
Why Science Majors Change Their Minds - gopi
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/education/edlife/why-science-majors-change-their-mind-its-just-so-darn-hard.htm
======
pnathan
I didn't change my mind. I started as a CS major, ended as a CS major, and am
finishing up a CS Master's degree. Possibly one day a CS PhD.

I have TA'd students and have long had an abiding interest in educational
curricula, stemming from my experienced being homeschooled, where as I grew
older, I was able to select elective materials to study in cooperation with my
parents.

There are a few highlighter reasons I believe STEM education has issues, and
please remember that these are interlinked, and other issues are present,
which also interlink into these issues. I've picked these because I think they
are standout.

* ROI on engineering vs. ROI on the MBA course. Non-founder engineers cap their salary potential in their career, in general, and spend gruelling hours in classes. MBA's salary cap is higher to non-existent, and can apparently skiv off pretty easy in undergraduate years.

* Math education is generally _broken_ in the US. That means that students are not ready for the rigourous thinking and numeracy demanded in STEM. They struggle understanding the basics of mathematics and computational thinking because they never have had it before, so the 'elite' students who do know what they are doing stand out.

* Hacker/elite snobs pissing on other classmates. This has happened to a few friends of mine, but not really to me. Some of the freshmen/sophomores really brag on their ability (i.e., they were coder geeks in high school) and this discourages other people. It's toxic.

* Gender imbalance and lousy social environment. A bunch of stinky guys geeking out over computers and video games which are outdated in a few years is not... primo.

* Young software engineers are expected to spend nearly every waking minute coding, just to have a chance to get a job. They need to get internships, contribute to open source, maybe build a mobile app, etc... and do well in class. This, as near as I can tell, is very rare. Only perhaps musicians have similar expectations. Spending this much time on your field is corrosive to your character and personality (see above two points).

* Culture heroes are entertainers and sports stars. Not makers of useful things.

* Focus on application instead of theory. Everyone wants to do something real cool right now, preferably yesterday, without any training. This is not realistic when laying the foundations for a solid career. Short-term thinking says, "pleasure now, pay later", which does not work well in STEM.

~~~
scott_s
I also started as CS, and stuck with it all the way to PhD.

I think that CS, CPE and EE are different than the rest of STEM that students
get to start playing in their discipline much, much earlier. I know from
experience that CS majors are writing code their first semester. Continually
creating new things in your discipline sets up a feedback-loop that keeps you
interested. I don't think this was true for engineering programs like civil,
mechanical or aerospace.

For science, the payoff is much more abstract, since you don't actually _do_
science as a science undergrad. You learn _about_ science.

There are, of course, undergrads who get involved in research projects or
extra-curricular activities centered around their major that allow them to
actually play around in their discipline early on. But I think those are edge
cases.

~~~
aswanson
Nah, EE's dont. They get divorced theory and math most of the first few years.
When we do actually get to build circuits early on, they are to mintutiae-
focused on some slew-rate characteristics of an op-amp at a given frequency
rather than systemic perspective thinking that is needed in the real world
with real applications. To much focus on analysis, nowhere near enough on
synthesis. A modern EE education is geared toward training autistic,
perspective-deprived drones.

~~~
Maven911
Yes incredibly accurate and its a shame. I did have labs working on
breadboards and even IC design but it was literally just following a well
defined procedure so you dont screw it up

------
jgon
This article is trying to figure out the solution to a problem that was solved
over a decade ago. See: <http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science>

Science majors change their minds once they find out that they will be
required to take challenging courses, yes, but it is not this challenge, in
and of itself, that causes them to "change their minds". It is that people who
are smart enough to be in a position to take these courses, people who the
article talks about as having great scores on the SAT etc, people like these
are also smart enough to do a quick ROI calculation and realize that a
comparatively easier (don't take this as a rip on people with these degrees,
many of them are my friends, are very, very smart, and have made this very
decision themselves) degree in econ, business, or law will yield vastly
greater material dividends.

If you want people to stop changing their minds about science, you have to do
something to change the ROI calculation that goes "I can work 2x as hard as my
peers, graduate and receive 1/2 the monetary compensation or I can....not do
that".

