One data point - a co-op student of yours - is not reflective of STEM as a whole. As this Sydney Morning Herald article points out, STEM includes fields like biology, which don't have crazy wages.
As an analogy, consider someone fresh out of high school who plays for a professional sports team and is paid $5 million per year. That 'crazy wage' for a 19 year old does not mean that all professional athletes are well paid.
What do you think "shortage" means? Because my understanding agrees with bloomer's. There is no shortage of Volvo V60s simply because new ones aren't available for $10,000. But the calls for STEM training sound very much like that sort of complaint.
While it's true that (nearly) "Every industry always tries to market itself", those are market forces.
"Extra-market forces" would be like the government including two years of plumbing training for all high school graduates. That's a non-market way to drive the cost for normal plumbing jobs down. (Note that this means other topics would be covered less.)
Similarly, the government might greatly increase the number of $10,000 scholarships for CS majors. This would almost certainly result in relatively more people with CS training, compared with other fields. The prediction is that this results in a higher supply of programmers relative to demand, and thus a lower salary.
A market solution is to have companies including training as part of hiring new employees. Companies don't like this because it places the expense on them. It also increases risk in two ways. First, someone may decide after 9 months that this isn't the career for them. They still get paid for those 9 months. Second, after the training is over, the employee may decide to take that training and go elsewhere for better wages. Calls for increased STEM funding can reasonably seen as a way to push the risks onto the student, and onto the government ("socialized", rather than "free market").
There is no need to reference rent seeking for this interpretation, which I believe is also the standard interpretation.
>As this Sydney Morning Herald article points out, STEM includes fields like biology, which don't have crazy wages.
Correct. The comment was clearly directed at the programming profession.
>That 'crazy wage' for a 19 year old does not mean that all professional athletes are well paid.
That's true but unlike professional athletics, programmers are paid well on average.
>"Extra-market forces" would be like the government including two years of plumbing training for all high school graduates. That's a non-market way to drive the cost for normal plumbing jobs down.
I really don't understand this argument. Government isn't trying to get people into STEM in order to drive down STEM wages. That is not how government works. That is not how politics works. This is not a good metaphor to understand the motivation. Governments will always have programs and policies to move people into specific industries or move people out of specific industries. That usually stems from good-intentions, values of the population (Armenia loves Chess, and therefore teaches Chess to kids in primary school), and maybe for some economic, ideological or political reasons.
>Similarly, the government might greatly increase the number of $10,000 scholarships for CS majors. This would almost certainly result in relatively more people with CS training, compared with other fields.
And that would be preferable to what the US (and Canadian) government is doing - mainly underwriting huge loans (or subsiding tuition) for majors that have low probability in resulting in a good paying job.
Trust me, if government wasn't involved in post-secondary education, you would see an even larger move to CS because no bank would ever underwrite a student loan for a 4-year history degree.
>The prediction is that this results in a higher supply of programmers relative to demand, and thus a lower salary.
OK. This is basic econ. Having said that, the math isn't so straight forward. Sometimes increasing the pool of engineers can also increase the market for engineers because more companies relocate to the area, or more companies get started by those engineers.
>Companies don't like this because it places the expense on them.
All employees need some training because no business is identical. But OK, I understand the point you're making though I think it is nonsensical.
For example, you're not seriously expecting a business to provide a 4-year degree program to train their engineers? That would be like building a house by grabbing a guy off the street and training them on how to build a house. If a company needs programmers to work on their software they will advertise for professionals with those skill-sets. This is why they pay good money for those professionals.
You wrote "The comment was clearly directed at the programming profession."
No, it is not clear. The SMH article was on STEM. The thread concerns STEM. The IEEE position you doubted is (almost certianly) about STEM (see https://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-... ). You presented a data point about programming, which is part of STEM. Nowhere did you say that the data point was only meant to be restricted to programming.
