LAST FALL, President Obama threw what was billed as the first White House Science Fair, a photo op in the gilt-mirrored State Dining Room. He tested a steering wheel designed by middle schoolers to detect distracted driving and peeked inside a robot that plays soccer. It was meant as an inspirational moment: children, science is fun; work harder.
Politicians and educators have been wringing their hands for years over test scores showing American students falling behind their counterparts in Slovenia and Singapore. How will the United States stack up against global rivals in innovation? The president and industry groups have called on colleges to graduate 10,000 more engineers a year and 100,000 new teachers with majors in STEM — science, technology, engineering and math. All the Sputnik-like urgency has put classrooms from kindergarten through 12th grade — the pipeline, as they call it — under a microscope. And there are encouraging signs, with surveys showing the number of college freshmen interested in majoring in a STEM field on the rise.
3 thoughts on “Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)”
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This article brought back memories, especially the comment that it was the more selective schools had the worst STEM retention rates.
I transferred to UW as a junior after taking the typical and expected calculus, differential equations, chemistry and physics sequences at a private college. It was not a lesser education, as I was certainly prepared for UW coursework.
But I was surprised that these same courses at UW were referred to as college flunk out courses. It did seem that the UW did take pride in weeding out students, instead of ensuring the students a good education in these topics. That was over 45 years ago, but the NYT article illustrates that times may not have changed in this regard.
There is plenty of blame to go around when to comes to poor educational outcomes, and profound numerical and scientific illiteracy in the US population at large, but failure to master STEM at high school and college has allowed and enabled the general public to be easy prey to lies and myths.
We are certainly not the better off for it.
No amount of incentive or prodding from the federal government will increase students/teachers in STEM. The United States needs a gripping FEAR, an overwhelming and close to immediate belief that unless something is done now, we are all doomed. ie., space race, star wars, Panama Canal, inter. alia.
That asteroid that just passed between us and the moon is a good example. President Obama could have seized upon that and said something to the effect that we will not always be this lucky. We will need great minds to plot trajectories and fusion space vehicles to quickly intercept threats to save our planet.
We need a believable crisis. Until then, state/federal/local ideas to get us off the stool will do no good.
RCS
There is no believable crisis that will change the American failure. I can think of any number of crises that could serve as a catalyst but have not and will not. Climate change, vaccine/autism linkages, tobacco/lung cancer linkages, collapse of western financial system, collapse of American political system, and we can add anything to do with evolution.
The US is wholly and permanently into religious fundamentalism and anti-STEM, both from left and right, and I don’t see any signs of that changing. The frontal attack on science as just another belief system no more or less valid than religious beliefs controls the vast majority of power in Congress and in state governments and a substantial majority of the public. The last number I heard on a survey of science and math knowledge was that 95% of the American public are scientifically and mathematically illiterate.
Both political and business leadership of all stripes are wholly ignorant of the most basic of STEM knowledge, as is most of the general public. Beliefs and other myth making are solidly in control.
There is no question in my mind that all correct decisions on any matter requires substantial and substantive knowledge of STEM and the application of the habits of thought that STEM demands. But that is no more possible than the proverbial set of monkeys typing Shakespeare.