~~~
geebee
I completely agree that PhD programs in STEM fields have become extremely
uncompetitive with the professions (a RAND study on the supposed shortage of
scientists and engineers that reached the same conclusion Greenspun reaches,
though with a more data driven, less anecdotal approach.)

But keep in mind, we're talking about undergraduate degrees here, which is a
different beast entirely. Engineering and physical science majors really do
have considerably better employment prospects on average than humanities or
social science majors.

That said, I suppose you still have to analyze it from the perspective of a
student who is sure to attend professional school. If you know you're law-
school bound, you're at a reputable university, and you have high grades in
humanities and the ability to ace standardized tests, you can still have a
high paying career in law without ever taking a serious math class.

Engineering/Sci majors are often more desirable on the way out - a law school
graduate with an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering has more options
than one with an undergrad major in English.

Considering how much harder these degrees are, it could still be rational for
a student to avoid these fields even at the undergraduate level - and if they
harm your GPA, it might be best to avoid them (though some admissions
officials do say they discount high GPAs in "easier" majors). And even if you
can hack it, you'll work a hell of a lot harder in college. But if you're
willing to put in the effort and have the ability, you do improve your job
prospects with an rigorous Math/Sci/Eng major over a humanities major in
almost every career scenario.

So on the balance, I think you can make a very strong ROI case for engineering
in eng/sci/math at the undergrad level. MS, less so, but it's a short program.
PhD? Well, the RAND institute already crunched the numbers better than I ever
could, it's pretty hard to justify a PhD in STEM relative to the professions
if you're going off career ROI.

~~~
vilya
I guess it depends how you measure ROI? People usually do PhDs in an area that
interests them; if they then go on to an academic or research position, it's
possible for them to spend their entire career pursuing their own interests.
That sounds like a pretty good ROI to me, regardless of salary!

~~~
lurker17
A very small fraction of Ph.D graduates land professional research positions.

~~~
hugh3
It's not "very small", it's just significantly below unity. In, say, physics,
I'd say that somewhere around 50% of PhDs wind up, long term, in professional
research positions. That's 30% in academia, and the remaining 20% in
government/military/commercial research labs.

------
zeteo
The article sounds as though there's a lot of pressure on colleges to lower
their standards in order to produce the required number of engineers. I was a
math/CS TA for several years, and I don't think the problem is with tough
freshman classes, low grades or a focus on theory.

Fundamentally, the main problem with students that come from the US
educational system is a lack of background in math. The prospective science
major who's having trouble with fractions and basic algebra is, unfortunately,
a disturbingly common presence on college campuses these days.

It's hard to fix K-12 in this regard (especially as everyone wants to fix it
in a different way). But if colleges really want to solve the problem, they
should put more effort into remedial math classes, instead of lowering the
standards (and reducing the theoretical content) for those classes they
already have.

~~~
kevinskii
I think the remedial math courses that presently exist at the college level
are probably sufficient. The problem is that there's a perceived stigma among
young people in taking them. I retook pre-calculus and trigonometry when I
started college after the military, and I doubt I would have graduated as an
engineer if I hadn't.

~~~
starwed
Make them mandatory if you can't pass a screening test.

~~~
bh42222
Nah, the real problem is just that other degrees, MBA, Law, etc, are just
plain easier AND result in higher social status plus frequently more money.

Maybe in-demand engineers make more than the average lawyer, not sure about
that. Maybe an MBA isn't really that much easier? But I'd say higher social
status, especially in the USA holds true.

~~~
jcdavis
Can't speak much about new MBA grads, New grad lawyers are doing pretty awful
these days (IANAL, but I have several friends who graduated from decent-but-
not-amazing law schools this year, and had/are having a hard time getting
fulltime jobs as supposed to temp/contact work.)

~~~
rayiner
At the top 10-15 law schools, more than 50% the class will get a six figure
job to start, and a big fraction of the remainder will have wanted to do
public service to begin with. Even just a bit below that, at some of the top
30 schools like UIUC that drops to maybe 10%. At the same time, salaries
aren't distributed normally, and the next mode is somewhere in the $50k range.

Engineering is both less segregated (people at MIT aren't all making Google
salaries and people at Penn State can get still top jobs) and less bimodal
(the top jobs don't pay 3x as much as the median job, and even people who do
poorly grades-wise can often find some sort of employment).

