How to make science and engineering degrees more popular?

[Alyrium Denryle]

Medicine probably scoops up a lot of the really smart people going to college, too. In the US, being a doctor means tons of prestige and, at least in the popular imagination, tons of money (in reality, it's also long, brutal hours and years of paying off giant student loans, but nobody mentions that on Grey's Anatomy).

It actually does not. The premed students have a very high wash out rate. Medicine tries to scoop them up and fails. Unfortunately for the biologists, grade inflation is... I wont say encouraged, but it is a natural consequence of bitchy premeds that complain about everything. You see, your TA or Professor evals are directly proportionate to the class average. If you are a TA, you may well lose your job if you don't pass as many as you can. Only the professors who are crotchety old men with tenure will intentionally fail such people, and that is why it is always some crotchety old Full Professor who teaches organic chemistry or genetics. As a result the market is flooded with people with a BA or BS in biology who fail to get into med school.

I actually get a count of the premeds every semester before I start teaching to calibrate how stringent I can be when it comes to grading, and how much I should try to really get my students interested in Biology for its own sake.... If there are premeds I have to lower my standards and not make any attempt to enrich their lives. They don't appreciate actual organisms.

[Archaic`]

I wonder how much help to British science enrolments would be an ad featuring Dr Brian May. Formerly lead guitarist of Queen, now Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University with his PhD in astrophysics. Too old for the kids to recognise any more?

[Ilya Muromets]

I wonder how much help to British science enrolments would be an ad featuring Dr Brian May. Formerly lead guitarist of Queen, now Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University with his PhD in astrophysics. Too old for the kids to recognise any more?

The band Queen is too old for most kids to recognize any more. You'd get a better chance using adds featuring the Mythbusters or something, which is at least interesting to them. Even then, for the most part, that's just something they want to watch rather than do for themselves.

[madd0ct0r]

On the other hand, it seems that engineering and science degrees are quite popular down here. .

Which is why of course, after that we either:

a)Migrate overseas and help fill the gap in countries like the UK and AUS

b)Stay back and take the jobs that have been outsourced by the western MNCs

and that's why this westerner is following the jobs east.

just graduated as an civil engineer - not a good time. Very few new engineers are being taken on (or were last year, or will be for a few more).
Working as a undergrad last year, there was a huge gap in the office age range, very little around 30.
that would be the 1980's recession.

bad money compared to what i could be getting as a lawyer or even generic office worker.
bugger all respect generally, it's typically seen as a job 'someone does'
but the chance to build - priceless.

[Rye]

I would imagine improving science and maths education in schools and their perception in popular culture at a younger age would be much more important than comparing it with the nebulously defined service sector and admin. When a lot of people start looking at going to University, they're simply not going to be an engineer because they don't have the necessary entry qualifications because maths bored them at school and they didn't take it at A-level.

That's true enough. My experience had a fantastic early learning period at primary school, so much so that I was four or five years ahead of the top set when I reached secondary school. The crap level of teaching there meant I didn't have to care about it at all and could pass with flying colours, which meant I became lazy and lost any sort of appreciation for the subject (often resenting the homework for being a waste of time and not doing it). Meanwhile, the other guy who was an equal "rising star" in primary school (we got through the textbooks at roughly the same pace) went to a richer school with better teachers and learned a better work ethic, later going on to fucking Cambridge.

This is an anecdote and of course worthless, but it shows the influence of decent teaching over the course of a life. I think perhaps an educational system that streamlined and encouraged the route for more able students to go into a curriculum that more closely relates to such a career path and show it to be vitally important and well paid would be better.

[Norade]

I would imagine improving science and maths education in schools and their perception in popular culture at a younger age would be much more important than comparing it with the nebulously defined service sector and admin. When a lot of people start looking at going to University, they're simply not going to be an engineer because they don't have the necessary entry qualifications because maths bored them at school and they didn't take it at A-level.

That's true enough. My experience had a fantastic early learning period at primary school, so much so that I was four or five years ahead of the top set when I reached secondary school. The crap level of teaching there meant I didn't have to care about it at all and could pass with flying colours, which meant I became lazy and lost any sort of appreciation for the subject (often resenting the homework for being a waste of time and not doing it). Meanwhile, the other guy who was an equal "rising star" in primary school (we got through the textbooks at roughly the same pace) went to a richer school with better teachers and learned a better work ethic, later going on to fucking Cambridge.

