The STEM curriculum itself could be seriously improved. Right now it's designed for the needs of a mechanical engineer circa 1955. Spends about 3x more time than necessary on elaborate trigonometry and calculating the volumes of increasingly absurd objects. Yet even the advanced students who take Calc BC won't come out knowing what a Lagrange multiplier is.
It's hard in ways that are sort of useless and neglects important concepts which then have to be learned in college.
Interestingly some of the math education reform efforts that inspire controversy (because they get rid of middle school tracking) do actually make some good moves in this direction, incorporating probability, statistics, and computation earlier.
This fact, and its absence in the essay, makes me really skeptical of the rest of your argument.
> But the fact that such a high percentage of our grad students in STEM fields are from overseas suggests that there’s huge room for improvement in how well we train our own workers.
Nope, it's because for most people, grad school is a shit choice. You spend several years making ~10k a year, maybe 20k tops, in what is really a low-paid research position. This is a good deal if you're looking to get a visa, but otherwise its not that great of a gig. That's why the positions are so heavily staffed by foreigners: they're getting a visa out of the deal.
I don't think there's an real evidence of a stem shortage of American workers. The more accurate story is that there just aren't a ton of STEM jobs available for most Americans, unless they are willing to relocate to a relatively small number of really expensive cities. If you want more Americans working in STEM, i think you need more STEM jobs distributed around the country, and you probably want them to pay more as well.
Of course there's also the question of the terrible mismatch between the incentives of the higher education system, and those of the students going in. The university system touts itself as being the magic path out of poverty, while giving many students little valuable in exchange for heavy amounts of debt.
All these facts - the prevalence of people getting stem degrees and then not working in stem, grad school being a bad deal for the most part - the broken incentives of universities - they're all pretty obvious to anyone willing to look for them. But since these political coalitions tend to line up on the 'blue' side of the aisle, most journalists aren't writing about them, and the narrative manufacturing machines are ignoring jsut how awful the american education system is failing people.
If you want to improve STEM AND fight inequity, we should retribute wealth away from stanford, MIT, harvard, and yale, and start building nuclear power plants in every state. We also need _some_ system that aligns incentives between 'people who are young and want to be trained in order to get good paying jobs' and 'people who can do the training' - because the university system sure as hell isn't it. Once engineering jobs look high status, and young people are getting advice from people with skin in the game - people will start to migrate towards the good paying enginerring jobs.
I accept the main premise of your essay, but. I'm an old guy; the Sputnik moment happened before high school, and my math instruction was changed accordingly. For me, it was great, once we got past the lunacy of set theory for 8th graders.
I agree that we need to make STEM more broadly attractive, while improving attitudes and educational persistence. But I think you disregard that social science research is characteristically politicized, tending to favor the politically-favored outcome (in this case, that tracking doesn't work). Indeed it's extremely important to improve the education of ALL kids, and to improve the education of the (say) 5% of kids who are likely to enter STEM vocations, but it''s also important to improve the education of the 0.1% of kids who are best positioned to make the most significant contributions to the advancing edge of scientific research. Studies of average performance of a large-ish population are unable to detect effects on a small subgroup.
I know plenty of people in my field of scientific research who have made major contributions without remarkable intellectual chops, because of some combination of tenacity, grit, and imagination. But I also know plenty of the "other kind." If you look through the history of science, you will be struck by the sizable fraction of scientists and mathematicians who were prodigies at the age of ten. We see nothing weirdly unwholesome about musicians like Mozart. Why is this notion toxic when applied to STEM?
This is why the "care work is infrastructure" messaging makes me uneasy. I'm completely supportive of getting funding for childcare, elder care, the whole liberal wishlist by any means necessary, and I'm also in favor of thinking of infrastructure as more than roads. But even pre-fabs, someone has to keep the lights on. Someone has to filter the drinking water and maintain the sewers and update the building codes. It's incredibly easy to take the basic physical elements of civilization for granted, and we need people in every community in the country who are going to be ready to step up and learn how to run and maintain those systems (most of which, of course, are now inextricably computerized as well). Respect for this as unique and vital work is, I think, hugely important.
One argument that I see particularly in computer science/software engineering is the importance of humanities education and the few (but not zero) number of English/Poli Sci majors who take a coding bootcamp and land a tech job.
