I will preface this by saying I do not have a STEM degree, although I did take premed classes and hated every single one of them.
On topic: is the STEM PhD worth it? Or, is STEM worth it at all?
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/...charts/273339/
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/...it_really.html
http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2015/02/...ntent=20150227
From the NPR article: "Only one in five Ph.D.s in science, engineering and health end up with faculty teaching or research positions within five years of completing their degrees, according to the National Science Foundation." Only one in 10 biology PhDs will be able to obtain an academic job.Universities have continued to churn out Ph.D.s who, as postdocs, provide cheap labor for the campus labs that draw much-needed research funding, but are given little help in moving on to jobs in which they can teach or run their own labs.
The result? Biomedical postdocs — according to the National Institutes of Health, there may be as many as 68,000 of them — are clogging a job market that almost certainly can't absorb them all. A new report issued by the National Academy of Sciences and other groups recommend that universities and other institutions address it by reducing the number of postdocs they produce, raising starting salaries to a minimum of $50,000 and limiting postdoctoral service to a maximum of five years.
The document also calls on universities to tell their graduate students about the state of the job market and help them train for, and enter, alternative careers in such areas as science writing, science policy and consulting.
Have an undergraduate degree in a STEM field? 75 percent of people who have a degree in a STEM field don't have jobs in STEM occupations.
Is the STEM job advantage a myth?
Thoughts/questions? Thought this might be an interesting place to discuss this topic considering that there are a lot of people who post on these forums who are in school or are working in a STEM field.The claims about STEM shortages come from employers, along with their lobbyists and trade associations, claims Michael Teitelbaum, who a fellow in science policy at Harvard University and a senior advisor at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
The tech industry can benefit if Americans -- and more importantly -- politicians believe that America is falling behind in producing highly skilled workers. While claiming that there is a STEM shortage, industry groups have lobbied Congress to allow more foreign IT workers to work in the U.S.
"This is all about industry wanting to lower wages," Norman Matloff, a professor of computer science at the University of California at Davis, told the Chronicle of Higher Education.