This is an anecdote and of course worthless, but it shows the influence of decent teaching over the course of a life. I think perhaps an educational system that streamlined and encouraged the route for more able students to go into a curriculum that more closely relates to such a career path and show it to be vitally important and well paid would be better.

I would agree with the end part of your statement Rye. When I was in middle school I was rather above other students my age in many areas and was denied admittance to the gifted homeroom due to not being organized enough. However as luck would have it my homeroom teacher was forced to leave the school and I was folded into the class. I was disappointed with what I saw.

The wanted us to, by the end of the term build a project of our choice that demonstrated higher level learning. Yet examples given were things such as rewriting the alphabet with new symbols and the like and we weren't encouraged to go beyond that. Due to other personal reasons, I was expelled before seeing what became of the other students projects, but my plan was to build a model rocket and do the math to predict how high and far it would go and then prove or disprove my math experimentally. It would have been relatively tough math for a grade 9 student but at the time I was confident that with access to the right books and a good graphing calculator I could do it. Sadly I am less confident now that I could do those calculations and am glad as hell that a CIS degree doesn't require high end math skills as I haven't used them in many years and I coasted through the mid level math course at high school with high A's after dropping the higher level math because while I could understand it I didn't do the homework and could never get it stuck in enough to pass the tests... I really wish somebody had taken me aside then and told me that the real purpose of doing the work was both to make it stick and prove that we can tough out doing boring tasks all day as a skill transferable to the real world.

[Ford Prefect]

Government grants for the throwing of legendary engineering barrels.

Brother, you attend UTas. You know this is basically all that engi good for, along with cricket. Cricket is the only thing engi has over law, and that's because they have a national level player and we don't. Honestly, you could dispell a lot of myths about engineering just by showing people photos of the UTas engineering faculty in action. After all, if that bunch of losers can get engineering degrees, anyone can.

[Manthor]

Perhaps for those engineers and scientists involved in research and design for corporations, a system of royalties could be set in place? Probably impossible but there must be some possibility of such a system existing where the corporations give a small percentage of income derived from the work of these scientists and engineers to them over the course of their lives. If songwriters,authors and actors can do it,so should scientists and engineers enjoy similar benefits.

[adam_grif]

Government grants for the throwing of legendary engineering barrels.

Brother, you attend UTas. You know this is basically all that engi good for, along with cricket. Cricket is the only thing engi has over law, and that's because they have a national level player and we don't. Honestly, you could dispell a lot of myths about engineering just by showing people photos of the UTas engineering faculty in action. After all, if that bunch of losers can get engineering degrees, anyone can.

I know UTAS Engineering is fine, the government needs to fund other university engineering faculties so they can match it

We got a shitload of Engineering students in computing with me back in first year because they force everybody doing Engineering degrees to do Programming & Problem Solving. They set the bar a bit lower than they probably would if they weren't all doing it (because most of them suck at it, but they want them to pass), so that unit was VERY cruisy for the actual computing students.

Engineering puts computing to fucking shame as far as throwing parties goes though. TUCS is a piece of shit.

[Ford Prefect]

Engineering puts computing to fucking shame as far as throwing parties goes though. TUCS is a piece of shit.

Well, yeah. Engi is mostly made up of jocks, while TUCS is mostly made up of nerds. Neither of them can interact with women though. :v

[Starglider]

Even in software consulting, it's vaguely annoying that the highest paying contracts by far are high frequency trading and other finance industry support software. This stuff is utterly parasitic on the real economy, even the legitimate bits of the finance industry, and it is a major reason why stock markets are now so volatile and arbitrary. Many of the best high-performance software developers have been sucked up to work on this instead of robotics or VR or anything else useful. Ethically, I'd much rather work on something useful like data mining genomes for cancer factors. Sadly though, the amount I can charge per developer hour for those automated trading projects is over twice what you'd get for a typical enterprise software component, so it's hard to say no.

Perhaps for those engineers and scientists involved in research and design for corporations, a system of royalties could be set in place? Probably impossible but there must be some possibility of such a system existing where the corporations give a small percentage of income derived from the work of these scientists and engineers to them over the course of their lives. If songwriters,authors and actors can do it,so should scientists and engineers enjoy similar benefits.

