Re-evaluating the allure of STEM majors reveals core principles to be pursued by all

As current college students, the prospects of our future job markets always appear hazy and daunting. Lucky for us, to figure out the correct course of study, we can rewatch President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, during which he prophetically announced the “skills for the new economy.”

What, exactly, are these skills? The first two, “problem solving” and “critical thinking” come straight out of a junior high school course description.

The following four, however, were a tad more specific: “Science, technology, engineering and math.”

Specific, but certainly not surprising. He included those same four — in that order — in his 2013 State of the Union. The employability of these “STEM” fields has gained cliche status among educators, policy makers and some students. Despite this, a thoroughly scientific approach to the economic prospects of these fields reveals the shaky evidence behind the president’s claim. 

To be sure, more college students do need to be better educated in mathematics and the hard sciences. More students need to be better educated in everything. But by singling out these fields without mention of any discipline in the humanities, the fine arts or, presumably, the social sciences, Obama establishes the false claim that STEM knowledge is disproportionately imperative to employers and, therefore, the nation.  

It’s certainly trendy and even intuitive to assume the major publicity of technological firms from Silicon Valley to Singapore, coupled with the expanding market for medical care, would deliver computer scientists, health professionals and laboratory employees boundless employment opportunities as the 21st century progresses. 

But as any scientist or mathematician knows, intuitions and trends always give way to hard data.  

If STEM jobs really conform to high-demand skills, one would expect to see both a rise in compensation for employees with these credentials and a comparatively low unemployment rate. But according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute published in April 2013, “For every two students that U.S. colleges graduate with STEM degrees, only one is hired into a STEM job.” What is more, wages in these fields have “remained flat,” paralleling the experiences of workers in nearly every sector of the economy. 

A concurrent report from Georgetown University found that while the overall unemployment for recent college graduates stood at 7.9 percent, students recently graduating with degrees in “computer science and mathematics” faced a 9.1 percent unemployment rate, students in engineering faced a 7.4 percent rate and students in “health” fields faced a slightly more encouraging 6.1 percent. Clearly, these numbers don’t support the idea that STEM majors are the sole path to employment — even if policymakers continue to do so.  

That certainly does not mean that students should stop studying in these fields, nor does it mean universities should stop supporting them. It goes without saying that careers in these fields are necessary for society and rewarding for students. And an education in these fields has been and will continue to be an excellent way for students to develop those critical thinking and problem-solving skills necessary for employment in any field — a fact corroborated by better employment prospects of STEM graduates applying to non-STEM jobs than other graduates applying for the same jobs.   

What this does mean, however, is that neither universities nor students nor presidents of the United States ought to value certain career trajectories by their supposedly high demand at any given time. 

The reason is fairly commonsensical. If the economy today demands more health professionals and chemical engineers, there is no reason to believe those same conditions will apply in four years when the incoming freshman class completes its course trajectories.

Moreover, if the new economy will be as globalized, innovative and disruptive as all the buzzwords make it sound, then we presumably can’t project with sufficient accuracy what jobs will be in demand in half a decade — let alone develop curricula for the technologies that don’t yet exist.

The type of STEM advocacy we should advance, then, is not one that disincentivizes students from studying the dusty old humanities, arts and social sciences in lieu of chic STEM fields, but one that incorporates technological literacy across the curriculum. If STEM graduates fare better in the competition for jobs outside their field because of the diverse range of skills imparted through designing experiments and analyzing data, then clearly these are assets to anyone.

In short, students studying everything from art history to artificial intelligence ought to select their courses by consulting their curiosity, not their career prospects.

Maybe then it won’t just be us philosophy majors answering the age-old question, “So what are you going to do with a degree like that?” 

Write to Simon at spb40@pitt.edu.