SL 658

~ Laura

This morning, I watching a pot, waiting for boiling. I should just go to the gym, but I’m too neurotic this morning. Ah, let’s blog for a bit…

What have I been reading?

The NSF has a really interesting report on the state of STEM education. One of their conclusions is that more than half of STEM grads work in fields unrelated to their major. Also a lot of kids who graduate with a degree in the social sciences end up in a STEM field. It’s a reminder that a “degree is not destiny.”

I stole these graphs from p. 13 of the report.

Stem 2 STEM 1

I’m a HUGE fan of April Bloomfield. If you are in New York City, please visit the Spotted Pig for nice beer and amazing food. The New York Times has an article about her book, A Girl and Her Greens: Hearty Meals from the Gardenand a recipe for potatoes.

Fantastic article by David Leonhardt about the latest research on at-risk students in college. Some points that he makes: 1) The pay gap between college graduates and everyone else is near a record high. 2) The unemployment rate among college graduates ages 25 to 34 is just 2 percent. 3) Students do better when they attend the most selective college that admits them, rather than “undermatching.”

Published by Laura

5 thoughts on “SL 658”

  1. Do you read Cherry Bombe mag? It’s about women and food. They hosted their Jubilee last month (their 2nd) in NYC and it was excellent. April spoke there.

    BTW I’m back again in NYC to see friends – yay for warm weather and museums and galleries and great food!

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  2. I guess I’d want to know more about who the social scientists are, before presuming that a degree isn’t destiny, in moving to STEM fields. First, there are the economists, who are often doing very mathematical analysis that might shift well to computery fields; then, there are the behavioral/social scientists who are doing something that crosses over into psychology, and are often strong statisticians (including epidemiology and health research). Degree isn’t destiny, but what you learn and who you connect with might be very important (though there is the opportunity to switch into fields through transition educational opportunities).

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    1. It also depends upon serendipity. I have two friends who work in software companies as analysts and they both were humanities majors. One was an high school English teacher who went to work for an educational software company. She networked her way in after dealing with the company in her teaching job.

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    2. I drifted from Poli Sci into psychology because I had some experience conducting surveys. Then I drifted to working with psychiatrists because when I was with the psychologists, I was working on a population with schizophrenia. Then I started working with other types of doctors because I couldn’t find any psychiatrists here who wanted to pay me.

      Anyway, there were always connections, but they weren’t very strong. I had statistical training in political science, but it was the minimum required for the program and quite a bit away from being a strong background by even social science standards. My education since then consists of two classes and lots of reading/absorbing what goes on around me. Anyway, I supervise people who have the actual MS-level stats degrees that I should have to do my job. They do know more than me on the technical aspects, but I can read up on the technical stuff far more readily they then can pick up the non-statistics stuff that I’ve picked up over 20 years.

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