We are about a century past the point where you could reasonably expect to get new benefits adopted on an industry-wide scale. These days it's all about cutting benefits (and salaries, for everyone except upper management) wherever possible.

[Shaun]

Well the new Con-Lib coalition is going to push for two years arts and humanities degrees - that's really going to help with persuading people to do a four year science/engineering one!

[Nephtys]

The real question is: Are more people even going to be any good at Engineering? I've got a BSEE, and I knew plenty of deadbeats who somehow graduated. I also know that honestly, it isn't that hard if you're willing to try... but really now.

We should rather be promoting people realistically know what the hell they want to do with their degrees first. Want a history degree? Okay. Be sure you know that you'd better get your PhD and have a plan on what you're going to do with it. Guess a 'Communications' degree doesn't look so appealing with it's piss-easy classes if there's few practical opportunities for it, eh?

[Night_stalker]

Well, FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is trying to help alleviate the lack of engineers to quote their offical site

Vision

"To transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology leaders."

Dean Kamen, Founder

Mission

Our mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.


Dean Kamen is an inventor, entrepreneur, and tireless advocate for science and technology. His passion and determination to help young people discover the excitement and rewards of science and technology are the cornerstones of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology).

FIRST was founded in 1989 to inspire young people's interest and participation in science and technology. Based in Manchester, NH, the 501 (c) (3) not-for-profit public charity designs accessible, innovative programs that motivate young people to pursue education and career opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math, while building self-confidence, knowledge, and life skills.

I participate in FIRST, and I've never had a moment to regret it. You see, after going through 3 years of FIRST FRC competitions, I've learned to think more like a engineer, to analyze situations more deeply than before, to actually look at something and wonder "how does it do that?" and try and find out how. FIRST gives out each year about $6 MILLION in scholarships, most of which center around engineering, so one can't say they aren't trying hard enough.

[Starglider]

We should rather be promoting people realistically know what the hell they want to do with their degrees first.

We already have major investments in teenage and graduate career counselling, here in the UK at least. It helps a bit but it can't change the basic truth is that most teens don't really have a clue what they want to do with themselves, or how the adult employment/career world actually works. There is no real fix for this. We already try to give teens work experience in real companies, but a week or two of doing whatever monkey jobs require no knowledge or training is of limited use (and sometimes counterproductive when it puts people off doing senior jobs in that industry).

The current proposed UK 'solution' (by the Liberal Democrats, who never met a tax they didn't like) is to change the massive student loan that you will eventually pay off into a massive graduate tax that you will have to pay for the rest of your life.

[PeZook]

You know, I wondered about that proposal (hears it on the radio).

It seems completely retarded...why not just do a simple tax hike and pay for the damn studies out of the budget, rather than fiddle with graduate tax rates, further complicating returns?

[Starglider]

why not just do a simple tax hike and pay for the damn studies out of the budget

That would be massively unpopular with current voters, basically untenable in the current austerity climate. It would also be even worse than either the current system or a graduate tax for encouraging slackers to spend three years studying nothing in particular at third-rate universities just so they can party and not get a job.

By contrast a 'graduate tax' will hardly piss off anyone if it isn't made retrospective. The only current voters to be affected would would be people over 18 who haven't yet completed their degrees, and most of them are more likely to be entranced by the magic disappearance of their debt figures than think about the massive increase in actual money they will have to pay. In fact the only substantial objections being voiced are from universities themselves, which correctly point out that the government has historically proven completely incapable of ring-fencing tax revenues. The money will go into general taxation and universities will only see a fraction of it. Their solution is of course top-up fees, particularly for the older, more in-demand univerisities (Oxford/Cambridge etc). So don't be surprised if we get a graduate tax and student loans if you want to go anywhere decent. I am sure the Liberals would like to anull existing loans and just tax all graduates, but there's no way they'd get that passed in coalition with the conservatives.

Actually since the tax scales with incoming, if you have rich parents and expect to have a high-paid job it would make more sense for them to just pay the full price for your degree, as if you were an international graduate, and opt out of the scheme entirely (or if that is banned, just study overseas). For twenty or thirty thousand pounds up-front, you save a hundred thousand pounds or more of tax over your working lifetime. So as usual with progressive taxation, upper class spoiled brats would wriggle out of it, slackers who just went to university to mooch off the state for a few years would pay little or nothing (payments are minimal under 25k/year, zero under 15k/year), and middle class workers earning 50th to 80th percentile salaries would take the brunt of it. All because of this bizarro Liberal Democrat reality where 'fair' means 'pay exponentially more if you can work out how to apply what you learned to productive ends', not 'pay based on what your education cost'.

