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Trigonometry Is Racist! KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON February 27, 2015 An African-American scholar says that emphasis on STEM education is bad for blacks. Earlier today on Sirius XM Urban View, an African-American talk station, the guest was Daryl Scott, president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. The conversation turned to STEM — science, technology, engineering, and math — education, and the origins of the ongoing push to encourage institutions and students to focus on those subjects. Can you guess what happened? In 1983, the guest explained, a commission empaneled by the secretary of education issued...

As we have reported, contrary to current wisdom, studies consistently show that there are more science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) majors than there are STEM jobs. Nevertheless, those with a vested interest in perpetuating the legend not only still claim that there is a STEM major shortage but declare that women are uniquely qualified to fill it. Recently, here in Washington, D.C., at George Washington University, Linda Rosen, CEO of Change the Equation (an organization geared toward more STEM education at the pre-K12 level and above), said, “Employers…are having difficulty finding the STEM talent they need.” For example, she...

There’s been much discussion recently over STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering and Math — degrees, a collection of majors that have not only some of the highest-paying related careers, but a positive employment outlook across several industries. For example, a 2014 report from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that many STEM graduates go on to work in industries different from their degree concentration. Yet — collectively — STEM majors enjoy an advantage in today’s economy and are projected to remain in-demand well into the future. A study from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and Workforce noted STEM is projected to...

The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee voted last week to admit more high-tech foreign workers in some categories than the annual supply of them. In its eagerness to meet the wishes of the high tech industry — and steal jobs from qualified American workers — the Republican majority on the committee, with the single, commendable exception of Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), voted to allow as many as 55,000 green cards to be issued annually to aliens with advanced science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) degrees from American universities. It also voted to increase the existing H-1B quota for such workers...

When the reasons mount for rethinking cherished academic practices, academia doubles down on those procedures. For example, as the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and others have shown, there is no shortage of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) majors to fill available jobs requiring those skills. Yet and still, academics proclaim that the need is so acute that they need to import STEM majors from abroad. It turns out that, on top of that misconception, some of these foreign students may actually be, well, spies. “The Chinese regime can work spies recruited in college into positions in research, government...

[SNIP] All of which brings us to the latest popular lament among pundits, politicians, and even some in the business world: the perceived lack of engineers and/or ‘STEM’ (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) graduates. President Obama has said “We need more engineers,” so has Hillary Clinton, and then Lockheed Martin executive Stephanie Hill recently stated that “we’ll lose” if we don’t produce at least 1 million more ‘STEM’ grads. About all the handwringing, readers can relax. Indeed, there’s nothing to this story or alleged shortage. Price signals work. They always do, and they do because one of the underlying purposes...

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) criticized Microsoft founder Bill Gates for calling on Congress to increase STEM worker visas while the company plans to cut 18,000 jobs next year. “Super billionaires aren’t happy apparently. … They declare we need to import more foreign workers,” Sessions said on the Senate floor Thursday. “Mr. Gates says we need to let more and more people into our country to take those kinds of jobs.” Sessions was referring to an op-ed in which Gates called on the House to pass the bipartisan Senate immigration reform bill. That legislation would increase the number of worker visas...

The Education Establishment went way too far, and this has presented the country with a unique opportunity for real improvement of the public schools. As never before, parents across the United States will tell you emphatically that they hate Common Core, and they especially hate Common Core Math. The Education Establishment will try to maneuver around this revulsion. Compromises will be offered. The same dumb ideas will be repackaged as something new and wonderful. The challenge is to refuse to compromise. Sometimes a good thing, compromise is now the biggest threat to genuine reform. Our Education Establishment has been selling...

For academics, diversity is the answer, no matter what the question is. “Making news this past May was the release of employee diversity information at large tech firms, including Google, LinkedIn and Yahoo, which indicated, not that surprisingly, that these Silicon Valley companies employed primarily men (60-70%),” Walter Breau writes on the Academe blog . “The news was more discouraging when the data was disaggregated into tech-related and leadership positions, with the percentage of women dropping even lower.” yahoo tumblr mashable icon “For example, at Yahoo, only 15% of technology and 23% of leadership positions were held by women.” The...

Throughout America, debates about what to do about the shortage of science, technology, engineering and math graduates have been going on for at least a decade from the halls of Congress to most university campuses. It apparently never occurred to any of the thought leaders who participated in them that they might be mistaken. “The country has twice as many people with STEM degrees as there are STEM jobs,” Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), said at the National Press Club on Tuesday, May 20, 2014. With Karen Zieigler, Camarota co-authored a study...

