
Is There a STEM Crisis or a STEM Surplus? - T-A
http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2016/08/12/is-there-a-stem-crisis-or-a-stem-surplus/
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aidenn0
This paper gives a good way of looking at it with taxi/passenger. To extend
the metaphor, there are lots of people queuing for a taxi, and the driver
decides to not pick them up because they don't have enough money to pay for
the ride:

Companies are not hiring lots of people because they perform poorly in the
interview. From what I can tell, a large fraction, if not the majority of
those people actually lack the skills the employer is looking for, despite a 4
year degree in a related field.

This large pool of people who apply for jobs makes hiring more expensive, and
also causes companies to apply low-sensitivity, high specificity tests to the
pool of applicants (e.g. I'll interview only people who graduated from these
10 schools).

~~~
wodenokoto
Can you elaborate on the kinds of skills that people educated in related
fields are lacking in terms of employability?

~~~
brianwawok
For a software developer... Software development skills.

Git

Html

JavaScript

SQL

Web frameworks

Many people fresh out of school skilled in computer science.. they have no
programming experience. They can code a linked list but that isn't actually
useful.

Remember the pain of learning all this

~~~
superuser2
> they have no programming experience

What?

Intro Systems: demonstrate working knowledge of Assembly. Write C to exploit
spatial and temporal locality. Learn to cope with concurrency.

Operating Systems: write process scheduling, virtual memory management, system
calls, and filesystem caching into Pintos [0].

Networks: write an IRC server, user-land TCP implementation, and IP router in
C from the relevant RFCs.

Advanced Networks: write Byzantine Generals, Raft, and Paxos from the papers.

Programming Languages: write several interpreters.

Parallel Programming: write efficient concurrent algorithms, implementing
concurrency primitives yourself.

Software Construction/Engineering: learn to collaborate with a team. Lose your
fear of merge conflicts by immersion therapy. Experience the pain of people
not pulling their weight.

Intro Security: given a pseudorandom function, write your way up to a PRNG,
stream cipher, RSA, Diffie-Helman, and an authenticated encrypted channel.

Databases: write most of a database engine.

If graduates are passing these classes but can't write code, or find it
remotely difficult to get to a passable level on any of the tools you listed
in a matter of hours/days, then the CS program at the schools they come from
are not nearly rigorous enough and should lose reputation in favor of those
that are.

A graduate of a decent CS program should have a decent idea of how to _create_
these tools, and be capable of doing so, though with considerable difficulty.
Consuming them should be pretty easy.

[0]
[http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs140/projects/pintos/pintos_1...](http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs140/projects/pintos/pintos_1.html)

~~~
alexbecker
Many CS programs don't have most of these classes. Mine certainly didn't have
Software Construction/Engineering, Security, or Databases. And many of these
classes are not required for majors, e.g. only one of OS or Networks was
required, and Programming Languages and Parallel Programming were optional
IIRC.

~~~
greyostrich
I never took 90% of those classes. Even for a class such as Programming
Languages, we never did any actual programming. I'm assuming superuser2 went
to Stanford, where their curriculum is no where near what's common.

~~~
superuser2
UChicago.

Other than Intro to Systems, which is required, these classes are
representative of a list from which you choose 8. There's also 3-quarter intro
sequence (all programming) and the 3-quarter theory sequence (all proofs, some
pseudocode). You could get away without taking some of these, but then you
would do similarly substantial programming projects in other domains
(compilers, machine learning, 3D modeling and rendering, visualization of
scientific datasets, etc).

Our department tends to be derided as "very theoretical", so I'm surprised to
hear that we do _more_ programming than others.

To be fair, you could also load up ~6 of your 8 with proof-based math classes
about CS theory (graph theory, combinatorics, mathematical logic I-II,
whichever of complexity or formal languages you didn't count towards the
required theory sequence, etc) but the people who do that are on tracks
towards PhDs in math or the subset of math that is CS theory, not the
programming job market.

HN threads about CS education tend to posit that it shouldn't matter where you
go to school because ~all CS programs are the same, so I assumed my experience
would translate. Perhaps this is not so?

~~~
aidenn0
All CS programs are definitely not the same. I have seen threads positing that
it doesn't matter where you go to school because its non-academic stuff that
makes the biggest difference, but haven't seen much sentiment of "all CS
programs are the same"

I do think that the more selective schools graduate better people largely
because the start with the better people, but don't think the school makes
zero difference.

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biocomputation
If I'm not mistaken, non-profits ( virtually all hospitals, colleges, and
universities ) are exempt from cap on H1b visas.

It would be interesting to know how many H1b visa holders are employed in STEM
positions at institutions that are exempt from the cap. What if it were
something scandalous like 800,000 or 1,000,000?

If the numbers were this high, it might have something to do with the fact
that there's so much double speak about STEM shortage / STEM surplus in the
United States. More American STEM degree holders might be able to find jobs if
they weren't forced to compete with foreign nationals.

~~~
aidenn0
I also find it odd that we allow people to come to our Universities and then
kick them out once we've trained them. That seems like an inconsistent policy.

The school I went to had a decent sized group of students from China, and all
but one of them is back there, despite wanting a job in the US.

