Posted on 10/19/2011 5:32:36 PM PDT by Kaslin
Education is the key to the future: You've heard it a million times, and it's not wrong. Educated people have higher wages and lower unemployment rates, and better educated countries grow faster and innovate more than other countries.
But going to college is not enough. You also have to study the right subjects. And American students are not studying the fields with the greatest economic potential.
Over the past 25 years the total number of students in college has increased by about 50%. But the number of students graduating with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (the so-called STEM fields) has been flat.
Moreover, many of today's STEM graduates are foreign-born and taking their knowledge and skills back to their native countries. Consider computer technology. In 2009 the U.S. graduated 37,994 students with bachelor's degrees in computer and information science. This is not bad, but we graduated more students with computer science degrees 25 years ago.
The story is the same in other technology fields. The United States graduated 5,036 chemical engineers in 2009, no more than we did 25 years ago. In mathematics and statistics there were 15,496 graduates in 2009, slightly more than the 15,009 graduates of 1985.
Few fields have changed as much in recent years as microbiology, but in 2009 we graduated just 2,480 students with bachelor's degrees in microbiology — about the same number as 25 years ago. Who will solve the problem of antibiotic resistance?
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
I coulda joined MENSA, but joining WOMENSA was a lot more fun. Oh, the things those college girls taught me.
Must appeal to powerjunkies.
“If science weren’t so anti-God/anti-religion maybe a lot more of the best students (read home-schooled) would go into those fields. “
Could you please provide an example of science curriculum which is anti-God?
Economics education is quite varied. Some universities emphasize social science but most focus on the quantitative side. The quantitative side of economics is every bit as rigorous as engineering. Economics courses were my most difficult classes in both undergradaute and graduate school. I took the same math as the engineers even though I was a business major. Most of my professors had degrees in applied math or industrial engineering. Equillibrium models, game theory, and other quantitative models are extremely challenging.
Get your MS certification and LabView certification and you are gold to many.
$50 grand a year
for a degree from a “name” school
qualifying you for a job @ Starbucks
not a smart move....
Who will solve the problem of antibiotic resistance?
If this problem manages to wipe out the liberal arts majors on wall street it can't be all bad.
College can be and usually is, a babysitting service for teenagers. For four (and increasingly five) years the young mush heads are filled with the venom injected by people who decided they wanted to be professors as a profession. They specialize in theoretical sophistry that, while sometimes interesting, is most often irrelevant in the “world o’ work” where the mush heads must somehow survive post graduation.
And yes, I graduated from a prestigious university.
That's true and in essence what I told my daughter -- study whatever turns you on but be sure to take some courses that teach you how the world works. After college -- "There are three (3) professions: law, medicine and the clergy. Pick any one you want."
She majored in music with a minor in chemistry. And made Phi Beta Kappa -- they seem to love offbeat combos. She has her "dream job".
I was surprised by the graduation requirements at her top-ranked college. "How the world works" courses were definitely not required.
God is obviously an engineer.
At RIT the students who washed out of Engineering were called Business Majors.
I keep thinking that Logic should be a required course at every level, but it would probably get twisted and mutilated into something resembling White-Males-Are-Bad Studies.
There are too many kids being told what to think, and not enough learning HOW to think.
He is a human resources jedi as well. ;^)
I’m not sure I’m buying these numbers. When you think of all the universities in the U.S. and the number of graduates. There is no way that we are graduating that number. I saw how many just graduated from the Engineering school ALONE at one college in Ohio. Multiply that times all of the colleges! Something seems off.
When I took my middle daughter to college for the first time - Appalachian State in NC - I saw a book with this title in the campus bookstore:
“The Sexual Politics of Meat.”
I am not making this up. I can not possibly imagine what kind of marketable skill one can learn in that book. And there were many like that in the book store.
Forgive me, but I must ask - how were your "Probability and Statistics" grades?
Today the first thing they want to know is if you have your bachelor degree. I worked and paid for my own education. It took me awhile to get the BFA.... glad I did. I couldn't even work in my industry without it.
I have a degree in Electrical Engineering. None of my Engineering courses were anti-God/anti-religion. Instead, the courses dealt with science and engineering.
Sounds like your home schooled students get a warped view of the real world. Too bad for them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.