[Shaun]

Heh, as if the hard working and responsible aren't saddled enough with the burden of paying for the wasters who are at university merely to postpone proper employment already!

[Norade]

I think a better thing would be an extra tax on those that don't complete a post secondary degree. That way people are encouraged to enhance themselves by taking additional training post high school. The only issue is ensuring that all people can afford such training.

[adam_grif]

I think a better thing would be an extra tax on those that don't complete a post secondary degree. That way people are encouraged to enhance themselves by taking additional training post high school. The only issue is ensuring that all people can afford such training.

That's just going to piss people off even more. We already had a system where if you wanted a uni degree you got it for free, and it angered people. Now we are giving extremely generous loans to people who can't afford to pay upfront. There's shit like subsidies for accommodation, and a support network for people who have all sorts of trouble getting to uni for whatever reason.

There isn't a problem with the barrier for entry to university, there is a problem with everybody doing things that are not science once they get there.

[Shaun]

I think a better thing would be an extra tax on those that don't complete a post secondary degree. That way people are encouraged to enhance themselves by taking additional training post high school. The only issue is ensuring that all people can afford such training.

That would just exasperate the problem of people going to university to 'study' worthless degrees and just generally be lazy arseholes and avoid employment.

[PeZook]

That would be massively unpopular with current voters, basically untenable in the current austerity climate. It would also be even worse than either the current system or a graduate tax for encouraging slackers to spend three years studying nothing in particular at third-rate universities just so they can party and not get a job.

Well, I kinda assumed some sort of review board would enforce standards if a university wants to hand out diplomas on state budget. An extensie reform is an excellent opportunity to introduce something like that and make it work decently well for a while untill inevitable rot sets in.

Of course, I do agree it would probably be unpopular with voters. Tax hikes always are.

I think a better thing would be an extra tax on those that don't complete a post secondary degree. That way people are encouraged to enhance themselves by taking additional training post high school. The only issue is ensuring that all people can afford such training.

As adam_grif said, it's a bad idea because it would encourage people to get worthless degrees just to get out of paying tax. Unfortunately, you can't force people to study what they really, really don't want to study: any attempt at upping engineer and scientist output would have to be comprehensive and start early, with programs going as far down as grade school, touching curriculae, teachers, students, career counsellors all at the same time. A lot of kids just don't see the appeal in doing the hard stuff. There's no reward for it for decades, they don't see it as cool, and it takes hard work, and of course you get a reputation of a nerd and loser if you're really, really good at science.

Funny thing: the US space program probably contributed significantly to current US technological lead by making engineering and science glamorous, even if only briefly. Rocket science = path to national glory, fame, wine and women. Certainly American aptitude at propaganda helped a lot, too, by underscoring how astronauts had to be tough and calm and brave and smart.

We've managed to do a lot with educational programs and social ad campaigns to curb smoking ; Science and engineering might be a good next target for the next 10-15 years.

[madd0ct0r]

. There's no reward for it for decades,

Is there ever?

Seriously, can I ever expect to be earning more then an equivalence lawyer, business administrator, management consultant ect?

One of the principle reasons I went for engineering was an idea of job stability - I may not earn as much, but I'd never be out of work.

Pure scientists have it even harder. Maybe we're paid less simply because we ain't as valued?
Society seems to need far more managers, administrators and organizer's then people with deeply specialist abilities.

[Night_stalker]

That attitude WILL come back to bite us someday, I just know it will. I mean, who needs people who know how to properly build things, when we could have more bureacrats?

[Shaun]

That attitude WILL come back to bite us someday, I just know it will. I mean, who needs people who know how to properly build things, when we could have more bureacrats?

Yeah, Napoleon was right when he called us Brits a nation of shopkeepers. We are. We're middle men between the scientists and engineers who build things and the people who consume them. We're bureaucrats, managers and administrators. We contribute nothing worthwhile or meaningful to society but we manage to do well because we manage to get our cut from it all.