The Body Politic USA

It doesn’t seem so long ago…the halcyon days of my misspent youth.  The year was 1992 and my mother had just been admitted to the hospital for a potentially fatal case of the flu.  She had inflammatory lung disease of unknown origins - and a case of flu could be a fatal complication.  Indeed - when she arrived at the ER her condition was critical.  Here, in a nutshell, was how my passion for  molecular biology was born.  From my Granfather’s diabetes, to my mother’s life-shortening lung disease, I was consistently exposed to the limits of modern medicine - not its marvels.

Like many - I was fooled by  ”scientist shortage” reports of the 1990’s:

On that day, I said goodnight to my mother and talked briefly to her attending physician.  After assuring me that my mother’s condition was stabilized, the conversation turned to research.  I mentioned briefly what I did for a living (I was a lab manager/technician)  and my plans to get a doctorate. The doctor nodded sagely that it was well known that the U.S. needed more Ph.D.’s in biomedical science.

How many times does a lie have to be repeated for the general public to be hoodwinked into thinking it is true?  In those days, it was quite true that getting a reasonably high-paying job  in biotechnology straight out of graduate school was completely doable.  What no one seemed to grasp was that the flood of graduate students post-docs  coming to the US from abroad, was already sowing the seeds of the  massive glut that I would face upon graduation from a doctoral program.  By the time I was out of the pipeline,  there were no industry jobs for new graduates.  Freshly minted Ph.D.’s were shoved unceremoniously  into the post-doctoral logjam into which most would disappear for 10 years of further “training” at coolie wages before “qualifying” for a real job with a salary and benefits.

Here we go again - the great STEM career shortage rides again:

So it was with a feeling of deja vu that I heard the president’s senior advisor and assistant for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs say that the thing to do was to encourage women and our youth in general to train for those valuable STEM careers (science, technology, engineering and math) - because this was how to secure their future!

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Are you kidding me?  A career in any of these fields involves a long and arduous education generally involving several YEARS of post-graduate study.  A lot can change in those years.  Shortages turn into gluts as people chase the career tracks that are profitable - for the moment.  Once a critical mass of “bodies” is reached, the field becomes commoditized and you can kiss that nice salary and secure future good-bye.

Right now people are flooding into computer science and programming - again.  Efforts to encourage women to enter this field are in full force - again.  The reason I say “again” is because we have heard this all before - back in the 1980s.  One such effort appeared in the New York Timestoday.  (”Giving Women the Access Code” by Katie Hafner.

Ask many of the graduates of higher education in STEM fields how valuable that degree has been and more than half will laugh hysterically.  My computer science counterparts learned the hard way - as I did - that employment opportunities can turn on a dime creating a situation where  long term educational commitments are nothing more than a crap shoot.

We need more than a bandaid for this problem…

Encouraging students to enter STEM fields without first understanding the cyclic dynamics of these industries is the height of irresponsibility.  These types of degrees promote “hard skills” that are not easily transferable to alternate disciplines.

So it should be no big surprise that women and men are shunning these fields in favor of a softer skill set in business where  sliding from field to field is not so difficult.

© 2012 - Ruthmarie G. Hicks - http://www.thebodypoliticUSA.com - All rights reserved.

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The Nov. 4, 2011  New York Times article on STEM (science - technology -  engineering - math) career paths shows clearly and succinctly that NO ONE is engaging in true investigative journalism anymore.  The article by Christopher Drew, Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard) shows an appalling lack of insight into the issues facing flocks of interested and engaged science majors. Did this author spend five minutes in a laboratory talking to scientists working in the trenches?  No.

Yes, science and engineering are HARD.   OF COURSE ITS HARD...Science is fascinating in the abstract - but “doing science” is never easy.  If it were easy we would have cures for cancer, heart disease, obesity and all infectious disease coming out of our ears. We’d have a shuttle to Mars where people would take vacations and someone would be working on a Warp engine to go faster than the speed of light by now.  I know its hard because I have a Ph.D. from a highly regarded medical school  and was a molecular biologist by trade for over 15 years.

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Spencer Johnson’s “Who Moved My Cheese”  “might” be a great read for those in the business sector.  But for those involved in careers that involve  advanced degrees in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (the STEM careers)  the solutions offered are quite simply “non-solutions.”

“Who Moved My Cheese?”

For those who don’t know the story  - its about four beings that live in a maze together.  Two of the beings are mice ( Sniff and Scurry) and two are very small humans the size of mice (Hem and Haw)
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In the wake of the Wisconsin protests that seem to have spread across the rust belt - there appears to be a glimmer of hope that the  public has finally awakened from their stupor of complacency.

This is in part happening because the props holding up the middle class have been knocked out from under them.  Easy access to credit - GONE!  How about cashing out some of the untapped equity in your home? You’ve gotta be kidding me - WHAT equity?
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Ever since Obama’s State of the Union address in January, we have been hearing more and more about American “exceptionalism” and about so-called “STEM” careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.  Engaging young minds in these all too critical areas of study is supposed to be the key to Americas future - paving a way to our supremacy in the 21st century and beyond.

Spin vs Reality:

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