I'm not able to tell if this comment is satire and it worries me.
STEM is pushed hard, but realistically, science and math dont have that great career prospects. For one thing, a PhD, and the 4-7 year opportunity cost that comes with it, is pretty much required to get anything more than a lab tech job.
After that PhD, where do you go? You can try for an insanely competitive tenure track faculty position. Or a very limited number of industry researcher jobs.
The E in STEM (traditional engineering) isn't exactly tech in terms of salaries and job availability, but it mostly guarantees paying the bills with a decent WLB after "just" a bachelor's.
The starting salary for a research scientist is $170 - $205K.
https://www.rentec.com/Careers.action?researchScientist=true
170k-200k is not that different from ordinary banks, I can't imagine it's all RT would pay.
Edit: had to look up the annual returns and they seem to be a bit different depending on where you look, so take those numbers with a grain of salt. In any case they're consistently the most profitable hedge fund out there.
Looking at my own motivations, one of the big draws of the position was that everyone I talked to at the firm was competent and pleasant, while in domains solving real problems (again for example healthcare and climate) 70% of people I've interacted with are stupid, petty, or both. But stepping back, isn't that state of affairs existentially horrifying? If that status quo persists, will we even survive as a species?
And I'm pretty surprised everyone you met was pleasant -- that was certainly not my experience at a hedge fund.
I do agree that there is little economic value in most Ph.D. programs.
> finance
You're not selling it.
I mean, we do have the RCMP and Bay Street, but I don't think it's comparable (in number of positions, salaries offered, etc) to NSA and Wall Street.
In addition, outside of the RCMP, various ministries of the Canadian government could need the skillset too (Statistics Canada being the one that first comes to mind, though any teams that do economic analyses could benefit from someone with the background).
And before you go about just curing symptoms, remember that many real cures would require gene modification and people aren’t all that interested in being a gmo. Ask RA sufferers about drugs like Humera re curing symptoms.
The "strategy" is to get your kid interested in science enough so that they make a strong resume to a good college and have a strong foundation, then sway them to learn CS and get a SWE job.