STEM-ing The Tide

The cat has completely escaped the bag: H1B visas are NOT about talent scarcity. And never has been. It is labor arbitrage. It is government overreach, taking money from workers and delivering it to high tech, high finance executives. What it isn't is a necessary tool addressing a shortage of qualified high tech workers. 

How do we know? 

Because each and every year we have more STEM graduates in the USA than we have jobs for them. By well over a hundred to one. So it really, really is NOT about a lack of home-grown talent. 

For a lot of high tech jobs the internet made it very easy to ship jobs overseas. But there were and are significant problems with off-shoring. Enter a compliant government with H1B visas. Jobs quickly came back home. Just not for the homies. 

But things are changing. Companies learned, quickly, from the Indian labor market that high quality advanced degrees are not what the jobs require. As it turns out India, outside of the most excellent IIT, has no problem self-certifying and pumping out diplomas at a rate not seen (or allowed) in the western world. Not so say that India hasn't produced many fine developers, but the simple fact is that very, very few are better than those produced in the USA. They're just cheaper. Or so it once appeared. Now it turns out that those sporting a US STEM degree, while superficially more expensive, are actually a very good value. Think "Brooks Law."

Now enter the pandemic. Travel restrictions suddenly make a LOT of sense. Even to the politicos who were sucking up to India with daily increases to H1B caps. 

Remote work suddenly became non-threatening. Previously front line managers in the US had legitimate fear that remote meant off-shore. Because it always had. Others in the management chain were insecure, assuming direct and indirect reports needed constant watching, and if they didn't maybe they didn't need a manager. Sort of what happened with off-shoring. Turns out constant surveillance was unnecessary. Most organizations found that workers were actually more productive, not less, almost as if supervision were unnecessary friction. 

Now we have entered a new, resurgent era. Where local talent is appreciated. Where productivity trumps tradition. Where American jobs are accessible to Americans who would otherwise be un- or under-employed. Where, as anyone who's spent much time developing with a global team already knows, quality will improve alongside reductions in missed deadlines.

Graduates with STEM degrees will no longer have to make the pilgrimage to the pacific coast to wave goodbye to their jobs. At least until the next round of lobbyists win the day.

STEM-ing The Tide

Hardly a week goes by when we don't hear "STEM" this or "STEM" that. It generally arrives via mainstream media and sometimes it is of, by and for mainstream media. Sometimes it comes from titans of industry, potential employers of STEM capable workers.

Then there are the educators.

STEM is definitely buzzword du jour, but sadly is not amenable to being watered down and made warm and fuzzy as there is always a chance you'll be given an objective test with right and wrong answers. From the employers' point of view "learning math concepts" is far less useful than actually being able to add, subtract, multiply and divide (in your head) or sort out a word problem that might be related to feed rates in a milling machine. K-12 long ago banned any school related activities that are not "engaging" and "fun" and these kinds of mental calisthenics and agility simply are not "fun." To inject "fun" they would really prefer that "STEM" become "STEAM" and then "steAm" progressing to "steAm" at which point all the hard stuff is gone and they are left back in their comfort zone of subjective fuzzies.

Then there is an inconvenient truth. Employers know what they want to the point they have pre-employment tests and screening. These requirements are either not shared with the K-12 tribe or educators simply don't want to listen. To be fair, some notables in industry, especially those pushing for H1B visas, advance their cause for more high-tech workers by allowing folks to believe that means more engineers, scientists and mathematicians. This is blatantly false. We have a surplus of those. What these employers really want are technicians and technologists. Someone from ITT Technical Institute who can keep the servers online and the network humming, not a PhD from MIT. They need more graduates from Southern Tech who can design and develop a product and already have more than enough GaTech grads to research new core technologies and advance the state of the art. You could make a Computer Scientist a programmer but it is waste of everyone's time and money, something for-profit operations try to minimize.

The knock on effect of this comes from parents. What parent doesn't think their special snowflake isn't the next Feynman, if only he is properly nurtured, engaged and entertained? Who would really want their daughter to be a plumber (charging $75/hr, $110/hr evenings and weekends) when they really should be a physician or a physicist (is there a difference)? Too many parents have misguided expectations and ambitions for a life that is not theirs to live and is not aligned with current or future realities.

So what will we, in the Great State of Georgia, do?

The Board of Regents is going to mandate that colleges and universities improve their graduation rate. There are a couple of ways to do this, with the most beneficial to society being higher and strictly enforced entrance requirements. Students who do not need remediation have a demonstrated ability to learn and are more likely to graduate, on time, than those who have not learned what they need to have learned to be in college in the first place. This would put back-pressure on K-12 forcing them to either do their job or expose their failure.