I took a few general courses in addition to my engineering major which I enjoyed. I wonder if you could speak more to the types of education curriculums that could better entice people to a STEM degree even as we preserve many of the teachings of humanities courses.
When I was a young hotshot, one of the most motivating things was finding out that there *was* so much more to be known. In other words, those accelerated classes, but also something most US high schools seem to avoid like the plague, namely early specialisation. I specialised in STEM at age 14 and 6 months (and no, this was not in some totalitarian pressure cooker; I also took German, just for fun). Seven years later, I moved to the USA.
Don't forget that tests on specific subjects will, in reality, measure motivation blended with ability.
- "In recent years there’s a push to de-emphasize STEM, mostly out of egalitarian concerns." I get that pursuing STEM is unfashionable or even sometimes problematic in some circles, but at large I haven't seen that same trend. In fact, compared to when I was in college (2010ish) it feels like it is more popular to pursue STEM now than ever before: https://www.nap.edu/read/25038/chapter/4#43
Great article! You hit the nail right on the head! My major was math achieved in 1974. Lead to an interest in programming using assembly language on a PDP-8 given to the Chemistry department by DEC. When IBM launched their PC I was one of the few at work that used it.I used a FORTRAN compiler to produce code that made impact testing more accurate.
I agree with the problem but disagree with the solution. STEM "talent" probably more has more to do with interest and confidence than innate ability, and it's still worth identifying and encouraging it early in life. A solid foundation in STEM for all students is also a good idea, but I doubt there would value in trying to herd a big portion of the population into specializing in it. Let the kids who feel they're good at it move ahead.
The NYC decision re G&T admissions was only for this year, because they felt they couldn't safely organize the testing. There's continuing interest in introducing additional criteria besides the test, but for now the plan is to switch back next schoolyear to the test as the only admissions criteria. There's a brand new but possibly short term DOE chief who has talked about her interest in changing G&T admissions, but probably nothing will be decided until the new mayor comes in late this year, who could put in another new DOE chief. My daughter's in G&T and at least in NYC the stereotype that it's all white doesn't hold true. There are also a lot of accelerated charter schools in NYC, which do admissions by lottery, but the mere fact that to enter the lottery parents have to want that kind of school for their kid means these schools also tend to attract "talented" kids.
The theme of Scott Rozelle's "Invisible China" is that the economy is at risk because rural children, who comprise 70% of children in China, are not educated properly even to high school level. There are classrooms - but what goes on inside them is without value. Rozelle fears that this will lock China in the middle income trap. This is a version of Noah's piece. You have to get good STEM teachers, which may not be easy.
Chinese students are learning math while American students are learning to decolonize their privilege. America had a choice between equity and merit and we chose poorly.
STEM background here (Ph.D. physical chemistry), but I became a Wall Street banking lawyer. A number of my colleagues were also STEM folk. Why? Better pay; easier work; less competition. The only rational people who end up in STEM are those with an extremely powerful taste for it, and those with no alternatives (immigrants, folk with poor social capital, etc.)
Hi Noah, I work in a fab (which of course does not automatically make me authoritative, but it does give me a certain perspective). I largely agree with your recommendations on education reform. However I'd like to make some comments on the industrial side.
1) There is not only a need for PhDs in the fab, but also shift personnel, including folks who are good at fixing things with their hands, or who simply have brute strength and can do manual labor. In fact these folks can be harder to find, since for example auto mechanics usually don't think of themselves as well qualified for fab work. I believe Varian Semiconductor (before they were purchased by the Evil Empire a.k.a. Applied Materials) ran an ad campaign which more or less said, "if you can fix a car you can fix an ion implanter." In my experience working on fab equipment is even easier than working on cars, since it is designed to be routinely maintained.
2) I think much of the movement of semiconductor manufacturing out of the US and into Asia has more to do with macroeconomics in general than STEM education in particular, although I'm sure you'd understand that better than me 😊. It is astonishingly cheaper to run a leading edge fab (or any fab really) where labor is so much cheaper, and so much of the rest of the supply chain is colocated. I do struggle to source parts and chemicals from within the US... It is frequently so much cheaper to buy them overseas, and I have to go to lengths to justify the added expense of buying local to my superiors.