So if you're looking at a top engineering program like Berkeley versus doing a
bullshit humanities degree followed by a top law school, you'll likely come
out ahead monetarily pursuing the latter option. On the other hand going to a
decent state engineering school is probably a better bet than aforementioned
humanities degree and a decent state law school.

That being said, even someone who went to aforementioned state law school and
is working in "small law" for $50k can make a lot of money if he can bring in
business. And if you went to that big firm and can bring in business, you can
get paid millions while still doing legal work. On the engineering side, you
either have to go the startup route, get an MBA and go into management (which
involves not being an engineer anymore), or be content hearing "we couldn't
possibly pay an engineer as much as a manager!" It's changing a bit with the
Google's and Facebook's of the world, but is still the basic reality for most
non-software folks.

------
rayiner
I sometimes regret not switching out of my aerospace engineering major. I went
to a good undergraduate engineering school (Georgia Tech), and frankly the
educational experience was terrible. Professors who weren't engaged, TA's who
couldn't speak English well enough to easily convey the material, exams that
were unrelated to what was taught in class, etc. I had a few great professors,
but they were few and far between.

When I left engineering to go to a smallish private law school, I had a
totally different experience. Classes taught entirely by professors. Maximum
of ~60 students per class and more typically 20-30 in upper-level courses.
Professors who would engage the class in hypotheticals rather than just dryly
recount the rules. Exams that actually tested the material we learned.

The fundamental problem is that engineering schools, especially the big state
ones like Berkeley, Michigan, Illinois, and Georgia Tech, are research
factories. They crank out certain amount of BS's to meet industry demand for
engineers, but their investment in those graduates seems minimal at best.

Now, don't get me wrong. I think an undergraduate degree in engineering is
still the best way to go (as long as you can hack the math and it won't kill
your GPA). Even if you ultimately want to do law, finance, or consulting,
people really do take you more seriously. But at the same time, I really can't
blame people when they stay away from STEM majors, especially ones that test
well and know they will be able to go to a top graduate school with their
liberal arts degree.

~~~
PotatoEngineer
You're also seeing a difference between undergraduate education and graduate
education. The class sizes and professor interest are night and day.

------
spacemanaki
Previously: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3196377>

------
bedris
_“You’d like to think that since these institutions are getting the best
students, the students who go there would have the best chances to succeed,”
he says. “But if you take two students who have the same high school grade-
point average and SAT scores, and you put one in a highly selective school
like Berkeley and the other in a school with lower average scores like Cal
State, that Berkeley student is at least 13 percent less likely than the one
at Cal State to finish a STEM degree.”_

This is interesting. Could it be that at more selective schools, when students
encounter difficulty in STEM courses, they are less hesitant to switch to an
easier major because they figure that their degree will still have value due
to the name recognition of their university, while their counterparts at less
selective schools don't have that luxury? That's one hypothesis...

~~~
ak217
No, it's just that Berkeley STEM courses are harder.

~~~
ricefield
Not just material-wise, but also in terms of competitiveness

~~~
grammr
This is a valid point. The EECS department at Berkeley essentially sets the
distribution of letter grades that will be assigned at the end of each
course[0], so there will always be many damned smart students who end up
getting really low (or failing) grades because of their performance relative
to their peers.

I majored in CS at Berkeley, and there were only one or two professors that I
can recall who strayed even slightly from these departmental guidelines. For
me, the harsh curves essentially ruined what would have been an amazing
educational experience. It was basically a perpetual preparation for the next
exam, because you were always competing for your spot on the grade scale.

This is a very real deterrent for not only students who need a decent GPA
(e.g. for grad school), but also for those who want to actually enjoy their
time at university.

[0] <http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Policies/ugrad.grading.shtml>

~~~
scott_s
I dunno, this distribution seems reasonable to me: _17% A's, 50% B's, 20% C's,
10% D's, and 3% F's_

Are you saying that the caliber of student in the EECS department of Berkeley
is so high that even the bottom 13% of the class would have gotten C's or B's
at another school?

~~~
rayiner
The problem is the 3.0 median. At my law school, where most people majored in
social sciences at places like Berkeley, Michigan, etc, 3.0 is a bottom of the
barrel GPA in terms of getting admitted. I think the median is like 3.8. Our
peer law schools won't even take someone with below a 3.2-3.3 or so.
Meanwhile, 3.3 was a great GPA at the engineering department at Georgia Tech
when I was there.

