They also are the fields that pretty much guarantee a salary somewhere between the 50k-60k range upon graduation with a BS. Basically if you want to make REAL money right after college you might as well start making analytical Calculus your friend. Anything else pretty much is a crap shoot.
President Obama had a town hall meeting at Facebook's headquarters last week and said that he wanted to encourage females and minorities to pursue STEM disciplines
Is there really a lack of women and minorities studying STEM disciplines? Generally speaking, is there a lack of "diversity" on college campuses these days? If you walked on to the UTSA campus today, you would think the endangered species is the white, male.
For the record, I think that PEOPLE (not just certain groups of people) should be encouraged to study these fields and that these fields will continue to offer good careers for the forseeable future, particularly engineering and medicine.
Women - Yes.
Black/Hispanic minorities - Yes.
Asian/Indian minorities - No.
I have not seen an old old wooden ship at the UTSA campus.
/lame joke
seriously though, using one local example in a predominately hispanic city is pretty bad. Another issue with that is how much of this hypothetical walk is done through the engineering building? Or are you just hypothetically hanging in the sombrilla?
My wife is a 43 year old Professor of Biochemistry (Ph.D. Texas A&M, 1995); works at a 15,000 student State University.
She is tenured.
Salary = ~$70,000; Full professors at this University, with 20 years in are 6-figure.
Science doesn't increase or decrease her salary; the professors have a union (APSCUF); so ALL profs make the same; I have tried to explain to the Science professors that they are getting screwed in this deal; but they don't get how they are more rare (and valuable) than an English Education professor. The high school science teachers in our district ALL out earn her.
Regardless; most of them do what they do because they like/love it. Most made a choice to NOT go to medical school after undergraduate work - because they wanted to do research. As it turns out, at least at this school, with full teaching loads, they spend most all of their time (not hyperbole; my wife works a 90 - 100 hour week) teaching/grading/counseling, etc..... research, such as it is, is accomplished during the summer/X-Mas break WITHOUT PAY. My wife has a 300K grant, but she does not pay herself a dime out of it during the summer; she spends the money on research assistants, equipment and supplies.
Most (but not all) of her good students go on to Medical School; a few get the disease and go into graduate school (which are filled with Oriental students who get educated, many returning from whence they came). The PI's here like them because they work VERY long hours, for very little money before they earn their degrees. The typical American, even the good ones, have trouble competing; although some do (but not as many as 20 years ago).
Just my 2 cents.
my brother went through as a PhD student (biochemistry). had an advisor from , worked for a prof who manipulated his research to keep his grant. then he went into R&D (bristol-myers squib outside princeton)and ran into more fraud, discrimination, nepotism, politics and you name it. somewhere in there was time for actual science but it was not enough to keep him there. he now teaches at a college in jersey and has sworn off R&D for life.
i kept it at a thesis and went into the health sector immediately. it's not perfect but better than the research world.
and then there are d.o.d contracts-and that is a whole different universe entirely.
Last edited by rjv; 04-26-2011 at 01:25 PM.
darrin thinks that the white male is the most suffered species ever to roam the earth.
Not so. I just think diversification, as a goal, is silly. It's like saying you want to diversify a basketball team. I just want the best players.
Darrin are you white?
using a basketball team as an analogy though seems ineffective as with basketball we are referring to physical attributes and not much beyond that. our job sector is only very rarely based on such limited skill sets and physical traits.
even then, even in basketball there has to be some sort of 'diversity'- you can not just have a bunch of 7 footers on the team.
id be satisfied with 60k a year...
Please, no offense Manny, but I'll take current numbers as opposed to projections, which rarely account for things such as outsourcing.
The reality of the situation is that other countries that have a 1/3 of the cost of living and educational costs and are also investing in this stuff.
The median income numbers are current. If you can provide me with any data to contradict what I posted then feel free but as yet I've seen nothing to support that studying a science is anything but a good career choice.
The reality is what the facts say the reality is. Jobs are definitely being outsourced, but some of the only areas where jobs are actually being created here in the United States are the STEM fields.
I get it, science jobs are in danger of being exported but not finance jobs?
Money won't buy you happiness but it does ease the nerves, eh?
exactly. it helps me focus on the more important things in life.
"In order to be happy, a person must earn two pennies, one to buy bread and another to buy a lily."
While we continue to throw away lives and treasure on bootless, militarily unwinnable wars which are mainly effective in prolonging the humanitarian emergencies they are supposed to alleviate.
Possibly related?
(indigestion)
If I have to check one of those boxes on a census form, I suppose that is the closest description.
But if I'm in the hospital and the doctor walks in, I'm don't concern myself with their race or gender -- only that they are good at what they do.
The difference is that changes made to correct societal conditions that were placed by segregation and racism do care about race or gender for obvious reasons.
You also don't understand what its like to grow up as a child of color and not see role models or even examples in these fields. It matters.
That may explain the shortage of Black Hockey players.
You didn't grow up watching the Cosby Show?
Cliff Huxtable wasn't a weatherman.
You guys make 2-page threads with pointless arguments.
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