Actually, Science can't fix the American economy

            Politicians and the news media keep telling me that what is happening on my Facebook news feed isn’t actually happening.  Whenever the high unemployment rate of recent college graduates comes up, we hear somebody saying that what the United States needs is more young people studying science, technology, engineering, and math, aka the STEM fields.  Politicians of both parties and countless journalists have cried out for more American students to earn degrees in STEM subjects.  President Obama even started the first White House Science Fair in an effort to encourage young students to study science.  Even Newt Gingrich’s implausible moon base idea went along with his effort to improve math and science education in the United States.

            Everybody from journalists to politicians to high school guidance counselors repeats the same refrain:  the country needs more scientists and mathematicians; study a STEM subject, and you’ll have a job.  So, why is my Facebook news feed filled with countless posts like, “Keep your fingers crossed for me!  After six months of waiting tables and volunteering, I finally have a job interview!” from friends of mine who have PhDs in STEM subjects?  Hold on.  Aren’t these guys supposed to be the ones in demand?

            Frank Bruni joins this misinformed chorus in his April 28, 2012 opinion piece in The New York Times entitled “The Imperiled Promise of College,” in which he discusses the problems recent college graduates have in finding good jobs.  Regarding young Americans in the workforce, he states:

The thing is, today’s graduates aren’t just entering an especially brutal economy. They’re entering it in many cases with the wrong portfolios. To wit: as a country we routinely grant special visas to highly educated workers from countries like China and India. They possess scientific and technical skills that American companies need but that not enough American students are acquiring.

Just about everybody with regular podium access is in agreement about why so many recent college graduates are unemployed – more just need to be STEM majors.  We are often told, STEM graduates have jobs and will fuel the economy to get better and better.  Problem is, they are completely wrong.  There is, in fact, no shortage of Americans with degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math.  No shortage at all. 

            I first suspected there was no shortage when I ordered a pizza my senior year of college, and it was delivered by a young man who graduated with a math degree the year before.  These days, I am almost ten years out of college, old enough that many of my friends have gotten advanced degrees in STEM fields.  Except for those who went into healthcare fields or who are teaching high school, almost all of them are either unemployed or greatly underemployed.  I have a friend who has a PhD in biochemistry and has been working as an unpaid intern in a lab in hopes that he’ll get a paid job soon.  I have another friend who went to an Ivy League university, then worked as a chemical engineer.  Last year she decided to go to pharmacy school after her employer cut everybody at the company back from 40 hours a week to 35.  Another friend has a PhD in physics has moved three times in the past five years following low paid temporary post doc that goes nowhere to the next low paid temporary post doc that goes nowhere.

            The shortage isn’t of qualified American STEM professionals.  The shortage is of good American STEM jobs.  But you certainly don’t have to take my word for it or listen to my anecdotal evidence.  Read “Into the Eye of the Storm:  Assessing the Evidence on Science and Engineering Education, Quality, and Workforce Demand” by Harold Salzman of Rutgers and B. Lindsay Lowell of Georgetown.  It available for free online and was (chillingly) published in 2007, before the recession.  To quote:

Analysis of the flow of students up through the S&E (author’s note:  Science & Engineering) pipeline, when it reaches the labor market, suggests the education system produces qualified graduates far in excess of demand:  S&E occupations make up only about one-twentieth of all workers, and each year there are more than three times as many S&E four-year college graduates as S&E job openings.

So, if there is no shortage of STEM professionals, why does everybody from my high school guidance counselor, to journalists, to politicians seem to think there is?  Why do they think that convincing students to enter STEM fields will solve a number of economic problems?  That is a riddle for the ages, but I will hazard a guess.  Practically all guidance counselors, politicians, and journalists do not have degrees in STEM fields themselves, nor do they work in STEM professions.  They, as a general group, don’t really know the realities of the STEM job market. 

            But the idea of encouraging science and technology sounds so good, doesn’t it?  What can’t science fix?!  Science fixed polio, why can’t it fix our economy too?  The idea is so simple, so possible, so positive, so doable, and (most importantly) so doable by somebody else.  It is so much easier to say “Just major in math, kids!” than to admit that no matter how hard they work and no matter what major they choose, many college graduates are never going to be able to find work relevant to their degrees.  Fixing the American economy is not going to be as simple as saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.” 

It is time that politicians and journalists wise up and realize that encouraging chemistry majors is not going to lower unemployment.  That is something my Facebook news feed could have showed them a long time ago.