Not going to happen.

What will happen is that Georgia colleges and universities will put in place more administrators, "graduation coaches" and remediators at the expense of capable instructors in front of capable students. Graduations rates will go up because that is what is mandated and that is what those in the Gold Dome are paying for. Diplomas will be printed at whatever rate necessary to ensure the flow of funds. We have  learned nothing from our recent cheating scandals.

But employers still have the final say. They find they must test applicants for minimal literacy and numeracy and a majority of credentialed applicants fall short even with the current, yet to be diluted, system in place. Even those minimally acceptable are incapable of doing the job without extensive training and the situation is so bad employers are having to go outside of the U.S. to find capable trainers.

We have allowed our education system to become so detached from the core mission of imparting knowledge and allowed this failure to span so many generations that we not only do not have minimally capable students, we don't even have "educators" who have a clue about what to teach or how to teach it.

Guest Post

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for this special announcement.

I am a woman in academia. More specifically, I am a woman in an historically (and even still) male-dominated field. For years I was the only woman in my graduate-level courses, or at my weekly area-specific seminars. I was a member of a department where every single female professor "happened" to be married to a male professor of the same department--and since I attended a public university, I was also able to see the distinction in pay and title of the couples.

I have dealt with my share of misogyny in the work place. I have been asked by (male) professors if I chose my particular specialty because my boyfriend at the time also happened to be in that area. I have wondered if a (male) professor asked me and not any of the other (male) students in the class to take notes because of some (subliminal?) connection of women to secretaries. I have had (male) professors tell me that I should have an easier time on the job market simply because I'm a woman in an increasingly PC-conscious world--screw any other qualifications I may or may not possess. I have had (male) graduate students tell me they don't believe in calling a woman by her last name until she's married, because until she's married it's not actually her last name.

To say these moments have been insulting is an understatement. And I know that compared to women of previous generations, these instances are mild. I should stress that most of the misogyny I encountered has come from tenured professors who earned their PhDs prior to the year of my birth. With few exceptions (most of which come from openly religious people--a whole different matter) the newer generation of academians is some combination of "refreshingly accepting" and "cautious of litigation".

Over the years I've felt these experiences have made me become somewhat of a feminist. I have attended, and very much support, "women in (fill-in-subject-area)" conferences and grants. I have participated in educational outreach programs for elementary-school and middle-school aged girls. I vehemently believe gender does not prevent a person from succeeding in or contributing to my field.

At the same time…I've noticed that I've become very tough on my own gender. Whenever I see a female academian who adds fuel for or support to the "misogynistic fire", who provides an example for the men who believe women cannot cut it, I become livid. These females include, but are not restricted to:

• Those who male-bash or who exclude males, ESPECIALLY if it's in the name of feminism. In doing this, they become that which they want to fight. Men should not be excluded from "women in (fill-in-subject-area)" conferences, for example. The purpose of those conferences primarily is to encourage women to enter the field. Having men who support the cause is natural and--one could argue--meets a long-term goal! It is illogical and hypocritical to exclude men or to male-bash in the name of gender-equality.

• Those who pull the gender card. Those who subtlety or blatantly exploit others who want to appear (or who actually are) pro-feminist…or even just not anti-feminist. I'm talking about the female grad students who tell their professor that they're just swamped this semester and could they please only turn in half of the assignments. It's true they may be swamped; it's also true that the boys aren't gonna pull that crap if they were swamped. The ones who beg successfully for extra time to pass qualifying exams or oral exams (this happens rarely. However, EVERY SINGLE TIME I have seen it happen, it was a female student. Similarly I've seen many males asked to leave for failing these same exams.). Do these women not understand what "gender EQUALITY" means?

• Those who appear as the misogynists' stereotype. First are the action-related stereotypes. Whenever I see a female graduate student crying or acting "hysterically" in a department lounge or (drunkenly at times) at an office event I want to slap her silly. We all cry in grad school; but do it in the privacy of your home or door-closed office--don't appear weak. It's OK to drink too. Just show some respect for your coworkers--don't go on angry rants or all Girls Gone Wild. These women are an embarrassment to themselves, their department, their profession and their gender. Trust me, the boys don't act like that.

