the list of what they hate is a culture that wants to put making money at a higher priority than having safe (and legal) operations.
The love of flying and the satisfaction of doing the actual job is far stronger than the dislike of working in a stressful employment situation. That’s why airline pilots are high on the “job satisfaction” list.
It’s not as common to find programmers who get real joy out of what they do, so the typical management’s lack of understanding of good processes tends to skew the results more strongly to the negative side.
I am posting prior to reading the article and all of the posts here in the thread. I am going to fall into the group that beleives this is not a verses situation. In fact, the more novel approach is to apply for STEM funding as a STEAM program. (A=Arts) The creative and inventive processes are similar across disciplines but have different end products. I am not gaining much traction for a summer professional development institute on STEAM which is an integration of both STEM and the Arts. I don’t yet have enough resources to adequately develop and promote this project but I see value in starting to promote it. I am hoping to run a week long institute for middle and high school teachers using the 3D game design engine developed by Microsoft Research, Kodu. The programming side is a GUI with parallel processes available plus set tool set for creating the 3D environment in which the “game” is situated. While not focused on electrical and mechanical systems, energy disipation effects, gravity are key to designing some games and computational thinkingis a critical element to understanding how to design engaging games.
So STEM emphasis is not bad, does not need to diminish liberal arts, and in some situations they are indeed integrated or interdisciplinary in nature.
I have never understood why it is ok for a politician/leader etc. to admit that they are not good at math… they are not a “math” person… etc etc.
Yet if that same person said they were no good at English… or they weren’t literate… that they would be thought of as inadequate and not allowed to be in office or in a position of authority.
Why is math illiteracy something that is allowed ??? I am not talking about the calculus here… just algebra…
It seems that whenever the liberal arts community gets wind of something that will increase the technical expertise of the nation or raise the bar on the use of mathematics in society…they feel threatened…
A well-rounded education should work both ways… if you look at the graduation requirements at most liberal arts colleges… science and mathematics (in particular) are at most reduced to just 1 or 2 courses… and many of those courses (for liberal majors) are NOT the difficult courses… they are designed to be passed relatively easily.
There are many liberal arts majors out there that ARE well rounded…but I would hazard a guess to say that most technical majors that graduate are better writers and communicators than the liberal arts majors are mathematicians or scientists…
Well rounded should work both ways…
Any graduate should be able to do college algebra and use it in a practical way… they should also be able to recognize statistical concepts and be able to look at data in a realistic and skeptical way.
Without these abilities the citizen population can’t make informed and reasonable decisions…
Unequivocally No.
If there was too much of a focus on STEM, there would be an oversupply of scientists, engineers, and technicians in the economy.
In the United States, we all know the opposite to be true.
I’ve also witnessed many times those who lament the multitude of Americans who don’t know the difference between Monet and Manet, but then get hostile when you ask them a basic question about math or science.
But even more important than this, is the need to eradicate the anti-intellectual, anti-knowledge, anti-thinking undercurrents in society. When those who are highly educated and experts in a field are viewed negatively as elitists, there is a major problem. When people believe the that all opinions are equal (for example, when a pundit believes they are just as knowledgeable about a subject as an actual expert), there is a major problem. When people willingly disregard facts, logic, and rational thinking because they “believe” something different, there is a serious problem. When people dislike President Obama because he uses “big words” and “speaks above an 8th grade level”, there is a serious problem.
There is nothing intrinsically elitist about someone who is more knowledgeable than you are in a specific field. I will never claim that because I played golf a few times I’m as equally qualified as Tiger Woods to talk about it. I will never claim that because I wrote a few school papers on the American Revolution that I’m as equally qualified as historian David McCullough to discuss it. I will never claim that because I took a marco-economics course that I’m as equally qualified as Economics Noble Prize winner Paul Krugman to determine what’s best for the economy.
