The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage – part 3

Article: The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage (Michael S Teitelbaum, The Atlantic, March 2014)

Michael Teitelbaum, and his book Falling Behind?: Boom, Bust, and the Global Race for Scientific Talent (pub March 2014), is the genesis of a number of recent articles questioning the ongoing race to increase the number of STEM graduates in the USA (and most countries in the world).

Teitelbaum believes these cries have ‘misallocated public and private resources by periodically expanding higher education in science and engineering beyond levels for which there were attractive carer opportunities’. His research claims we have been through five 10-15 year alarm/boom/bust cycles to date – the first three related to the Cold War need to better the Eastern Bloc, the last two related to globalisation and the rise of India/China. It is possible we would have hit a sixth cycle around 2007 but the global recession disrupted that.

This is the third article I have reviewed on this matter and the argument is becoming very familiar (ironic given this article starts out reminding us that STEM crisis alarmists are operating in an echo chamber). It goes some like like: a) if skills are in high demand then salaries would increase, b) there are currently 100-200% more students graduating in STEM majors than there are jobs, c) IT unemployment sits around 11.7% and d) amongst college educated information technology workers under 30, temporary workers from abroad comprise the large majority.

This line of thinking suggests that shortages are related to particular geographies (such as Silicon Valley or major regional hubs) or niche skills sets (such as social media, security, big data etc). Teitelbaum reminds us that college graduates employed in science and engineering occupations actually comprise only a small fraction of the national workforce (I think its about 5-6% in IT). The article points out that IT careers are unstable, have slow-growing wages and there is a high risk of jobs moving offshore. Doesn’t sound that rosy does it?

One thing that the articles do agree on is that the average performance of American K-12 students is fairly ordinary in international STEM testing. This article then counters that by saying the US is measuring a large volume of both very high and very low students so there is still sufficient numbers of students being produced (approx 33% of the world’s leading scientists come from the US). Tietelbaum recognises that

“science and engineering occupations are at the leading edge of economic competitiveness in an increasingly globalised world, and science and entering workforces of sufficient size and quality are essential for any 21st century economy to prosper.”

His main gripe is that there is no data to back up claims of a nationwide crisis in STEM and that this crisis truism is misallocating public funding and attention.

 

My thoughts:

At this stage I believe I am reading variations on the same article. Despite this I am still looking for answers on why large numbers of mid career IT workers are unemployed. Also, if economic data on graduate unemployment is demonstrating there is no STEM crisis then perhaps its time to turn out attention to STEM related K-12 performance. In short – I see true value in broadening students understanding of computational thinking, programming, logic and other STEM related fields at a young age however I do not expect this to translate directly into the number of Australian’s employed in STEM fields (as defined by government statistics). I’m still operating on the belief that we need to prepare a future generation for jobs that don’t exist yet – and that giving them a broad based education is the best way to do this.