This semester I am teaching a course for the Honors College. It is an introductory
course on International Relations. For my non-American readers, Honors College
is where they pool the bright students
with high scores. In general, they have a separate dormitory, a lot of tailored
support and a whole separate Dean to cater to the students’ needs.
My students mostly have pharmacy,
biological & agricultural sciences,
and engineering backgrounds. And did
I mention, they are very bright.
In the last few years, I have been working at universities
that had strong science and engineering departments. For the longest time, I
thought this was a great thing!
The last university that I worked in Turkey was very strong in engineering, for which I was proud of. I
still don’t know what exactly nano-technology
means, but they were nice folks up there making cool graphics.
Here in the US, my
university has strong pharmacy and Ag-Bio sciences programs. They go out
of their way to attract students into STEM
disciplines –basically, science and engineering programs.
In the US, the economic recession
is still hammering the job market. Therefore, there is a concerted effort to
channel students into areas where they would have guaranteed employment. Nursing, engineering and other technical
departments are having their heyday! Music and art history, not so much…
For the longest time, I though this would be a great thing:
that we should encourage ‘good’ students to go into these ‘hard’ disciplines.
That’s what the society needs, right?
However lately, I am beginning to question this approach.
So what are we doing at the moment? We are railroading all the bright minds into pre-med, biology, nursing and engineering. Essentially, we are
skimming the top and placing these kids into technical fields. As overachievers, they take their responsibility
very seriously and spend significant time and energy on math, biology, anatomy,
chemistry and other such ‘hard’ courses.
I teach International
Relations and Comparative Politics,
which for these students mean ‘stuff that happens outside the US’. They are so solidly geared towards their professional careers that any such
class in social sciences becomes a ‘distraction’ for them.
 |
| STEM'pede... |
So what do we have in our equation: We have a pool of best and bright minds. We sort them
into these technical, professional
disciplines. We pump them up with the importance of STEM disciplines night
and day, so they dedicate themselves and excel in their particular fields.
Yet, is this what higher education is all about? Is university just a bigger vocational
school??
I think the academia and society in general are doing a huge
disservice, by creating these seasonal fads in higher ed. For a while,
it was finance. You had the best and
brightest going into economics and business schools. Supposedly, they
would graduate and instantly take up jobs with six figure salaries at Wall
Street. Subprime crisis and the disgraceful collapse of the finance sector
hopefully put the brakes on this a bit.
Similarly, there was the Law School fetishism. The best and the brightest would go to law
school, pay an arm and a leg for tuition, and graduate with thousands of $s of student loans. But it was all worth it!
Because they were going to land on six figure salaries in prestigious law firms.
Unfortunately, students soon realized that not all law
graduates could become Ally McBeals. The job
market for the law graduates saturated
rather fast, and many students ended up saddled with huge student loans, doing clerical work for pitiful hourly wages.
Let me wrap up: I think the current hype about STEM areas will do us harm in the long run for at least three
reasons:
1.
Eventually, we’ll have an over-supply problem in these technical areas. Hence, in the
lung-run, this will be another self-defeating mission, much like the cases of finance
and law.
2.
By treating the disciplines other than science
and engineering as ‘second class’,
we are undermining the principles of a liberal
arts education. It was this liberal
arts aspect of the US higher
education that made it superior,
compared to other countries, such as Germany,
which is rather advanced in engineering and technical fields. We cannot have
well-rounded, sharp and worldly citizens with critical thinking skills, by having them write lab reports only. A
university degree should be much more than just a ticket to employment.
3.
Lastly, there might be significant opportunity costs for channeling all
our best and the brightest into these technical areas. Speaking for my
discipline, we still don’t have clear answers to some of the most critical
questions in political science. What is the relationship between income distribution and democracy? How can political systems
address the issues of justice, equity and efficiency simultaneously? Is democracy exportable to the rest of the world? Maybe some
of these students who are so eagerly channeled into STEM disciplines might have
the answer, but we would never know…
I am not arguing that we should terminate the efforts to
recruit more students into STEM disciplines. As long as the short fall in those
areas continues, this is certainly a noble mission, especially when it
encourages the recruitment of women and minority students.
But I think STEM support should not come at the expense of other areas,
particularly the social sciences. We
should not build structural barricades for good students that effectively steer
them away from social sciences.
Skimming the top students and placing them into technical
fields might give us top-notch nurses,
doctors and civil engineers. But it would deprive us of top-notch writers, diplomats, and political
leaders.
Given the way world affairs is unfolding lately (Syria about to explode, Iran brewing nukes, Arab Spring spinning out of control, Europeans agonizing over self-inflicted
wounds, China being a Pandora’s box,
etc, etc) we do need the best and the brightest as leaders and diplomats.
Wishing you all brilliant veterinarians and political leaders,
The STEM-wary Academic Mommy
No comments:
Post a Comment