Amen brother… Why is it that every politician almost brags about how they don’t understand science. Why is it that only 5 of our representatives were engineers? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_111th_United_States_Congress#Occupational_background) Why is it that when we get politicians speaking at an event they talk about how they couldn’t ever do what we are doing? Why is that always greeted with laughter? That isn’t funny, that is sad.
I’ve never understood the trend in American politics to have our representatives as just an average Joe. No, screw that, I want experts making decisions. I don’t want a man who ran multiple businesses into the ground making key economic decisions… I want a freaking expert.
Here’s a very recent article (just the first paragraph, actually) about how 8 out of China’s 9 top government officials were at one point in STEM-type fields originally. I could post some snarky comment about how you don’t need to be XYZ to understand that’s a good idea, but I won’t. Such comments wouldn’t go far anyways, given the rhetoric machines that pump out endless tripe concerning inane social details that prey upon an uneducated voter’s every whim.
If we get at higher understanding of math in the common American, then maybe we can change the culture enough so people stop acting upon their impulses by deficit spending in their day-to-day lives. Eventually that will propagate up to the country’s leadership. It doesn’t matter where you stand on social matters; we need better “numbers people” in charge so we avoid the economic situation we’re in. If you don’t think the U.S. is in an ‘economic situation’ or you think it will poof go away, you cannot be more mistaken.
The rest of STEM education, to me, is simply a way of creating better general problem-solvers (which seems to be the general consensus in this thread). Sure, we need liberal arts for specialist majors – but we’re running dry on those specialists to begin with.
An interesting article titled “How to Fix the STEM deficit”
“The Presidential Award program has slots for 106 teachers, so there should be 21 more awardees: A fifth of the annual awards went unclaimed because not enough science and math teachers at the elementary level made the cut.”
The definition of STEAM as given to be by people in the field has A = Animation.
While I am all for the focus of STEM programs. The world needs everyone to keep going along. I am an urban planning major, my degree is considered a liberal arts degree. However, on a daily basis I am required to work with engineering and architectural drawings to complete dimensional analysis of them. In addition to looking at things such as corrosion of infrastructure (roads, bridges ,etc) and setup when maintenance should take place. My experience with STEM makes me better understand these issues then most of my classmates. Another point I want to make here is how many majors where calculus is required is it actually used in the field besides engineering. Yes, calculus is useful in figuring out many things for different applications but name me another real world job other then engineering where it has to be used. The reality is there aren’t too many. Finally, calculus courses are generally taught by math professors or students who know the math but have no idea how it actually applies to things. This is why taking calculus with a engineering teacher is important, which most college math departments fail to do if you are not an engineering major. Just my two cents speaking from reality inside and outside of academia.
I keep forgetting to make an on-topic post about this subject.
My answer to the topic is a HUGE NO - there is NOT too much emphasis on STEM today. The problem is that there has been way too little emphasis in the past.
When I was in high school, the graduation requirements were 2 math classes (didn’t matter what level), 2 science classes (didn’t matter what level), but 4 English classes, plus a literature elective. Don’t get me wrong - the English classes were great and I wish more people would pay better attention in those classes, but why did the requirements include 4.5 years of English, and only 2 of math and science?
I don’t think the current emphasis on STEM education overemphasises STEM at all - I think it’s just finally bringing it up to level that it should have been all along.
What I find worst about the article is some of the comments. Obviously, the few commenters (6) do not constitute a significant sample size nor is it necessarily unbiased (or truthful) sample set, but for the three of them, one is a science teacher, one went from being an engineer to unable to be hired as a teacher, back to engineering, and the third went from being an engineer to teaching for a short time, to laid off and looking for a job outside of teaching.
I don’t have significant contact with people in this area to know if these are quite isolated and rare or if it is a common problem, but it would be quite disheartening if it is common.
The requirements at a public school (at least mine in Wisconsin) are still like that. It is required to take 4 years of literature and history, but only 2 years of math and science. Obviously those who care about college take 4 years of everything, but I still don’t understand why history and literature are required while math and science are not.
Definitely not enough emphasis on STEM.