Even then, you defined it as those tech companies which pay high wages. There are plenty of tech companies which do not pay high wages. (Especially if your definition of "tech" includes things like "biotech", though I know that's not what you mean.)
Here's another IEEE piece, this one a podcast interview (with transcript) from "Techwise Conversations" titled "Why Bad Jobs-or No Jobs-Happen to Good Workers" from 2012, at https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/at-work/tech-careers/why-b... . It concerns Peter Cappelli's book 'Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs: The Skills Gap and What Companies Can Do About It.'
You ask "You're not seriously expecting a business to provide a 4-year degree program to train their engineers?" That's of course silly. A 4-year liberal arts degree in computer science is different than job training. Few companies will require me to learn a foreign language, or take a fine arts course, as part of becoming a software developer. Or, as you point out, take a history course. Which is all fine. Colleges aren't trade schools. (And I think we need more trade schools.)
Instead, I'll quote that podcast:
> Well, the employers, if you look at what the hiring managers are saying and what they’re looking for, they’re not, for the most part, hiring people out of college anyway or out of high school. What they want is three to five years’ experience. So the shortages that they report, the difficulty hiring, are for people who have quite specific skills, and those skills are work-experience based.
So no, most employers are NOT looking for the equivalent of someone of a 4-year degree in the first place, so they aren't going to pay for someone's college degree.
In fact, that podcast concurs with my point, which you think is incredible:
> the shortfall is in giving people experience, taking people out of school who are bright and capable, and giving them the basics and getting them up to speed in these work-based skills. And the problem is, employers a generation ago used to do this routinely; now, virtually none of them are willing to do it.
Cappelli makes the argument (which I hadn't heard before):
> the craziest thing about high tech is the Silicon Valley model, which sort of became dominant in the U.S., replaced the model where IT people used to be groomed and trained from within. And the Silicon Valley model of hiring just in time for what you need came about largely because they were able to poach talent away from these bigger companies that had spent a lot of time training and developing people.
What I (and hprotagonist) wrote here is nothing exotic or abnormal in the discussions about the "myth" of the need for more STEM training. Nor does it ignore basic economics like you think it does.
Since you are so incredulous that the IEEE (or at least articles in the IEEE) can have a position which can be summarized as "there is no shortage and certainly no skills gap; employers just won't pay you what you're worth and people won't work for peanuts." , and yet it's so easy for me to find IEEE articles making that point, suggests that you need to take a closer look at what the IEEE has written on the topic before making such a blanket response, or characterizing our viewpoints as fundamentally flawed from an economics perspective.
>No, it is not clear. The SMH article was on STEM. The thread concerns STEM.
Uh huh. I would think it would be clear after my response, and yet you won't simply accept it and respond to that.
Just to be extra clear so I don't have suffer through another multi-paragraph response where you gaslight me about what I meant to say: I agree that there is no shortage of science majors. We are probably graduating too many biologists, chemists and physicists for the market or academia to take in. There are certain engineering fields that are probably saturated as well.
I can't say the same about CS. For one thing CS is a very flexible profession. Because it gives you such a good mental model of computing, you can transfer CS knowledge into multitude of domains. Regarding the demand side, the fact that bootcamps exist and that graduates of those bootcamps can actually earn a living suggests to me there is more demand for programmers than you make thing. There is no such thing as an engineering bootcamp, or a physics bootcamp, or a physician bootcamp. The fact the big tech companies (but even startups and mid-to-large companies) keep throwing around huge salaries and bonuses is another data point. The fact people here think that a six figure starting salary after a 4 year degree is perfectly normal is another data point. The fact that politicians and non-professionals have taken up a mantra of 'learn to code' is another data point.
