You are missing the point and only using part of the professor's assertion, "There are a lot of skilled workers who have been lured out of the not-very-well-paid STEM occupations to work in high finance and elsewhere, and he suggests that an increase in wages would bring many back into STEM activities."
It is false choice to say that you either increase STEM wages to compete against those working in high finance or just allow STEM jobs to go unfilled.
Plain old market supply and demand works very well, thank you.
The problem is that it is not a level playing field. We are importing cheaper labor to fill many STEM jobs, which depresses wages across the board in those fields. And there is an endless supply of cheap, skilled labor from abroad. Our immigration policies bear no correlation to our real job needs.
During the past four years, the average household income has declined by $4,500 or almost 10%. If there was truly a shortage of labor, skilled or unskilled, we would see wages increasing. They are not. They are actually going down and have been for decades.
Of course men’s wages haven’t risen as rapidly as wages across the board—they used to be paid a premium for simply being men!
But those wage studies under-report actual increases, because most such jobs include health benefits that have been rising far faster than the rate of inflation.
Really, what is the point of trying to lure back STEM-educated workers who can be more productive elsewhere?
And our entire country benefits when smart and skilled immigrants come to work here. It is less capable, unskilled immigrants who are a drag on the economy and our standard of living.