My wife just got her psychology PhD. Thankfully it was in clinical psych (which from an observer's point of view is the "best" of the psych programs) and she abandoned academia so she has a decent, well-paying job.
America mints way more liberal arts PhDs than we have jobs for. Being in debt w/o a job at 30 is not a great position to be in.
Also, getting the degree (aka being a low-payed servant for her PI) wasn't far from misery. Just one datapoint, but it was not unique among her cohort.
It is not my experience that their chosen field makes them miserable. Would you mind illuminating your point? My experience is anecdotal and not very helpful.
Most people do not have the necessary personality type/abilities/interest to do well in STEM. Doing a STEM degree is not enough on its own to get the STEM payoff. To be clear, I am not saying that STEM makes people miserable by default, just that a minority of the population enjoys such things.
However the low percentage of STEM degrees can also be explained by the fact that the college lifestyle is an institution of its own in the US. Therefore more people who won't necessarily stand to benefit from college will attempt it, and they are more likely to pick easier majors (which are overwhelmingly non-STEM)
In this case it won't pay off either. It's a hard job market for mediocre engineers and many STEM fields don't even pay that much better.
The vast masses of people are already on the road to hell from birth no matter what choices they make in their lives so that expression ought to enter its retirement years
I disagree that STEM fields don't pay any better. I think it's clear they do.
Nature vs nurture. It's a mix, it's not all decided at birth. You always have the power to change your outcome. Many people will never exercise it effectively though.
I said many STEM fields don't necessarily pay better, not STEM in general. Obviously engineering/software/quant stuff pays off as long as you are motivated (a suprisingly large hurdle) I was thinking of various sciences like biology, pure maths, where it's heavily dependent on your location and other factors.
