Are Stem Jobs the Answer?

The Good
"Workers with associate's degrees in STEM fields out-earn 63 percent of people who have bachelor's degrees in other fields. Almost half of workers with bachelor's degrees in STEM fields out-earn workers with Ph.D.'s in other fields according to the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce" STEM is the new Liberal Arts where graduates end up in many less academically careers.

The Bad
But America might very well have plenty of STEM specialists already. So many, in fact, that the job prospects for STEM graduates are actually pretty dismal. Perhaps that’s the point. See 1. Do We Really Have a Scientist Shortage? 2.Stem labor shortages Microsoft report distorts!

The Ugly Truth If  you are good at STEM stuff and are willing to study more than the non-STEM majors, you should Go For It because that is where you best job will be. STEM graduates are often are our best and brightest. Many used to major in Liberal Arts and go to work for investment houses on Wall Street, no more. Stem majors do more work, earn higher wages. See The skills gap is phony period, Skills  Shortages Manufacturing Overblown and Most New Jobs Don't Require College Education, Do we nee more science majors?

Abundant world-wide supply means wages will fall. 
Bill Gates has been touring the U.S. in early 2013 lobbying for newly minted U.S. foreign college graduates to get visas to stay, work and maybe settle. This increase in supply will push wages down and because all new graduates know new technology and often bring more drive to the job, they will force workers with twenty years of experience to change careers. The useful life of programmers is dropping fast and those devoting time and money to education themselves should be aware of this.

Siemens Seeks Apprentices from the Rest of Europe
"... After graduating from the National Technical University of Athens [a five year prestige's school], Vlasios Ntizos," "..., is one of 29 European youths who were chosen by Germany’s biggest engineering company."  He beat out 1,000 Greek student applicants. Siemens had 45,000 applicants for this year's apprenticeship class.

"Siemens spends about €177 million ($222 million) each year on apprentices (they get paid roughly $1,000 a month), with 1,350 trainees and students passing through its facilities in Berlin. A regular apprentice costs as much as €100,000 for a three-year program, which Siemens hopes fosters a sense of loyalty that will last a lifetime." Similar to a U.S. College Education

"The country’s [Germany] vocational education system—built on a centuries-old guild tradition that combines state-funded classroom sessions with practical training by companies who pay apprentices modest salaries—offers more than half a million high school graduates a year of hands-on education in hundreds of professions as a respected alternative to a university degree. The system has helped keep youth unemployment at 7.9 percent, the lowest rate in Europe."  [U.S. with four times the population would need a 2,000,000 student apprenticeship program to compete.] Edited 1/30/13 

Germany’s vaunted dual-education system is its latest export hit"

Epilogue: The Cost of a Misdirected Education

My Keene State College 1990 Economics 101 class was given data showing that average college graduates make much more than high school graduates. They had seen it before. That is why most of them were in college. Then I showed them median income of college graduates. They were disappointed with the lower number. I explained how some really high earners make the mean higher than the median. Then I showed them data indicating the bottom quarter of college graduates earned about the same income as high school's top-quarter. They became more unsettled. Then I gave them the lowest income statistic of all, the median income for those with just a bachelor's degree. Those with higher degrees were left off. From the back of the room I heard  "you mean they are ripping us off.  

I pleased to report that the Great Recession has mass media coverage of the decreasing economic return from a college education has substantially increased. But like any unwelcome news, parents, teachers, and politicians will be the last to react properly. The collateral damage has been immense. It will continue to be so unless some responsible mass media helps makes an educational system that improves the well-being of all students . Here is the collateral damage of our love affair with college.

College graduates who can't find a job and dropouts owe over 1.3 trillion dollars in outstand college loans and are finding they do not have the skills to earn a positive economic return from their investment.

Disgruntle U.S. graduates and dropouts whose needs were not met by their investment of many years in school and from whom society receive little support. In fact, many need society's support.

The Tiger Mom social stress has spread to many academically oriented suburban communities. See Reforms to ease students stress divide a new jersey school district. 12/26/15

The overly academic approach used by most high schools originally had a negative social affected on less advantaged students. Now it is showing up in middle class males.

But some took the path less traveled. 

My fourteen year-old nephews announced he wanted to attend a neighboring carpentry high school. Four years of getting up early and getting a ride from his father to grandmother's house where he waited for the school bus to take him to a new, strange school. At fourteen! After school he walked the two miles home from grandma's house. No one advised him what to do! He just didn't like academics and went with vocational education. Now a successful small contractor, his biggest problem is convincing his wife they don't need a new Volvo every two years.

His younger brother was much more academic, but found school a waste of his lazy but conniving mind. He dropped out early in the 9th grade and eventually went into the military. After serving in Iraq he began looking for a good job in corrections until he found a unionized one working for public corrections. No one told him to augment his substantial; public retirement plan with a 401K plan. He just did it. He also bought car mortgage insurance a year before not being able to pay said liability. 

Epitaph: Many of our best and brightest did make a proper investment in college and there are enough of them to maintain our nation's well-being. Imagine a country where the school system maximizes all kinds of all Special Intelligence rather than maximizing the math/verbal intelligence of everyone including those with whose learning disabilities requires special attention. Edited 1/30/13

Obama Wants to Move US Up
Source Early Years  Education The Economist Magazine 2/9/13

"Finland on top (it scored direly in the OECD study). At least 98% of children aged five or six are in pre-school education there. Finland also dominates the overall league tables for education performance, so perhaps the scope for improvement is slight. Other enthusiastic providers of pre-school education like Sweden, Norway, France and Belgium and Denmark do not score particularly highly on attainment in later education, whereas Japan, which combines early-years provision with a fiercely competitive exam culture, excels. So too does South Korea, where the state until now has provided under half of pre-school places. So pre-school is no panacea, says Andreas Schleicher, who oversees the OECD’s big triennial PISA report on educational attainment. “Drilling children” in early years does not lead automatically to learning gains, he says." Chart from The Economist.

Editor's Note: I'd trade two more years of early childhood education for two less years of high school in a second. Academic kids not mature enough to leave home for college could go to junior college or work for a while, maybe as workers in a vast public/private pre-school industry.

The Great Reversal in the Demand for Skill and Cognitive Tasks 3/13   source

"Many researchers have documented a strong, ongoing increase in the demand for skills in the decades leading up to 2000. In this paper, we document a decline in that demand in the years since 2000, even as the supply of high education workers continues to grow."