3) Fabs produce truly horrible waste that will destroy the surrounding environment if not properly contained and/or passivated. It is always cheaper to vent your exhaust directly to the atmosphere or house exhaust than to install abatement units, for example. In the US companies go to great length to understand the unique waste properties of every process and dispose accordingly, as it should be. Many of our foreign competitors have no regard for these practices, which gives them a competitive advantage in a marketplace that does not price in externalities.
Instead of identifying the best students and accelerating their education, why not identify the best students and set them to tutoring those who are less good? It can raise the average standard, teaching will improve the abilities of the gifted ("if you want to learn, teach") and it will promote solidarity.
My criticism of the Virginia program is a bit different than those that you mentioned. It requires one to rethink the "gifted" nomenclature. Simply put, of all the smart people I've interacted with, I can count those with unexplained (academic) talent using only the number zero. Instead, everyone filters into roughly 3 categories: high socioeconomic status (aka SES), high motivation + mentor, and clear cases of neurodivergence (these people normally have severe developmental issues outside of their "gift(s)"). I'm sure there are rare cases of unmotivated, poor, yet level-headed kids out there, but we're talking about 1 in 100 million or 1 billion, not 30 of them taking the same AP physics class in a Cleveland, Ohio magnet school.
If one uses that model, the Virginia decision looks a bit different. High SES kids don't suffer at all. They'll always get resources to succeed. Motivated and mentored kids will suffer some, since excess motivation might become excess boredom in many areas, but mentors may find even more motivated kids who were otherwise discounted too early in the old system. This will hurt and help different individuals, but will probably be awash as a whole.
For the neurodivergent, though, they will lose out on building on their strengths early without additional resources being devoted to their weaknesses. The US mental health system just isn't prepared to help most of them. They'll end up bored and bullied (by kids and *teachers*), along with given fewer opportunities to understand where their strengths can go. I fear by the time they get to 11th grade, many will have decided to give up on further (math) education to chase other interests that have programs that are more eager to foster their strengths. Subjects where exceptional performance gets them more positive attention.
If the goal is to get even more STEM professionals, chasing neurodivergent kids into sports and fine arts will definitely not help towards that goal.
The STEM curriculum itself could be seriously improved. Right now it's designed for the needs of a mechanical engineer circa 1955. Spends about 3x more time than necessary on elaborate trigonometry and calculating the volumes of increasingly absurd objects. Yet even the advanced students who take Calc BC won't come out knowing what a Lagrange multiplier is.
It's hard in ways that are sort of useless and neglects important concepts which then have to be learned in college.
Interestingly some of the math education reform efforts that inspire controversy (because they get rid of middle school tracking) do actually make some good moves in this direction, incorporating probability, statistics, and computation earlier.
Most US STEM graduates aren't working STEM jobs:
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2014/cb14-130.html
This fact, and its absence in the essay, makes me really skeptical of the rest of your argument.
> But the fact that such a high percentage of our grad students in STEM fields are from overseas suggests that there’s huge room for improvement in how well we train our own workers.
Nope, it's because for most people, grad school is a shit choice. You spend several years making ~10k a year, maybe 20k tops, in what is really a low-paid research position. This is a good deal if you're looking to get a visa, but otherwise its not that great of a gig. That's why the positions are so heavily staffed by foreigners: they're getting a visa out of the deal.
I don't think there's an real evidence of a stem shortage of American workers. The more accurate story is that there just aren't a ton of STEM jobs available for most Americans, unless they are willing to relocate to a relatively small number of really expensive cities. If you want more Americans working in STEM, i think you need more STEM jobs distributed around the country, and you probably want them to pay more as well.
Of course there's also the question of the terrible mismatch between the incentives of the higher education system, and those of the students going in. The university system touts itself as being the magic path out of poverty, while giving many students little valuable in exchange for heavy amounts of debt.
All these facts - the prevalence of people getting stem degrees and then not working in stem, grad school being a bad deal for the most part - the broken incentives of universities - they're all pretty obvious to anyone willing to look for them. But since these political coalitions tend to line up on the 'blue' side of the aisle, most journalists aren't writing about them, and the narrative manufacturing machines are ignoring jsut how awful the american education system is failing people.
If you want to improve STEM AND fight inequity, we should retribute wealth away from stanford, MIT, harvard, and yale, and start building nuclear power plants in every state. We also need _some_ system that aligns incentives between 'people who are young and want to be trained in order to get good paying jobs' and 'people who can do the training' - because the university system sure as hell isn't it. Once engineering jobs look high status, and young people are getting advice from people with skin in the game - people will start to migrate towards the good paying enginerring jobs.