To be consistent then if we are nationalistic, we should either strive to keep
the graduates here, or not allow them in our universities at all. Conversely
if we are globalistic, then we should be fine with immigrants working here.

~~~
avar
Why shouldn't universities benefit from the influx of foreign money and
students regardless of what happens with immigration policy?

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jessespears
The paper that this article is derived from:
[http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/article/stem-crisis-or-
stem...](http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/article/stem-crisis-or-stem-surplus-
yes-and-yes.htm)

I found the paper to be more detailed and have a higher signal:noise ratio.

------
SFJulie
Is there a corporatism that is hidden?

For IT, a master CS degrees (+5 years after highschool) have still not proven
to be better than 2 years of apprenticeship. (Sackman/grant 197x)

The global cost of not working (wasted potential outcome hence taxe) is ~ 10%
of the potential cumulated income a nation could have.

Then, STEM is also used as a regulative barrier to some jobs hence a de facto
limitation on competition of workforce to access a market, thus diminishing
the competition.

Least but not last, the access to the data of employability per diploma is not
accessible to future graduated creating an opaque market which access is based
on your capacity to either be born rich or to have a crippling loan. It is
then creating a market where some workers because of their vulnerability are
in poor position for negociating their earnings (thus diminishing the overall
potential wages of all workers).

And, least, the non reproducibility of scientific experiments yielded by STEM
education is growing up, being a clear signal of a «cheating» that arise when
stakes are too high in a competition.

I would say there is neither a STEM crisis or surplus, but bank and university
are clearly fueling a «diploma bubble».

~~~
rimantas
I think the first thing to do would be to start differentiate between science
and vocational training again. Otherwise we will be looking at studies how
astrophysics degree has little advantage over 2 years of apprenticeship in
telescope building.

~~~
SFJulie
Trained in hard science. Most of the «lessons» are just about learning «math
recipes» that are highly suspicious (like lambda calculus in pertubation
theories) that works in one and only one case and avoiding the «generic
methods» like Hamiltonians.

So basically most of my «scholarship» was about learning more than one way to
do the same thing other and other again in up to 4 distinct notations
(Einstein with 4D vectors), Nabla operators, quaternions ...)

Whereas working in labs was a total different story. It was basically
«telescope building».

I learned computer programming for physicists and to be honest most of CS are
pretty clueless about memory, and how to make flow of data kick computers in
the balls.

So, I really think that even «hard» science as an heavy load of
«apprenticeship» and that scholarship have an heavy load of fat vs muscle.

If we «optimized» training not to achieve a social status based on how much
more years someone studied but based on what is required, the whole society
would be improved.

So I stick to my gun, for me studies and their indirect cost of «non
availability» on the market is excessive and every one (except banks and
universities making an awesome lot of money out of it) are losing.

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matteuan
I have the impression that the real shortage is of people that have REAL
skills. The number of graduates is certainly correlated but somehow we fail in
identifying the talents.

~~~
dalke
I have the impression that the real shortage is because people believe there
are "talents", which encourages companies to ignore on-the-job training.

There's of course good economic reasoning for this viewpoint. It forces job
candidates to learn skills on their own dime, and companies don't end up
training someone who then gets a higher paying job elsewhere.

This in turn is a consequence of the modern view that people only spend a few
years at any one job, rather than decades. This encourages employers to see
employees as a resource to exploit, rather than to nurture.

~~~
falcolas
It's a vicious circle, and what makes it worse (from the outside) is that
companies who _are_ willing to take on fresh-from-college talent and mentor
them up (and keep their salaries on par with the rest of the industry) tend to
have lower churn. Which means they have fewer openings, but more competition
for those openings.

There's two major tech companies who do this locally, and they have some of
the most loyal employees I've seen anywhere.

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Animats
Important subject, nearly useless WSJ article. Mentions the obvious stuff,
such as the postdoc glut. No mention of training or retraining to ease moves
from one narrow specialty to another.

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pdimitar
Let me be the guy who noticed that this conclusion:

“The STEM labor market is heterogeneous. There are both shortages and
surpluses of STEM workers, depending on the particular job market segment.”

...is something that somebody actually paid to hear/read. Whatever happened to
common sense?

I realize this is pulling things out of context, but in what context exactly
is this mega-obvious statement contributing _anything_ at all to any
discussion?

It's an honest question and not an attempt at trolling.

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lifesucks1
Here are the facts I know

I make 2 to 3 times a person on H1b makes. I have close to 100 examples. I am
good but not three times good.

H1B is the modern day indentured labor with some American niceties to it. In
all honesty as an immigrant I will tell you America treats its immigrants best
than the rest of the world. So don't be surprised if there is a never ending
line of people wanting to come to america.

As for the issue at hand H1B for surely suppresses salary for americans any
spin on it is just spin. It does not give americans who want to change their
career into IT options. It makes it harder for anyone to change jobs.
Newcomers have a lot of competition with people some with real resumes and
mostly fake ones. As you reach late 40's it is impossible to find any STEM
jobs since no one is willing to hire you. This holds good for naturalized
citizens and locals.

Since most companies who hire H1B know that the H1B will not leave them and go
for a minimum of 10 years they happily sponsor. This is due to the fact that a
green card roughly takes anywhere from 10 to 12 years. Cheap labor is always
good for business.

The government does not care since America needs people to keep growing so
they are fine with it. Legal immigration is better and taxable than illegal.
Our congress is business friendly so they don't care.

This process will continue till the point where in the salaries of STEM jobs
will be so low that most of us will prefer flipping burgers. At that point
things might balance out since most of the americans will be looking into
other fields other than STEM so no one around to complain.

Also ask the question differently when there is a serious shortage of doctors
in all parts of US especially the smaller cities and towns why aren't they
bringing in more H1B's there. What is stopping that from happening? This is
the STEM curse.

Suggestion for all average americans there is still time try and switch to
something where u don't have to compete with H1b you already have a 10 year
head start. Here is an idea start a business hire H1B's.

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kevin_thibedeau
Didn't they get the memo. It's "STEAM" now because everybody's job has to be
portrayed as a crucial resource with a made up labor shortage.

