The Future of STEM

Today I am linking an absolutely excellent post from a blog I stumbled onto called Trotsky's children concerning which fields will remain valuable in the future and which one's will not.  Suffice it to say that his analysis corresponds with what I have been seeing.  Majoring in STEM is not a sure fire way to get a good job right out of college, I know a lot of STEM guys that took a few years to finally end up into their real jobs.  The proliferation of digital technologies is changing the world today as much as the Industrial Revolution changed the world 200 years ago, and jobs that appear essential now, for example accounting, could very well go the way of the telephone operator, completely disappear, or end up like haberdashery, a small niche for those with money or a predilection for dandy, and it behooves us to not forget this.

No Guarantess For The Future

We all no about the epidemic of worthless degrees out there, you probably heard about it from the Captain, and are well aware that certain degrees are not worth the paper they are written on, much less the twenty grand in debt that is required to earn them.  Trade schools and STEM degrees are often touted as a far superior alternative, and they really are, but individuals need to remember that going to a trade school or getting a STEM degree doesn't necessarily insulate you from the trivails that afflict the worthlessly degreed. 

There are some questions that can be asked about the man who went to pilots school. How legitimate was the pilot school? The actual job prospects for someone who graduates from school considering that many ex-military pilots end up working in the commercial flying after their stints in the service  But the fact is that going to school to learn to fly is really like learning the trade.  The guy knew what he wanted to do, and he went to a program that he thought would help him get there.  In the end it looks like wasn't the guys plan the was flawed, he was just unlucky.  I've seen it before.

Most of my friends, who graduated between 2007 to 2010 had rough starts finding work. My room mate, who I have known since college, got an electrical engineering degree but he was underemployed out of college and had to work as a tech for two and a half years before he finally secured an engineering position.  I have another friend that took a bunch of jobs as a teller and a few as a customer rep, traveling from South Dakota to California before he finally got a job close to what he actually wants to do; be a credit analyst. The list goes on.

There is a silver lining to all of this as these situations are forcing many of us to adopt attitudes concerning consumption that are more similar to our grandparents than our parents.  But that is admittedly cold comfort for the guy who is unemployed and sitting at home.  All I can say to that guy is that he has got keep plugging and find something, anything at all, because eventually he will get there.

Most Degreed Persons In America Ever YIPEE!

Another article champion the rise of degreed individuals in this country.  The story has become old hat by now, talks about how women are out competing men in terms of earning degrees, that the poor are lagging behind, that completion rates for current students are alarmingly low and the platitudes about how necessary a college education is lest you be doomed to poverty forever.

Grad School Not A Good Way To Spend 100k

From the mouth of someone who has taught grad school, "Grad School May Not Be the Best Way to Spend $ 100,000".  Let's review what she lists out.  Here big three bad reasons to go to graduate school are:

• You don't know what you want to do with your life.
• Because your career has stalled.
• Because you applied and you got in.

All in all these aren't bad reasons, though I could list many more.  The fact is that she is someone who has a vested interest in individuals going to grad school, after all she doesn't denounce it as a whole, and I am not going to take her to task for that. I don't hate professors or academics but I do know many personally and I understand that they are simply human beings like everyone else. And human beings have a tendency to be unable to separate what is good for them from what is good for everyone else.  Most professors don't want to shunt in people off to degrees that will leave them massively debt and near unemployable; in fact I believe most professors are largely oblivious, or only dimly aware of, this reality that many face. They earnestly believe, not all together untrue, that education yields tremendous benefits. It is true but their mistake is assuming that getting degreed and getting an education are synonymous; they aren't.

This is something that you, as an individual, have to determine. When considering whether or not you should get a bachelors, masters or PhD you need to think about the education, not the degree.  Does going to get you university and taking courses in a particular programs advance your skill sets? Will you learn valuable information or processes that is applicable to a future career? Do you actually learn how to do a job or are you simply learning generalities?  This is why an accounting degree, and to a much lesser extent, a finance degree, is more useful than a marketing or a business management degree. 

In accounting you learn the concept of GAAP and actually apply those concepts in various classes, be it inventory accounting, accounts receivables accounting, or learning to equal out a balance sheet.  While it is true that much of this could simply be learned on the job the reality is that if you want to do accounting for a major company they will require a degree. It is an unfortunate reality of credentialism that we have to deal with but that isn't my point about accounting degrees. Accounting degrees will actually import information, and a skill set, that make you employable. Contrast this with a management degree where you will study the theory of managing employees or businesses without actually ever doing of that. It's all theory text book knowledge and when it comes down to it, who wants that?  If you wanted to build a rocket who would you pick, the person who has a degree in rocket science but no real experience with rockets, or the person who doesn't have a degree but has successfully built and fired rockets before. It's a no brainer.

In the end while knowledge is great to have, experience will trump it every single time.  How does a university education get you the experience you need to do the job you want to do?  In many instances the answer is, it doesn't.