Driving students into science is a fool's errand

At the outset, he identifies three broad categories of funding: (1) luring young people into STEM careers; (2) promoting science and technology at graduate schools; and (3) raising standards of science education. But the rest of his argument lumps these all together as if all the spending is for category #1, "luring".

For example, he points out that "no such government-backed programmes exist to pull children into being lawyers or accountants." And his broad argument, as expressed in the subheading, is that the funding biases the system to producing more scientists and technologists than it needs: "If programmes to bolster STEM education are effective, they distort the labour market..."

Only by ignoring the distinction between category #1, "luring", and category #3, "raising standards", can he complain that businesses who want better-educated scientists, if they really meant it, would just pony up and "pay and train newly graduated scientists and engineers properly." Either he thinks that the technical skills businesses want can be achieved by a quick training session after a broad general education, or else he thinks that raising the salaries of engineers will send a market signal to grade-schoolers that they ought to be more interested in STEM education. The problem of poor preparation never seems to enter his head. If all the accounting firms in the country were complaining that few recent college grads can add a column of numbers, and the government responded by trying to improve arithmetic education, would Macilwain complain about the money spent "luring children into accounting"?

In short, he might have an argument. But until he grounds it in specifics, he's just hand-waving with the broad idea that trying to improve STEM education distorts the market. This is obvious tripe, because the same broad argument could be applied to education in general: "If programs to bolster education are effective, they distort the market for educated workers. If they aren't, they're a waste of money. Besides, if businesses really wanted educated workers, they would pay and train new hires properly."

Want to make science attractive and more effective? Cut grad student enrollments in half and triple grad student pay so that it is comparable to what other STEM grads make in the workforce; in this case, choosing science would not be a major financial mistake, even for the masses who never get a faculty job. Professors would have fewer students, enabling better mentorship and improved job outlook for each graduate. Increase pay for professors so that they make money comparable to other highly educated professionals. Endow faculty chairs at major universities and set a mandatory faculty retirement age so that deadwood profs aren't hogging positions needed by rising stars. Mandate open publishing.

These changes could be implemented easily if legislatures and funding agencies wanted them, but nobody seems to want that. If the government wants people in science, they should spend money making it a better career, not spend money to slap a coat of marking gloss on a relatively bleak situation.

Perhaps I'm just irretrievably biased, but STEM seems, as well as being an enormously vast field it seems lazy to lump together, to be the engine of human advancement and economic growth.

If student A, an engineering student, is put in competition with student B, who could have been a good lawyer but chose a Maths degree, and student C, who had to choose between music and physics but chose physics at university, then A's wages might end up slightly lower but we are all likely to end up better off.

But it's not just that I am a science-biased technocrat - I don't especially want to drive our future judges and music professors into engineering careers. I think it more likely that technical education is just under-taken-up at all levels compared to what would most benefit society, and people who could perfectly well cope with technical careers end up taking jobs in the service sector that provide little training.

To take a shortage of technically-trained people, paint that as a benefit for the wages of the currently qualified, and argue to maintain the status quo on that basis is just short-sighted nonsense.

Sarcasm aside, just because it's good for business doesn't mean that it's bad for you.

Given that it was published on nature.com, best known as the publisher of one of the top science journals in the world, I would bet that the intended purpose is to stimulate discussion, not to explicitly endorse this view as written.

* Science, at least when I went through high school was Not Cool. It was for "nerds", something that you didn't really want to be labeled. I don't know if it's still that way in the US, but counteracting that effect might not be a bad idea.

* He talks about flooding the market. I just don't see that as likely to happen, and I don't necessarily see STEM stuff as a "lump of labor" with a fixed amount of work to go around, either. These are people creating and discovering new things!

In the UK, the government is at the point of giving away science degrees just so that there are enough science teachers for primary and secondary school students, and as a computer science student, I have managed to get a paid internship every year of my degree, and last year turned down 4 internship offers, because there were so many companies looking for people with a computer science education.

Our STEM graduate rates are falling, and our need for STEM graduates is increasing.

On top of this, we don't just need people getting jobs in STEM subjects, we need a population who have a broad knowledge of, and respect for, scientific understanding. If children aren't taught science to an adequate level then the country, and the world, suffers for it.

The reason you don't push students into being lawyers is because there are more law students graduating than there are open jobs for them.

Any market, STEM or not, where there is a lack of unqualified workers and more job opportunities than graduates should have programs that encourage students to consider pursuing those careers.

Would you rather have a society full of too many engineers or that of too many lawyers?

1. Labor finitism: there's a fairly fixed amount of labor that society will pay money for, and us proles are doomed to compete against each other for it, in what ultimately becomes a race to the bottom.

2. Labor progressivism: technical and scientific progress will free up resources for more interesting and higher-yield work, and make everyone richer. To quote Keynes, the rising tide will lift all boats.

In a labor-finitist world, the worker's job is to extract as much payment out of capital-holders (for as little work) as possible. The labor-finitist world is almost Malthusian in its ruthless cruelty. In a labor-progressivist world, it's actually good to do the grunt work quickly, so you can graduate to more interesting stuff.

Of course, reality is somewhere between these two extremes. In the very short term, it's labor finitist: people have to formally "create" jobs. In the long term, it's labor progressivist; the labor pool does expand, with its rate being an open question. The open question pertains to the 0.1-20 years range over which we actually make career decisions. It's like Efficient Market Hypothesis, whose truth comes down to "what time frame?" (Over very-short or very-long timeframes, EMH is demonstrably not true for well-known reasons. Over typical timeframes, it is.)

If labor finitism is true, then we want to drive young people far away from whatever we do. Given that the software industry is already a horrible place to work, just being honest about the low autonomy and shitty legacy code and arrogance of non-technical management-- also, the fact that, even though our salaries might look good on paper, we make about 1/5 of what we should given the bullshit we have to put up with-- ought to be enough. We just need to counteract the Googley propaganda about this career involving actual autonomy and respect.

If labor progressivism is true, then since science and technology are the driving forces of that progress, we want as many people in those industries as have the talent, because that will bring us out of scarcity faster.

It's unclear which is the case, though. Labor progressivism is true in the underlying "real world", but this society is littered with legacy power relationships that, I'm afraid, make labor finitism a lot more accurate. Just look at the terrorist attack that has been inflicted on the academic job market for the past 25 years if you don't believe that.

If it isn't, then no amount of driving is going to help.