Subject: Scared away from tech industry?

From: "Worley, Dale R (Dale)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 May 2012 14:18:23 -0400

Note that I've changed the Subject.  I'm hoping that the readers may
have some information on the question I ask below.

> From: Fred Baker [[email-masked]]
> 
> If you want my opinion (nobody asked, but I will presume that someone
> is wondering), the corollary is "why aren't more students interested
> in math/science?". I'll observe that there are relatively few teachers
> that I can say "inspired" me to think their their directions;

My experience was that my teachers in the early years were not
inspiring at all, but that was not important, in the same way that you
would not say, "My teachers inspired me to want to eat!".  In my
college years, the math and science teachers were somewhat inspiring
in their fields.  But my computing motivations were entirely internal,
my consumption of computing was limited only by the open hours of the
campus computer center.

    I did an interview for BBC Radio for New Year's Day several years ago
    about the early days of developing the Arpanet.  The closing question
    was why, in 1968, we weren't at Woodstock.  I replied, "For us,
    computers were the drug of choice."	-- Steve Crocker

But getting back to the broad question "Why aren't more students
interested in math/science?" ...  I live in Boston, which has a high
concentration of tech industries, and there are occasional items in
the newspaper about encouraging students to choose "STEM" careers
(Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), because there is a shortage
of such people.  The news items never get around to discussing what
the "shortage" is -- If there is a shortage, why do not salaries rise
to the point that more people choose STEM?

To some degree, the answer must be revealed by the fact that the
companies that sponsor the "STEM publicity" programs are all defense
contractors, and so must hire US citizens.  I believe that the pay
scales of STEM fields have been depressed by globalization, and that
the production of STEM people (if not their employment) has been
moving to "developing" countries.  (Can I blame globalization on the
Internet?)

Some years ago, I read a small item that claimed that the pay of
engineers (relative to other people) peaked during World War II and
had been declining ever since.  I've never been able to find any data
to test this claim.

> What if teachers were measured on a survey at the end of a semester or
> a year that asked "does teacher <> make <> interesting to you?".

Since most students don't like school *at all*, it would result in
teachers receiving poor ratings.

Dale