There are also the visual stereotypes. This is a more delicate issue. On the one hand…as long as it's professional, wear whatever you want. But there are many in my field who believe that the more "presented" one looks (regardless of gender), the less time you spend working. This seems insane, but even I have wondered about a few female colleagues. How is it that they can change their hair color every month, and always match their nail colors to their outfits? How is it that they never wear the same pair of shoes twice? Where are their priorities? Is it coincidence that I never see these well-dressed females in the department or in local coffee shops on weekends? Is it coincidence I never see them pulling late nights in the office?

The way to beat misogyny, the way to equalize genders, is by earning RESPECT. Keep up with the boys and beat them at their own game. Do all the assigned work, as well as the extra (secretarial) work. Do it well and without complaint. Work at odd hours and on weekends like every other graduate student EVER [worst-case, it's a way to get study buddies]. Be as big of a hard-ass and tough-cookie as any of the men. In short, grow a pair.

This post is presented without alteration or editorial comment and represents the opinion of the original author whose credentials have been verified by the editorial staff of The Other Dunwoody. It is released under the same license (see "TOD: Taking It") as any other post on The Other Dunwoody. 

Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

STEM Crisis: A Political Myth

If necessity is the mother of invention
Then I'd like to kill the guy who invented this
The numbers come together in some kind of third dimension
A regular algebraic bliss

Let's start with something simple, like one and one ain't three
And two plus two will never get you five
There are fractions in my subtraction and x don't equal y
But my homework is bound to multiply

Math suks math suks
I'd like to burn this textbook, I hate this stuff so much
Math suks math suks
Sometimes I think that I don't know that much
But math suks

I got so bored with my homework, I turned on the TV
The beauty contest winners were all smiling through their teeth
Then they asked the new Miss America
Hey babe can you add up all those bucks?
She looked puzzled, then just said "Math Suks"

Math suks math suks
You don't even have to spell it, all you have to do is yell it...
Math suks math suks
Sometimes I think that I don't know that much
But math suks

Geometry, trigonometry and if that don't tax your brain
There are numbers too big to be named
Numerical precision is a science with a mission
And I think it's gonna drive me insane

Parents fighting with their children and the Congress can't agree
Teachers and their students are all jousting constantly
Management and labour keep rattling old sabers
Quacking like those Peabody ducks

Math suks math suks
You don't even have to spell it, all you have to do is yell it...
Math suks math suks
Sometimes I think that I don't know that much
But math suks

If you've ever taught anything even closely resembling a STEM course then you have certainly heard a student excusing their ignorance with "Professor TOD, I just don't do math".  Students at every level say this for one reason only: it works. Society accepts it. Parents accept it: "my kid is the creative type--math isn't her forte". Hell, even teachers accept it. And that is what really suks.

Or is it?

It seems this common mythology surrounding acceptable innumeracy gives unjustified validity to the business drumbeat and chant of "we need more STEM for our high tech industry and America isn't delivering". Those in the field and especially those who've become unemployed as we continue the expansion of our H1-B visas have known for some time this simply does not ring true. And now they have the voice of Robert N. Charette a contributing editor to the IEEE Spectrum singing to their choir. In his recent article in the Spectrum Mr. Charette shows clearly how the numbers just don't add up. Especially not if you're the type of businessman who believes supply and demand are somehow related.

Mr. Charette points to the demand side showing that US business and industry is creating 277,000 STEM jobs per year. That's right--over one quarter of a million jobs per year. That's the demand. Sounds pretty good and if you're as innumerate as Mister Boofay you're probably thinking that IS a righteously large number way bigger than what our homegrown supply can meet.

Except...

The supply side figures don't support that supposition. Turns out we are producing 252,000 STEM bachelor degree holders per year. Still short of the demand by 20,000.  But wait! There's more. We pump out 80,000 Master's, 20,000 PhD's and 40,000 Associate's degree holders per year. Now we're over 120,000 over the demand. That's right. We have an almost 50% surplus PER YEAR over annual demand.

And yet industry moguls are whining about the lack of talent and while they are currently importing 50,000 H1B visa holders they demand more. Clearly this is intended to create a wage depressing oversupply and will inevitably contribute to the under and unemployed in STEM. And even if there were a short term supply issue the US is blessed with 11,400,000 STEM degree holders who currently work outside the STEM fields---that does not count the unemployed. Yet that number alone represents a forty year supply of STEM workers in an environment where we are already generating about 50% more STEM graduates than the current demand.

So...if your twoddler giggles when she plays with her toes or smiles at the ceiling fan or even prefers the taste of the blue crayons to the green then just smile and let it go. She may grow up to have the same understanding of numbers as a squirrel (zero, one, infinity: no nuts, my nut, look at all them nuts) but as it turns out that's OK.

Maybe that is what really suks.