Why Are Fewer People Studying Science and Engineering?

I went to New York City to talk to a bunch of press people about science education and the need for more graduates with STEM degrees. It was part of a campaign I'm doing with Emerson, an engineering company that helps make the world work.

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[RachelandJun]

I don't think schools do a good enough job motivating students to learn. I had absolutely no desire to learn anything until I was already half way through university and finally figured out it could be interesting. I think that people not caring about science comes a lot from a failure to show kids early on how awesome it can be. :/

[shanimarissa]

I'm an Engineer.... Here's my (rant-alisious) story. It's F-ing long. Sorry.

I sucked at math and science in high school.  Well ... maybe more accurately... I had the attention span of a gnat in high school and therefore sucked at all of my academics.  

I would guess that this is common for a lot of teenagers - but therein lies the problem.  If you did poorly in high school it does not mean that you don't have an affinity for or interest in STEM professions - but the doors to those professions are somewhat closed in your face as a result of the poor grades.

To get into Engineering (a few years after high school graduation) I had to go to a community college for a year and upgrade all the pre-requisite classes to meet the entrance requirements.  When I applied, I still didn't get in, because - you know - competition.  So I had to enrol in General Arts and Science for two semesters and THEN reapply to the Faculty of Engineering.

When I finally got in I was so relieved to finally be on my path to a career.  Only to soon be crying myself to sleep every night because the work-load was insane, the math was outrageous, the labs were intense and the pressure to perform was completely overwhelming (didn't help that I also had to waitress at nights).  The only way to get good at STEM type subjects is to practice solving equations endlessly - and that shit is time consuming (and frustrating)!

Semester after semester I watched my class-sizes dwindle.  Very few of us made it out - not because we were smarter, or more dedicated, or desperate - but because (I think) people began to wonder if the juice was worth the squeeze.  Is this what work-life was going to be like??  Do I want to live like this for ever??

Now I now the TRUTH (more on that later) ... but one of the HUGE problems (at least at my university) was that there was NO ONE to support us through this horrible time.  The professors didn't let us know that "it gets better" and  there was no compassion or support for those who fell behind (if you fail one class, it would set you back two semesters for pre-requisites).  I remember feeling so alone. So helpless. 

THE TRUTH - in the end - 12 years of working later - it was worth it.... working as an Engineer is seriously rewarding work (in several aspects - not just money) and it is not nearly as crazy from a workload perspective as it was in university.  All the outrages math, ridiculous equations and insane amount of material - I use maybe 10% of it in "real-life".  BUT HERE IS THE KICKER - without the 90% of material that I don't use in my everyday work, the 10% I do use would be useless.  I needed to learn that 90% to do my job, I just don't need to use it regularly.

I will say - as there are a lot of young people commenting - the first few years of working as an Engineer wasn't all sunshine and roses.  It was hard too.  More so from the point of view that you realize once you get a job that you are the bottom of the barrel and you have to earn your stripes before you get cool, complex projects.  And, in retrospect that is a REALLY good thing, because you need to develop more practical skills before you can take on the world.  But I do remember the first few years being a bit hard to swallow - I was all like "I'm a brilliant engineer and I just survived the most hellish experience of my life and I can take on anything" and then I'd get to spec valves, or write a procedure instead of leading the multi-million dollar expansion.

Alas - 12 years later, I run my own consulting firm and really enjoy both my work and my life.  I am incredibly happy that I made the career choice I did and would recommend it to anyone (with all the caveats outlined above)

MY SOLUTIONS; As an engineer I am wired to try and fix ... 

- Maybe there should be a "pre-med" for STEM professions - ease students into it a bit
- Maybe the course materials should be reviewed and pared down to lessen the overwhelm
- Maybe STEM professions should be longer-term degrees (7 years instead of 4/5)
- Maybe there should be STEM student support staff to help students through the overwhelm

MY RECOMMENDATIONS TO YOUNG PEOPLE: 

- if you are interested in STEM type stuff, but are struggling now, it's totally OK.  You can find your way around that (sort of like me with upgrading).  You have to be patient with yourself when you are learning something new.  When we see a baby take a few steps - we clap like mad - excited at their achievement.  When they try again and fall we don't say "STUPID BABY!!" - we clap like mad.  TRYING DESERVES APPLAUSE!

Alright ... enough now.  I'm embarrassed to post this.

[prag]

Anyone who says that people don't study engineering anymore has never been to India.

[jacquelinegordon]

My sister is in STEM at a prestigious university. At least part of the problem is that the STEM field is not about helping students work through the difficult. It is instead focused on "weeding out the weak." The system sacrifices possible engineers, possible scientists just for the sake of ridiculous pride and prestige. The way that STEM fields are structured at the university level are so utterly counterproductive to society, and we need change there.

[thegardenofeatin]

Math class. Fewer people are studying science and engineering because of the utter failure that is math education. Algebra and calculus classes are approached from a math teacher point of view, focusing on completion and exactness rather than practical understanding or application. This turns so many students off that they had to create liberal arts departments just to hold them all.

[aarOuOn]

You know what's really cool? That my brother can be a mechanical engineer--an incredibly under-saturated field, yet SOMEHOW, he can't find a job after literal years of searching, simply because every job out there seems to need 4+ years of experience. Now, a perfectly qualified engineer has left the field to become a professional tutor. The employers are digging themselves into a hole because they're too cheap to train new employees.