I accept the main premise of your essay, but. I'm an old guy; the Sputnik moment happened before high school, and my math instruction was changed accordingly. For me, it was great, once we got past the lunacy of set theory for 8th graders.
I agree that we need to make STEM more broadly attractive, while improving attitudes and educational persistence. But I think you disregard that social science research is characteristically politicized, tending to favor the politically-favored outcome (in this case, that tracking doesn't work). Indeed it's extremely important to improve the education of ALL kids, and to improve the education of the (say) 5% of kids who are likely to enter STEM vocations, but it''s also important to improve the education of the 0.1% of kids who are best positioned to make the most significant contributions to the advancing edge of scientific research. Studies of average performance of a large-ish population are unable to detect effects on a small subgroup.
I know plenty of people in my field of scientific research who have made major contributions without remarkable intellectual chops, because of some combination of tenacity, grit, and imagination. But I also know plenty of the "other kind." If you look through the history of science, you will be struck by the sizable fraction of scientists and mathematicians who were prodigies at the age of ten. We see nothing weirdly unwholesome about musicians like Mozart. Why is this notion toxic when applied to STEM?
This is why the "care work is infrastructure" messaging makes me uneasy. I'm completely supportive of getting funding for childcare, elder care, the whole liberal wishlist by any means necessary, and I'm also in favor of thinking of infrastructure as more than roads. But even pre-fabs, someone has to keep the lights on. Someone has to filter the drinking water and maintain the sewers and update the building codes. It's incredibly easy to take the basic physical elements of civilization for granted, and we need people in every community in the country who are going to be ready to step up and learn how to run and maintain those systems (most of which, of course, are now inextricably computerized as well). Respect for this as unique and vital work is, I think, hugely important.
One argument that I see particularly in computer science/software engineering is the importance of humanities education and the few (but not zero) number of English/Poli Sci majors who take a coding bootcamp and land a tech job.
I took a few general courses in addition to my engineering major which I enjoyed. I wonder if you could speak more to the types of education curriculums that could better entice people to a STEM degree even as we preserve many of the teachings of humanities courses.
When I was a young hotshot, one of the most motivating things was finding out that there *was* so much more to be known. In other words, those accelerated classes, but also something most US high schools seem to avoid like the plague, namely early specialisation. I specialised in STEM at age 14 and 6 months (and no, this was not in some totalitarian pressure cooker; I also took German, just for fun). Seven years later, I moved to the USA.
Don't forget that tests on specific subjects will, in reality, measure motivation blended with ability.
You're one of the top quality blue-pill dealers.
Three Things:
- "In recent years there’s a push to de-emphasize STEM, mostly out of egalitarian concerns." I get that pursuing STEM is unfashionable or even sometimes problematic in some circles, but at large I haven't seen that same trend. In fact, compared to when I was in college (2010ish) it feels like it is more popular to pursue STEM now than ever before: https://www.nap.edu/read/25038/chapter/4#43
- Mathematician Steven Strogatz facilitates a conversation about math in America here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T9kV11YCBg. He also has a pretty good podcast.
- Really like the topic choice. Hope to see it in future post.
Great article! You hit the nail right on the head! My major was math achieved in 1974. Lead to an interest in programming using assembly language on a PDP-8 given to the Chemistry department by DEC. When IBM launched their PC I was one of the few at work that used it.I used a FORTRAN compiler to produce code that made impact testing more accurate.
Keep hammering on this topic!
I agree with the problem but disagree with the solution. STEM "talent" probably more has more to do with interest and confidence than innate ability, and it's still worth identifying and encouraging it early in life. A solid foundation in STEM for all students is also a good idea, but I doubt there would value in trying to herd a big portion of the population into specializing in it. Let the kids who feel they're good at it move ahead.
The NYC decision re G&T admissions was only for this year, because they felt they couldn't safely organize the testing. There's continuing interest in introducing additional criteria besides the test, but for now the plan is to switch back next schoolyear to the test as the only admissions criteria. There's a brand new but possibly short term DOE chief who has talked about her interest in changing G&T admissions, but probably nothing will be decided until the new mayor comes in late this year, who could put in another new DOE chief. My daughter's in G&T and at least in NYC the stereotype that it's all white doesn't hold true. There are also a lot of accelerated charter schools in NYC, which do admissions by lottery, but the mere fact that to enter the lottery parents have to want that kind of school for their kid means these schools also tend to attract "talented" kids.
