We should compare to the unemployment rate among college graduates (which is usually, but not always, lower than the total unemployment rate), because you can't call someone an engineer or a scientist until they have a BA or BS. I don't know how it compares in this particular recession.
I know that chemistry employment is directly proportional to manufacturing activity. And manufacturing activity in the US has been declining for quite some time.
I don't think that students are motivated by jobs in the field until high school, but then there is some motivation. The sidebar on that article addresses that in the last paragraph. It approaches the idea from the goal of increasing people in STEM career, but it is valid. And the lack of attractive STEM careers has an (downward) effect on the motivation of the high school teachers.
And I am a little reluctant to count all employment as equal. A PhD in ultra-cold physics is not using his full skill set restarting computers and resetting people's passwords and hooking up printers. Web page design with a PhD in physical chemistry provides another example from my personal experience. Basically the PhD in those particular situations was a long personal growth experience with no relationship to the eventual field of employment. Those people would be counted among the employed... and even in a STEM field, but the training is still a mismatch.
The article mentions how many physicists and mathematicians were employed by Wall Street firms to do stock market modeling. That was definitely a compromise option that my fellow students discussed (and not as a good goal, except for the money).
I've been and when I try to go back, will still be one of those people that can't find work in a STEM field. That's why the chip on my shoulder is so huge (perhaps larger than it needs to be). If I am going to compromise by teaching STEM, I HAVE to fix that chip, but that might take a while...
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timeasmymeasure
I have lots of thoughts, not all of which have to do with my rant.
Date: 2009-07-11 02:24 am (UTC)I know that chemistry employment is directly proportional to manufacturing activity. And manufacturing activity in the US has been declining for quite some time.
I don't think that students are motivated by jobs in the field until high school, but then there is some motivation. The sidebar on that article addresses that in the last paragraph. It approaches the idea from the goal of increasing people in STEM career, but it is valid. And the lack of attractive STEM careers has an (downward) effect on the motivation of the high school teachers.
And I am a little reluctant to count all employment as equal. A PhD in ultra-cold physics is not using his full skill set restarting computers and resetting people's passwords and hooking up printers. Web page design with a PhD in physical chemistry provides another example from my personal experience. Basically the PhD in those particular situations was a long personal growth experience with no relationship to the eventual field of employment. Those people would be counted among the employed... and even in a STEM field, but the training is still a mismatch.
The article mentions how many physicists and mathematicians were employed by Wall Street firms to do stock market modeling. That was definitely a compromise option that my fellow students discussed (and not as a good goal, except for the money).
I've been and when I try to go back, will still be one of those people that can't find work in a STEM field. That's why the chip on my shoulder is so huge (perhaps larger than it needs to be). If I am going to compromise by teaching STEM, I HAVE to fix that chip, but that might take a while...