I've goofed on some of my STEM education opinions. I will stand by my statement that a big reason for STEM emphasis is the vendors' goal of selling tech stuff to schools but there is a shortage of STEM professionals. The IEEE maintains wages have been stagnant for 20 years as evidence of no shortage but apparently complex factors suppress wages despite a shortage.
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Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education.
The
more I look at the actions of Administration, Politicians, Researchers, and
other “leaders” the less inclined I am to believe they convey the “whole
truth”. The Gates Foundation has so
heavily funded so many organizations that truth about education issues is on
its way to non-existent.
I
have a lot more faith in finding truth in the words of retirees, who were
experts in their field back in the day.
They have no current vested interest in individual advancement, which so
characterizes many “education leaders” climbing the totem pole today.
In
pursuit of some STEM truth, I put forth the following words from a retiree on
STEM and education:
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Regarding
stem, one concern of mine is an overemphasis on "job training" …..
and the de-emphasis of general education, subjects like history and
ethics which I view as essential I suspect are lacking.
Are
there enough qualified engineers in the US? Here is my view.
My
last job in xxxx County was at a high tech company, xxxx, where I was a VP of
engineering for a group of engineers, software, hardware etc. It was
interesting that there were very few Caucasians in my group and no
females. I participated in the hiring and I can tell you that there was
no intent to discriminate. We had many Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans,
Pakistani, Afghani, etc. Not a single Mexican, but a few South Americans. Almost
all hires were American citizens. We would get very few Caucasian
applications. I don't understand the lack of Caucasians. There are more
Mexicans in xxxx county than whites. We used all kinds of methods to try to
get candidates, but job openings could take 6 months or more to
fill.
I
can tell you that there are definitely not enough qualified engineers in xxxx
County. To solve this, you can train more (STEM growth), bring in offshore
engineers (xxxx company has done this), move work offshore (xxxx company does
this in India), hire from outside the area (expensive and difficult because of
the housing costs in xxxx), or hire from competitors (wage inflation, xxxx
company doesn't do much of this for a variety of reasons). It is
clear to me that there are not enough engineers in southern CA to meet the
needs of industry.
I participated
in offshoring to India and found it very difficult.
I
was involved in a program to demonstrate to local high school kids what our
jobs were like. When the kids saw engineers working at a terminal in a
cube, or even in the lab, and talked with them about what they do, the response
was not positive. I am not a salesman and it was not my intent to
influence either way. But I was shocked and even a bit offended at
the response.
My
brother’s son graduated from an Ivy League School with an engineering
major/economics minor degree. He and ALL
of his friends took jobs on Wall Street. He is out for about 5 years now,
works in xxxx city, owns a nice home and is involved with trading natural
gas. I don't know if he is happy, but he is doing very well
economically.
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The
above is one knowledgeable honest voice about STEM.
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