The theme of Scott Rozelle's "Invisible China" is that the economy is at risk because rural children, who comprise 70% of children in China, are not educated properly even to high school level. There are classrooms - but what goes on inside them is without value. Rozelle fears that this will lock China in the middle income trap. This is a version of Noah's piece. You have to get good STEM teachers, which may not be easy.
Chinese students are learning math while American students are learning to decolonize their privilege. America had a choice between equity and merit and we chose poorly.
STEM background here (Ph.D. physical chemistry), but I became a Wall Street banking lawyer. A number of my colleagues were also STEM folk. Why? Better pay; easier work; less competition. The only rational people who end up in STEM are those with an extremely powerful taste for it, and those with no alternatives (immigrants, folk with poor social capital, etc.)
Hi Noah, I work in a fab (which of course does not automatically make me authoritative, but it does give me a certain perspective). I largely agree with your recommendations on education reform. However I'd like to make some comments on the industrial side.
1) There is not only a need for PhDs in the fab, but also shift personnel, including folks who are good at fixing things with their hands, or who simply have brute strength and can do manual labor. In fact these folks can be harder to find, since for example auto mechanics usually don't think of themselves as well qualified for fab work. I believe Varian Semiconductor (before they were purchased by the Evil Empire a.k.a. Applied Materials) ran an ad campaign which more or less said, "if you can fix a car you can fix an ion implanter." In my experience working on fab equipment is even easier than working on cars, since it is designed to be routinely maintained.
2) I think much of the movement of semiconductor manufacturing out of the US and into Asia has more to do with macroeconomics in general than STEM education in particular, although I'm sure you'd understand that better than me 😊. It is astonishingly cheaper to run a leading edge fab (or any fab really) where labor is so much cheaper, and so much of the rest of the supply chain is colocated. I do struggle to source parts and chemicals from within the US... It is frequently so much cheaper to buy them overseas, and I have to go to lengths to justify the added expense of buying local to my superiors.
3) Fabs produce truly horrible waste that will destroy the surrounding environment if not properly contained and/or passivated. It is always cheaper to vent your exhaust directly to the atmosphere or house exhaust than to install abatement units, for example. In the US companies go to great length to understand the unique waste properties of every process and dispose accordingly, as it should be. Many of our foreign competitors have no regard for these practices, which gives them a competitive advantage in a marketplace that does not price in externalities.
I enjoy your writing, please continue 🙂
Instead of identifying the best students and accelerating their education, why not identify the best students and set them to tutoring those who are less good? It can raise the average standard, teaching will improve the abilities of the gifted ("if you want to learn, teach") and it will promote solidarity.
My criticism of the Virginia program is a bit different than those that you mentioned. It requires one to rethink the "gifted" nomenclature. Simply put, of all the smart people I've interacted with, I can count those with unexplained (academic) talent using only the number zero. Instead, everyone filters into roughly 3 categories: high socioeconomic status (aka SES), high motivation + mentor, and clear cases of neurodivergence (these people normally have severe developmental issues outside of their "gift(s)"). I'm sure there are rare cases of unmotivated, poor, yet level-headed kids out there, but we're talking about 1 in 100 million or 1 billion, not 30 of them taking the same AP physics class in a Cleveland, Ohio magnet school.
If one uses that model, the Virginia decision looks a bit different. High SES kids don't suffer at all. They'll always get resources to succeed. Motivated and mentored kids will suffer some, since excess motivation might become excess boredom in many areas, but mentors may find even more motivated kids who were otherwise discounted too early in the old system. This will hurt and help different individuals, but will probably be awash as a whole.
For the neurodivergent, though, they will lose out on building on their strengths early without additional resources being devoted to their weaknesses. The US mental health system just isn't prepared to help most of them. They'll end up bored and bullied (by kids and *teachers*), along with given fewer opportunities to understand where their strengths can go. I fear by the time they get to 11th grade, many will have decided to give up on further (math) education to chase other interests that have programs that are more eager to foster their strengths. Subjects where exceptional performance gets them more positive attention.
If the goal is to get even more STEM professionals, chasing neurodivergent kids into sports and fine arts will definitely not help towards that goal.