New Scientist
Invest in minds not maths to boost the economy
* 23 December 2013 by _Michael Brooks_
(http://www.newscientist.com/search?rbauthors=Michael+Brooks)
Instead of trying to educate more scientists or engineers to drive
innovation, we should focus on turning out agile thinkers
WE ARE all becoming used to warnings of a shortage of science, technology,
engineering and mathematics recruits – the "STEM crisis". In a world
increasingly dominated by careers that involve these fields, organisations and
politicians repeat the mantra that we really must train more of these people
to secure our prosperity.
Earlier this month, for example, the UK government announced it will
plough an extra £50 million per academic year into teaching STEM subjects. In
2012 the Royal Academy of Engineering _warned that the UK needed 10,000 more
of those graduates a year_
(http://www.theengineer.co.uk/channels/policy-and-business/report-reveals-scale-of-uks-engineering-skills-shortage/1014081.arti
cle) . In the same year, Microsoft said the STEM pipeline needed
strengthening because 1.2 million US jobs would open up in computing by 2020 –
and
only 40,000 more Americans would have degrees in those subjects by then.
These arguments are flawed. STEM training is not the only answer: the
Microsoft report, for instance, failed to acknowledge that a degree in
computing (which Bill Gates doesn't have as he quit a degree at Harvard to
start
Microsoft's forerunner) is only one entry path to the industry. Plus, if
there really is a shortage, why aren't wages rising? If you have a degree and
you work _in computing or mathematics, your wage is likely to have risen by
less than half a per cent per year_
(http://www.epi.org/publication/pm195-stem-labor-shortages-microsoft-report-distorts/)
between 2000 and 2011.
UK Royal Society president Paul Nurse has _highlighted a glut of science
PhDs_
(http://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2011/06/british-science-nurse-society) ,
with many relegated to donkey work in the lab. Nobel laureate _James
Watson also noted a resigned acceptance of unfulfilling labour among trained
scientists_ (http://bigthink.com/videos/we-are-training-too-many-scientists)
: "We're training people who really don't want to think, they just want to
have jobs," he said in 2010. Watson's conclusion? "We may be training too
many scientists."
Watson is echoing what many _labour market analysts have been saying for
years_ (http://www.economist.com/node/17723223?story_id=17723223) . There is a
solution. Instead of looking to produce scientists or engineers, we should
focus on simply turning out agile minds.
I recently curated a summit on the future of secondary education. It was
convened as a partnership between the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical
Physics and the University of Waterloo, both in Ontario, Canada. What was
most striking was that the heads of these two institutions explicitly told me
they didn't want any focus on STEM education. They wanted a future in which
students are able to think creatively.
They are not alone. Norman Augustine, a former CEO of aerospace giant
Lockheed Martin, declared that the best of his 80,000 employees were those
with
good communication and thinking skills. "I can testify that most were
excellent engineers," he wrote in the _The Wall Street Journal_
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904265504576568351324914730.html)
. "But the
factor that most distinguished those who advanced in the organization was
the ability to think broadly and read and write clearly."
The ability to process, synthesise and communicate information efficiently
is the premium skill of the future. We shouldn't be surprised: it was the
premium skill of the past too. John Maynard Keynes once stated that what
made Isaac Newton great was his ability to focus on a problem until he had
thought his way through it. "I fancy his pre-eminence is due to his muscles of
intuition being the strongest and most enduring with which a man has ever
been gifted," he said.
When he chose to, Newton was also great at communicating ideas. The same
can't be said of most STEM graduates: a _2011 UK government study_
(http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/2664/) reported the moans of employers that they often
lacked
communication and organisational skills as well as the ability to manage
their time or work in a team.
The experts in Ontario concluded that creating students who can think
broadly will not be easy. It will involve abandoning the culture of grades and
exams and moving to assessments centred on a student's portfolio of
projects. That will mean employers and universities will have to be more
creative
in their selection criteria. It will also mean holding back from trying to
skew the labour market and letting students find and study what they are
good at, once they have mastered a broad range of basic competencies.
That's OK: the UK government report already admitted that the expectation
that people enter STEM jobs after their studies "may require some
rethinking". The pipeline is proving leaky, and employers are voicing concern
over a
"lack of high calibre" applicants for STEM jobs. It's the same in the US,
which spends $3 billion a year on luring students into those subjects: 44
per cent of those majoring in a STEM subject shift focus while at college,
compared to 30 per cent in the humanities. And that doesn't include health
profession courses, or computer sciences, where the rate is 59.2 per cent.
What is most concerning about the drive is that the fiercest advocates are
those who stand to benefit most. As science policy analyst Colin Macilwain
argued in _Nature_
(http://www.nature.com/news/driving-students-into-science-is-a-fool-s-errand-1.12981)
this year, increasing the number of STEM
undergraduate places "floods the market with STEM graduates, reduces
competition for their services and cuts their wages". In other words, it's a
source
of cheap labour for the technology industries.
Pushing more students towards such courses without ensuring they learn
more than just fact-farting and number-juggling may fill entry-level jobs. But
our best thinkers, looking for interesting, well-paid work, are all too
easily tempted away from applying their skills to the big science challenges
of the 21st century.
So the STEM mantra won't create industries and innovations that drive a
flourishing economy, and it won't bring through those who will solve the
problems of climate change and energy, food and water scarcity.
It's time to acknowledge that the rationale for the STEM push has run out
of steam.
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