[Elricboy]

Being in an engineering school right now, 90% of the people around me wouldnt have come here if it wasnt for ppl/parents pushing down the fact that this field would give you a good career.

[Catsandpixels]

this video literally changed my life. i have a liberal arts degree and i had no idea what to do for a job. because of this video, i started coding and now i work for a big company as a web developer. thanks hanks

[fingersandthumbs]

It's absolutely teachers. I loved physics when reading on it on my own. As soon as I got into the classroom and the teacher clearly didn't care about making us like it, I really started to hate it. 

[VamLoveAndKisses]

So, my whole life I've been told not to do a humanities subject because it won't get me anywhere. Now I'm reading in the comments that those who studied a STEM subject are also struggling just as badly. So...We're all screwed? Okeydoke, beer anyone?

[lazynoodle]

Government: "we need more engineers"
School system:"okay we'll encourage it more"
School system: "let's make the STEM major harder"

[spinningincirclezzz]

I wanted to be an artist when I was younger, but being constantly told I would get nowhere made me...give up on it. Now, I'm working hard and getting good. I'll pursue art, and I dont care what other people say Anymore. I love it

[notthatplatypus]

I feel like a lot of high schoolers shy away from pursuing STEM fields in college because of the high school curriculum. It's almost expected that students take AP classes, and with several college level classes on top of others, all crammed together, it's exhausting. I know a lot of people pursuing arts and humanities solely because they need the break and need a chance to relax. I don't have any AP's this year, but the honors classes I'm in tire me out enough to make me want to pursue an art I like in college instead of a science. I love chemistry, and would love to possibly major in it, but it's just too tiring. If we changed the way college prep in high schools is approached, maybe we could get more STEM students.

[kunairuto]

Here's another reason (or more accurately an addition to) why less people are pursuing STEM majors: as time goes on the amount of information required to make worthwhile contributions to the fields becomes greater, which makes it even harder to study. For an analogy, imagine the sciences as a ladder. As more discoveries are made, that ladder gets longer, and subsequently becomes more difficult to climb to the top.

[hornchief]

For someone in high school right now, I think the main issue is that schools don't encourage learning at all. Most of the kids in my school that have failing grade is mostly because they don't care about learning or feel they'll never need to learn anything they're being taught. And we barely learn anything new each year, it's mostly review for half of the school year then learning new stuff.  Hell, I think I learnt more stuff from the Internet than I have from school just because I didn't have someone slowing me down to review what I already knew. The big issue is they need to make learning seem more important at a young age and they should be encouraging us to learn beyond just the classroom.

[monicatorres]

My roommate and I were talking about this the other day. How some majors are considered "dumb majors" and you are told that if you don't get into STEM then you are going to get no where in life. I am studying computer science because it actually interests me and I love solving problems but I see a lot of fellow Cs majors struggling because they don't have the same passion and I hate seeing people waste time and money on something they will hate for the rest of their life. We really need to start encouraging people to just do what they have a passion for and do their best to make it work.

[nathanschwartz]

you want to know why less students are graduating with stem degrees? because the public school system puts too much emphasis on memorization and passing a test than actual creativity and learning. students are taught in school that they only have to pass the test. their limits are not tested they are not challenged to come up with the solutions to complex problems they are told to memorize facts and recite them for a grade. im not saying the school system is failing us, im saying i think there is too much emphasis on passing a test. the general skeleton is there it just needs to be changed to cultivate our next scientists. imagine from the time you were a child you were taught how to paint a fence. and you got really good at it so you were taught how to paint grass or something and so on and so forth, and you got really good at painting the parts of the picture but unless someone shows you the full beautiful picture or shows you the paintings of the greats like da vinci, michellangelo, etc.. you're never going to understand how beautiful and complex a painting can be. i think that is whats going on in today's education system in our math and sciences departments. 

[sarahcostello]

To take the whole "STEM is hard" mindset and take it in a totally different direction:

I've found that people who are considered "smart" by modern Western standards are expected to go into STEM fields. Which goes two ways - one, it causes people who have not been told all their lives that they are exceptionally smart, but are still perfectly capable of becoming scientists and engineers (and good ones at that) are told that they're not good enough to go into STEM, or that it'll be too hard for them, so they don't. This equates to fewer people going into those fields based on intimidation factor and underestimation of their abilities alone.

On the other hand, there are people like me who have been told all their lives that they are smart but just don't WANT to go into STEM. People look at my grades and my work ethic and tell me I should be a doctor, or an engineer, or a rocket scientist, and are taken aback when I tell them I don't want to. Math and science just aren't my thing. I'm not necessarily bad at them - they just generally don't interest me. It's not that I don't like solving hard problems, because I do; it's just that I like solving different KINDS of problems. But I'm kind of sick of being told I'm wasting my intelligence just because I like language and history rather than math and science. I'm not going to dedicate my life to something I dislike just because it will make the world think I'm smarter. 

TL;DR: STEM subjects are considered the "smart" ones, and that mindset hurts everyone. 

[smokingowly]

Problems are hard, eating icecream is easy and more tasty

[Edu]

computer science student here, yeah, it's very very very hard, but when u get your software running without a bug, it's a blessing from odin haha