Aiming to diversify and strengthen the nation’s technological workforce, President Barack Obama is hosting the White House’s annual science fair with an emphasis on the achievements of girls and women and with new initiatives to improve science, technology, engineering and math education. […] The White House says Obama will announce a new $35 million Education Department competition for teacher training programs as part of his goal to train 100,000 educators in science, technology, engineering and math, also known as STEM. …

A new study from the Center for Immigration Studies asks whether or not there is a shortage of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workers in the United States, and their resounding conclusion is "no". The report released today and written by CIS researchers Steve Camarota and Karen Zeigler found that there are more than 5 million native-born Americans with an undergraduate degree in STEM, but not working in STEM with another 1.2 million degree holders not working at all. Additionally, there are 1.6 million foreign-born residents with an undergraduate degree in STEM that are also not working in STEM...

The idea that we need to allow in more workers with science, technology, engineering, and math (“STEM”) background is an article of faith among American business and political elite. But in a new report, my Center for Immigration Studies colleague Karen Zeigler and I analyze the latest government data and find what other researchers have found: The country has well more than twice as many workers with STEM degrees as there are STEM jobs. Also consistent with other research, we find only modest levels of wage growth for such workers for more than a decade. Both employment and wage data...

Problems in hiring high-tech workers at big corporations are driving the push for amnesty in the immigration reform debate. Big businesses say they need to import more foreign workers trained in science, technology, engineering and mathematics because they can’t find U.S. citizens and legal residents to fill the jobs. Democrats will not vote for importing more workers unless they get amnesty for the 11 million to 20 million low-skill undocumented workers. So big donors and political action committees like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are lighting fires under Republicans to pass immigration reform. But maybe U.S. companies need to hire...

On August 30, 2013, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers published in its journal Spectrum, “The STEM Crisis Is a Myth.” The IEEE article reports that within the United States – [T]here are more STEM workers than suitable jobs. One study found, for example, that wages for U.S. workers in computer and math fields have largely stagnated since 2000. Even as the Great Recession slowly recedes, STEM workers at every stage of the career pipeline, from freshly minted grads to mid- and late-career Ph.D.s, still struggle to find employment as many companies, including Boeing, IBM, and Symantec, continue to...

With literacy rates among high school graduates ever more of a mystery, educators are worried about…defense spending on education. Never mind that the Department of Defense is one of the few federal agencies experiencing funding cutbacks, anti-military teachers are worried about what is left of the Pentagon’s budget. “In 2010, the most recent year for which data are available, the Department of Defense (DoD) was administering more than a dozen different programs and spending close to $50 million on K-12 outreach targeting the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and math,” Seth Kershner writes in Rethinking Schools, “a nonprofit publisher...

The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee voted last week to admit more high-tech foreign workers in some categories than the annual supply of them. In its eagerness to meet the wishes of the high tech industry — and steal jobs from qualified American workers — the Republican majority on the committee, with the single, commendable exception of Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), voted to allow as many as 55,000 green cards to be issued annually to aliens with advanced science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) degrees from American universities.

Amnesty is being driven, among others, by big businesses claiming they cannot hire enough high-tech professionals. These are (or posture as) major donors to members of Congress. So these businesses are twisting arms on Capitol Hill. The compromise is that Democrats get amnesty for illegal aliens if business gets more high-tech foreign workers. However, in fact, there is no shortage of high-tech professionals in the USA. Businesses do not need immigration reform. On August 30, 2013, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers published a review of this question in its journal Spectrum, titled "The STEM Crisis Is a Myth."...

I know that dissatisfaction, or rather, deep, deep hatred, for public schools and universities is fairly commonplace around here and the need for massive overhaul in the educational system from kindergarden to the graduate level is one of the top priorities for many Freepers. And so there has been talk about the rise of online educational systems, to use as key examples Open Course Ware, EdX and the Kahn Academy. There has been talk of the extent to which they will replace teachers on other forums and so I figured it was worthy of a separate thread. This is also...

MOREHEAD — First, I'll admit that I went to see The Big Bang Theory star Mayim Bialik speak at Morehead State primarily because I'm a fan of the show, in all its nerdy glory. But as the actress who plays neurobiologist Amy Farrah Fowler on the CBS comedy spoke to the large, attentive crowd in Morehead's Academic-Athletic Center, I found myself thinking about something other than the popular TV show:I wish my daughter could hear this.Of course, during her lecture, Bialik told the crowd about her experiences in Hollywood, as a child star on the 1990s sitcom Blossom, now as...