The Rutgers/Georgetown study "Steady as She Goes? Three Generations of Students Through the Science and Engineering Pipeline" was released last Wednesday. I have not read all the details yet, but the gist of the report is that over the past 30 years the supply of STEM graduates has remained about the same rather than shrinking as most people believe. One of the points of concern raised in the article is that, since the late 90's the best students in the pipeline are opting out of the STEM fields in greater numbers. The authors suggest that the most talented STEM graduates are being lured away from STEM careers by better pay and benefits in other fields. The suggestion is that we need less, rather than more, STEM graduates to drive up the wages of STEM professionals so that youngsters will be attracted to STEM fields and will then save America from its decline as a leader in the world.
In my original post, I put forward my concern that we chemistry faculty must prepare for a sharp decline in majors in the near future as the guidance counselors of the nation come to the realization that ten years of pushing students into pharmacy has filled the pipeline. I wrote this realizing that even as our numbers of majors have doubled over the last decade, about half the chemistry and biochemistry majors in my department list pharmacy as their career goal. Suggesting that we need less STEM graduates will only make matters worse for chemistry departments if the guidance counselors read the report summary and opt to chase students from STEM careers.
There is much in the study to comment on, but I will focus on two things that immediately concern me. As others have noted, this study covers all of STEM and such a broad brush does not really paint the kind of nuance that would provide a clear picture of the future. Also, the economic theory behind the study makes no sense to me. It appears to me that the researchers are using an outdated economic model where countries are isolated and labor and services from other countries have little or no effect on wages and demand for trained professionals in this country. Outsourcing and Insourcing have contributed greatly to the pay and job prospects of graduates in this country. Producing less graduates will not raise wages. It will raise outsourcing and insourcing, in my opinion.
What should we PUI and MCU academics do? More on that later, as I just got a long awaited good lab result and I can't type while doing my happy dance.
T.S. Hall
The article does not cite any new problems. Such a glut of PhD's has been predicted for a long time. In fact I read a very old dissertation that detailed the economics of the pending PhD glut by David Breneman, "The PhD Production Process: A Study Of Departmental Behavior" (1968).
ReplyDeleteIt seems the RO1 schools have failed to take into account the basic economics of what they are doing. Public subsidies (NIH, NSF funding, etc.) and incredible speculation about the value of a graduate degree have created an incredibly large supply of graduates who have spent years deferring their potential incomes. Now they want a return on that investment, but there are so many that they are again forced to diferr with Post-Docs. Even after years of that, the demand is now so low due to outsourcing and increasing pressures of globalization that it is becoming very difficult for american students to justify this route anymore. It should be mostly regarded as a labor of love and not one of practicality these days.