Science is hard. If you implemented a system whereby scientists made fortunes that dwarved those enjoyed by business moguls, entertainers and athletes, people would treat budding scientists better, but it wouldn't increase the population of scientists.
You need two conditions to be true in order for someone to become a scientist or engineer. First, they have to enjoy the work and have the ability to do it. It must be the most fulfilling thing in their universe. Such must be their dedication. The second is they need to be able to afford the education and get a decent job after it is done in order to pursue their interests. We have plenty of people who meet the first condition who never have the opportunity for that dream to come true. They may not be able to afford going to college. They may need to drop out of school to work because their parents get laid off etc. You fix that problem, you increase the number of science and engineering students.
The problem is laziness, pure and simple. It is far easier to be a rock star than a scientist. It is far easier to understand the accomplishments of an athlete than an engineer. Either are roles that amass huge fame and fortune as a result, and can be achieved as careers without any education and, more importantly, even kids can do it.
Except that you will never recruit from this pool. Those who wish to be scientists are born, not made. You cannot teach someone to enjoy calculus. They have to have a personality such that they would find calculus enjoyable. These people are intrinsically not lazy.
You may be projecting a tad here. I don't know a hell of a lot of parents who can't abide the thought of little Johnny going to college.
I am speaking specifically about students who go into the sciences. Those who spend years of time and thousands of dollars for a career path that is not particularly lucrative. Parents do often discourage this. They push their student to get out and find a job rather than going to graduate school for example. I see it all the time.
At any rate, I think you'd have to work at it to say that either is a major contributor to the low numbers of qualified employees (note that I didn't say qualified graduates).
Even if they dont do it often, the system we are currently under does it by keeping the intelligent students in the same social environment as the knuckle-dragging plebs, forcing them to conform, degrading them when they succeed etc.
The difference in teachers is probably one of success vs failure of the teacher. Teachers in the sciences come in two varieties. People who's chosen career was from the beginning to be a science teacher, and those who failed at bigger and better things. Whether a teacher resents a strong student will depend on which category they fall in.
Whoa there, kiddo. If part of the problem is public hostility to the percieved ivory tower, you don't fix the problem by building an actual ivory tower. In fact, you may just be making the problem worse; an institution of elites is great, but when it's the guys from the common man's school who get elected to the positions that oversee said institutions, how sympathetic are they going to be to the place they weren't good enough for?
That happens anyway. They (the plebs) already hold us in contempt (which I give right back) because we are smarter than they are. Populism will always exist, education will always be the first thing to get dropped from any state budget. What would you prefer? Keeping our best and brightest in schools that are practically designed to fail, or risk resentment by the plebs who already resent scientists?
Yes. I know my elitism is showing.
I'll be honest; I don't think there IS a surefire way to generate more scientists and engineers. I don't think there's been a day in two lifetimes that you could find a recruiter who said there was no shortage of qualified personnel. I do believe, however, there are ways to generate more support for the ones we do generate, and there may even be an answer to the far more mountainous challenge of changing public perception towards them.
I have alluded to part of the problem earlier actually. At least with biologists we are plagued by premed students. Plagued. They are literally festering boils in our undergraduate programs. Most biology majors are premed. Most of them graduate with insufficient qualifications to get into medical or graduate school and thus go out into the workforce with a degree in biology. This floods the market with people who are "qualified" for entry level private sector work, making an undergrad degree in bio useless. This is compounded by the "learning" style of the average premed. Namely, they memorize everything by rote, complain when they dont get every point possible and give hard profs and TAs poor evaluations which leads to grade inflation if we want to keep our jobs. Then, because they have no real interest in the subject material, they hit the big red Purge button in their brains, forget everything, and then proceed to slow and water down the curricula in subsequent courses.
One of the best ways to help biology students out is to give premed students their own separate degree program. Call it a BS in Biomedical Science or something. A degree that basically teaches them nothing but what they need to know to get into medical school, and thus does not qualify them for anything other than medical school and perhaps teaching health at a high school. Most of them fail, market is not flooded, I would like to thank everyone who lost.
Keep in mind, I hate premeds with a passion because I have to teach their worthless hides.
) ; The engineer is shunned as some self-important nerd slouched over the drawing board until people discover all your stuff is now made in China and there's no work at home ; And the banker and CEO are hailer as entepreneurs and captains of industry up to the point where it turns out they made your financial markets collapse.