You can complain about grade inflation, etc, but at the end of the day you're
telling that 18 year old kid: "don't even try to major in engineering, because
even if you keep up with your highly qualified peers you'll still kill any
shot you might have had at a non-engineering graduate program."

~~~
scott_s
I was comparing that distribution to the schools I've been a student and
taught at (Virginia Tech, William and Mary) in CS. It seemed on par. Then the
point is not about Berkeley, but all engineering departments.

------
spodek
I went the other direction. After finding math and science easy before
college, I avoided science classes in college to avoid being too nerdy.

By junior year I realized I loved science too much, overcame being bothered by
what other people thought, majored in physics, and got a PhD.

My last two years of the PhD I ended up starting a company and became a
successful entrepreneur in media, which is, I guess, the payoff to the economy
of someone going into math and science.

Check out this irony. I've come to create art with my medium and taught a
couple art courses at art schools to MFA and BFA candidates. The _art
students_ learn programming, circuits, entrepreneurship, design, and such.

I'm talking about programs like NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Project
and Parsons' Arts, Media, and Technology program.

We created these displays, which is pretty techy and beautiful. \-
<http://joshuaspodek.com/tag/unionsquareinmotion> \-
<http://joshuaspodek.com/new_bryant_park_in_motion_videos>

~~~
BadCookie
I'm surprised that you were able to decide to major in physics your junior
year. At my school, if you didn't take physics your first year, you simply
could not graduate as a physics major in four years (at least without getting
a special exception to double up on courses, which would require you to be
nearly super-human). Perhaps this phenomenon contributes to the low numbers of
science majors, as well. Lots of people don't figure out what to major in
until they are a year or two into college, which rules out a lot of STEM
possibilities if you happened not to take the correct courses in your first
year.

~~~
spodek
Exactly.

I had to double up on classes and take some subjects on my own over the
summer. Two classes one semester literally overlapped by about fifteen minutes
and I had to get special permission to show up late for it. I got a passing
grade for it, but finished it afterward.

It wasn't a matter of being super-human, just loving the subject. I agree,
though, that if your passion isn't overwhelming, you can't do it. You can with
many non-STEM majors.

The first couple years of graduate school were brutal. I had taken twenty math
and science classes undergrad. Typical Russian and Chinese classmates had
taken thirty to fifty and they blew me out of the water. The one guy in the
program who took nineteen courses dropped out, so I was right on the border.

------
devindotcom
Personally I stepped away from pre-med because I couldn't stand the idea of my
major determining my life for the next ten years - graduate programs,
internships, residence, all that stuff, it's daunting when you're 21 and all
you want to do is STUFF. Going premed would mean what I'd done was just the
beginning not an accomplishment in and of itself. That was daunting and a bit
demoralizing. The fact is it's not for everyone, and not just because of the
difficulty (I never excelled in math or organic chemistry), and people like me
who get in because it's interesting often find that the career paths that
present themselves are strictly defined and entail a lot of drudgery. I
remember perceiving this very clearly in my 3rd year after doing a lot of prep
work and it was an easy decision. I ended up majoring in Psych with minors in
Neuroscience and Cog Sci, for the record, which was hard as hell anyway, but
technically a BA and not applicable to STEM-type employment.

------
bmahmood
The article certainly identifies an important issue, but seems simplistic in
it's assessment of the root causes. As a a bio major, who wavered between pre-
med and business aspirations, my main gripe with science education was the
theoretical framework it was taught in. It's mostly complete rote memorization
of thousands of inane details, without any practical context to understand the
relevance or application (no, labs do not fulfill this purpose).

If the implications of bio/chem theory were taught in a more practical,
problem-solving approach, (a la computer science), I feel people would develop
a better passion for science (as they did in High School with science fairs as
the article describes), and stick with it longer.

------
brudgers
I think the analysis is a little superficial.

K-12 education in the US channels a lot of really bright kids onto a highly
time consuming and sequential STEM track, and the idea that anything other
than a STEM major is for wimps is not uncommon. In addition, STEM majors is
where such students are directed by guidance counselors.

I went off to college to major in EE. I had a 3 minute conversation with my
academic adviser which consisted entirely of him telling me exactly which 15
hours to take. I walked out and changed majors to CHM, where the academic
councilor explained the various degree options and discussed electives over
the course of about an hour.

But it turns out, though I loved the theory, I really fucking hated laboratory
sessions. Organic synthesis on paper was an interesting problem - I just
didn't care for going through the motions, cleaning glassware and pretending I
was conducting a meaningful experiment.

It took me several years to decide that there are lots of worthy intellectual
endeavors and challenging problems outside of STEM [YMMV]. I believe my choice
to pursue a liberal arts degree is among the best decisions I ever made.

Personally, I think the problem is that the US educational system narrows the
funnel toward the STEM field too early - for all practical purposes it's
already narrowing way down into the primary grades...even though the it is
obvious that people can find their way into the more "open" STEM areas (such
as programming) without being channeled academically toward a STEM career.

In other words, the primary reason that a person first exposed to algebra at
Junior College is less likely to become a mathematician is lower expectations,
both on the part of the academy and on the part of the student.

