UC San Diego sociology professor John Skrentny encountered a quandary when he examined research on college graduates with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Those are the fields commonly referred to by the acronym STEM.
Educators, politicians, business leaders and industry moguls continually stress the need for more STEM graduates to meet the needs of rapidly evolving technologies in the U.S.
Yet, Skrentny discovered that many of these highly sought degree holders ultimately leave the fields for which they prepared and were hired. Rather, they gravitate to other professions having little or nothing to do with their education and training.
“Employers in America keep saying we have a desperate, urgent shortage of workers with STEM degrees, and yet the majority of STEM graduates do not work in STEM jobs,” the Del Mar Terrace resident said in a recent interview.
“I couldn’t understand why these employers kept saying we need more, we need more. Schools and universities were urging more students to major in STEM subjects and to graduate with STEM degrees. Employers were saying we’re still not getting enough. We need foreign workers with STEM degrees. …“It just didn’t make sense. If there was supposedly a shortage, why is it that a majority of people with these supposedly in-demand degrees are not working in these jobs.”
The skewed data piqued the curiosity of Skrentny, who grew up in northwest Indiana in the greater Chicago area. He decided to delve deeper into the issue.
“I’m a scholar, I’m a sociologist and we love to try to solve puzzles and that’s when I wanted to understand,” said Skrentny, who got his Bachelor of Arts degree from Indiana University and a doctorate degree from Harvard University.
The fruit of his inquiry is Skrentny’s book “Wasted Education: How We Fail Our Graduates in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.”
The 230-page text, including 45 pages of notes detailing Skrentny’s extensive research, was recently published by the University of Chicago Press.
Information on the book and Skrentny can be found at: quote.ucsd.edu/jskrentny/
The volume is available on Amazon books.
The book has resonated with reviewers, including Jon S. Wesick, who wrote on Amazon’s website: “I answered the nation’s call for STEM, spent 10 years in college earning a PHD in physics and spent a further 3 years as a postdoc. It was a real slap in the face when nobody wanted to hire me. …
“If you’re thinking about going into STEM, read this book!”
In formulating his theory on the failure of STEM education, Skrentny said he scrutinized the data from the National Science Foundation that tracks American college graduates.
“I could use that data to try to understand where the people with STEM degrees are working. … What I found was that a lot of them are working in jobs that make more money than most people with STEM degrees. …
“So it’s basically that they do all of this work for this degree and then they decide the employers are not offering them the money that they want so they go and do something else. …. They end up doing something other than science, technology, engineering and math.”
Chapter 3, “Burn and Churn”, explores how STEM employment isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. Rather than long-term careers, many of these jobs are prone to layoffs due to the constantly shifting nature of the industries and employers’ needs.
Moreover, STEM industries often instigate turnover because of poor management, lower pay, bad treatment and workplace discrimination, Skrentny contends.
“I looked at what we know about how employers treat STEM workers,” Skrentny said. “What I found is they don’t treat them very well. They tend to overwork them. They tend to make them work especially long hours, especially for workers in computers and software.”
STEM employees, Skrentny said, frequently take on burdens in developing new products and technologies that require working long overtime hours while accepting deadlines they are unable to meet.
As a result, they experience negative reactions from their bosses, leading to possible demotions or dismissals.
In Chapter 4, Skrentny addresses the “Precariousness of the STEM Job.”
“These employers claim that there’s all these shortages, but then they allow a lot of sexual harassment in the work place (and) they allow there to be workplace cultures that tolerate an unequal treatment of women and African-Americans, but especially women. So a lot of women with STEM degrees end up leaving STEM jobs as well. …
“These are all kind of situations where it’s sort of a self-inflicted wound by the employer. … They might be complaining about a shortage but their own practices are creating a perceived shortage. Their own practices are leading workers to go do something else.”
His book, Skrentny believes, could help employers understand why they are experiencing high turnover of STEM grads.
“One of the things I would hope is these employers would manage with more compassion …. Stem employees are more vulnerable to boom and bust (cycles). …”
Another factor Skrentny cites as a reason for STEM employees leaving jobs is their own discomfort with the practices or policies of the companies for whom they work. That’s particularly true among social media firms, Skrentny said.
“Some of these workers are doing things that maybe they won’t feel so good about. … We ’ve had a lot of STEM workers tell me they would not have their children working in these fields,” he said.
Skrentny said there are many STEM graduates who have employment in their chosen fields and are content with their jobs.
The data, however, as Skrentny’s book illustrates, suggests many more are not working in the occupations for which they signed up. Ultimately, Skrentny urges, society needs to reexamine its emphasis on STEM education.
“I’m not trying to say that everyone’s miserable, that this is a terrible way to earn a living,” Skrentny said. “I’m trying to understand the puzzle of why so many who go through the trouble to earn these degrees choose to work someplace else. That is what I’m trying to understand.”
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