HN title: "Not enough jobs for science graduates challenges STEM hype"
hprotagonist: "it has historically been very challenging to find work as a "straight" biologist ... I think STEM is horseshit is that it is so broadly defined as to be without meaning"
me: "The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage"
hprotagonist: "even IEEE's response was "there is no shortage and certainly no skills gap"
You: "That cannot be IEEE's response"
(I later provide a couple of links to IEEE-hosted articles which concur with what we are saying. Furthermore, you now agree that there is 'no shortage of science majors', which is the S of STEM.)
bloomer: "It is the same one that RAND ... gave when commissioned by congress to determine whether their was a “STEM shortage.”"
you: "The crazy wages that tech companies pay aren't a data point?"
me: "One data point ... is not reflective of STEM as a whole"
If it's so obvious that the thread switched away from STEM onto CS, then why did both bloomer and I get confused? Instead of me 'gaslighting' you, I think a better description is that you 'sidetracked' the conversation, while I tried to steer it back to the main thread.
Jesus. I qualified my statements over the last two responses. Can you move on already?
I would also appreciate if you didn't continue to distort my position by attributing quotes or phrasing to me that I didn't argue, and I don't believe.
>I think a better description is that you 'sidetracked' the conversation, while I tried to steer it back to the main thread.
Fine. But we have no actual disagreement about there not being a lack of supply of scientists and even engineers. I conceded that point, though 'concede' is too strong of a statement because I never argued otherwise. I live in a university town and half the people in my social circle are some form of PostDoc or PhD student/grad in the sciences. I can see how hard it is for a Math PhD to get a tenure-track position.
>(I later provide a couple of links to IEEE-hosted articles which concur with what we are saying. Furthermore, you now agree that there is 'no shortage of science majors', which is the S of STEM.)
It wasn't that I disbelieved IEEE, but rather it was an expression of surprise that a IEEE would issue a nonsense statement like that. But I said that already, and you won't leave it alone. How many more times do I have to explain what I meant without your gas-lighting?
>If it's so obvious that the thread switched away from STEM onto CS, then why did both bloomer and I get confused?
And after the tedious clarification - what's your excuse now?
>FWIW, and not that it makes any difference, but:
I understand the word 'bootcamp' is used, but those 'bootcamps' are not there to train professional physicists or engineers. They are summer camps for students to get excited about the respective professions. But you know that, so why would you purposely be engaging in this equivocation? Why even bring it up as a point when you know it's red-herring.
I ask seriously. I made a point that there are no weeks-long courses to get you to be a professional scientist, and you went ahead and googled it, found programs for students which are nothing like programming bootcamps but you still decided to post that.
>There are bootcamps for physicians, but they are for practicing physicians to get training in a specific topic.
So nothing like bootcamps I referenced. Just like the other 'bootcamps' you used as a counter-example.
As an analogy, consider someone fresh out of high school who plays for a professional sports team and is paid $5 million per year. That 'crazy wage' for a 19 year old does not mean that all professional athletes are well paid.
What do you think "shortage" means? Because my understanding agrees with bloomer's. There is no shortage of Volvo V60s simply because new ones aren't available for $10,000. But the calls for STEM training sound very much like that sort of complaint.
While it's true that (nearly) "Every industry always tries to market itself", those are market forces.
"Extra-market forces" would be like the government including two years of plumbing training for all high school graduates. That's a non-market way to drive the cost for normal plumbing jobs down. (Note that this means other topics would be covered less.)
Similarly, the government might greatly increase the number of $10,000 scholarships for CS majors. This would almost certainly result in relatively more people with CS training, compared with other fields. The prediction is that this results in a higher supply of programmers relative to demand, and thus a lower salary.
A market solution is to have companies including training as part of hiring new employees. Companies don't like this because it places the expense on them. It also increases risk in two ways. First, someone may decide after 9 months that this isn't the career for them. They still get paid for those 9 months. Second, after the training is over, the employee may decide to take that training and go elsewhere for better wages. Calls for increased STEM funding can reasonably seen as a way to push the risks onto the student, and onto the government ("socialized", rather than "free market").
There is no need to reference rent seeking for this interpretation, which I believe is also the standard interpretation.