~~~
pnathan
FYI, there is a whole branch of chemistry that exists outside the lab and
dealing with the abstract concepts and mechanics.

~~~
brudgers
Yep. Unfortunately, you can't get there without cleaning a lot of glassware.

------
ewanmcteagle
Why are the students afraid of lower grades? If you don't go to a PhD program,
does it matter all that much? I think this emphasis on grades is something we
should work to undo. You can learn, you can relearn and get extra help, but if
the grades cause you to quit too early then grades are not having the effect
we want.

~~~
Kuiper
A significant portion of the undergraduate population at my school receive
scholarships that are recurring on the condition of maintaining a 3.0 GPA.
We're talking non-trivial amounts, on the scale of $18-22k scholarship money
per year for a school that costs ~$45k/year. For students receiving these
scholarships, grades matter significantly, and it can become an economic
question of whether they'd rather continue pursuing the engineering degree and
graduate tens of thousands more in debt, or switch to an easier set of courses
that will allow them to retain the scholarship.

I think a lot of it also has to do with expectations from parents. For a lot
of students, graduating with an engineering degree and a 2.5 GPA will leave
mom and dad less happy than an English degree with a 3.5 GPA, even though the
former is more likely to be useful in the job hunt.

------
ewanmcteagle
I think this is a valuable alternate perspective. Students will become
discouraged from time to time and this will vary by field. Frankly, most
professors don't care about undergraduate education. I know this from direct
experience. They will typically list their priorities as: research and grants,
graduate students, and only then, undergraduate teaching. And teaching is hard
enough even when it's a top priority. You always lose some students without
dedicated effort put into teaching and that will be worse in harder classes.
High school doesn't prepare students for a rigorous college experience and if
we don't bridge that gap somehow that will be one more reason someone will get
out of a tough curriculum.

------
alexholehouse
I think this in an interesting problem you don't really have in a lot of
tertiary education systems else wear (that said, I still think the ability to
pick and chose a diverse set of classes is a great model, and better than
most).

I studied in the UK, so you apply from high school to do, "Computer Science"
or, "Physics" or, "English". And that's what you do. You have some choice in
terms of the classes and courses you take, but (generally) they're all totally
within that sphere. I think having some options to do other courses would be
really valuable, but equally it means people don't typically chose to switch
from an STEM based degree to something else, and people stick it out (or just
drop out).

------
rflrob
_The bulk of attrition comes in engineering and among pre-med majors, who
typically leave STEM fields if their hopes for medical school fade._

I don't know that including pre-meds in the analysis is worthwhile. While
medicine is certainly quite technical, I don't really consider it a STEM
field. The economic multipliers from improved medicine (increasing
productivity for each of a doctor's patients) is qualitatively different from
those for "real" STEM fields (increasing productivity for potentially anyone
who can get the discovered knowledge).

------
cantbecool
I don't think it,the curriculum, is too difficult, but the professors that
teach the lower level general curriculum freshman year in most universities. I
mean I had professors that were literally out in left field, and don't get me
started on the foreign TAs. There was always major communication barriers
during my first two quarters in EE. Enthusiasm coming from professors is
contagious, but so is boredom.

------
civilian
I thought this was posted a week ago. Don't upvote this!

