STEM education series: Your comments

Our series on science and technology education generated quite a few interesting comments from readers. Many of you evidently have strong ideas about the shortage of developers in many cities and a lack of interest in STEM fields among college students. Here are a few of your own policy prescriptions.

First, some of you suggested that school teachers and administrators stop putting reading and math on the same playing field:

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“The assistant director of admissions at MIT once said “everyone in this room has a math SAT score of 750 or more. As for the english score... well, we don’t care about the english score.” If every school had that attitude, we’d have more kids interested in STEM,” wrote longjohns.

But others argue that relegating English to second-class status might be overdoing it:

“English score as it relates to communication is quite important. Most technical job interviews are extensive and focus on the candidate’s ability to communicate effectively. Most technical jobs are a team effort and the team isn’t helped by someone who can’t get their ideas and problems across to the other members,” wrote edbyronadams.

College major flame wars

Others propose a market-based solution to choosing college majors: Simply tell students how much they can expect to earn, and they’ll follow the money:

“Tell students how much each major will help them make when they graduate and let students decide what to take,” wrote jfv123

Another commenter, edbyronadams offers some evidence:

“My computer engineering son had no problem finding well paid internships during the summers and other times.”

Others say studying one’s interest can serve as a gateway to a university education, even if it won’t necessarily result in the most high-paying job.

“Of course, really studying one’s “hobby” is not as easy as it seems on the surface, but at least the university would have succeeded in attracting the student’s attention. In other words, the university has the unenviable task of lowering the barrier to entry (at least appear to lower) even as they have to make the educational standards stringent,” writes chickenlover.

Others agreed with Michelle Crumm, who said that engineers don’t get the same respect in the business world that executives do. Some commenters said they wouldn’t encourage their children to major in engineering at all:

“I urged my children not to pursue the butt busting engineering curriculum I followed, but to chose a business oriented career. They followed a business oriented college education and they have careers today that are a lot more rewarding than engineering careers. Read “rewarding” as making a helluva lot more money than an engineer,” wrote Dawg62.

On the topic of why there are so few women and minority STEM majors, one reader posited:

“Everyone knows that a lot of women just DON’T WANT to be scientists, mathematicians, or engineers. You can’t make more women enjoy typing code all day long just like you can’t make more guys enjoy marketing, customer-service, and sales,” wrote objectiveChill, only to be called out by a female scientist: “I’m a chemical engineer, I work with male and female scientists and mathematicians, and we all do fine. Some of our best coders are women.”