matt yglesias kind of gets it right on science profs and science majors
Matt Yglesias has a short article at Slate about STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). The article is called “Do STEM Faculties Want Undergraduates to Study STEM fields?” Yglesias focuses on different funding structures and TA’s. I’d focus on faculty funding formulas. Faculty and graduate student funding in the sciences relies heavily on external income sources. In the social science and humanities, funding is mainly internal. Deans allocate FTEs (faculty lines) and graduate program class sizes (# of PhD students) based on a combination of merit and, more importantly, enrollments. Thus, you have an incentive to created bloated undergraduate majors, which leads to more grad students. It’s not the other way around – large grad students do not lead to more majors.
The incentives do not encourage strong teaching in the sciences. While people don’t intentionally teach bad, they do in practice because there is no reason to do otherwise. Consider the typical experience of a freshman in a big science department:
- They are a decent student in an American high school.
- They are thrown into a large lecture class with little supervision, except maybe the once a week lab or discussion section.
- The TA’s have no teaching experience. They often have bad language skills.
- Grading is often punitive – curves are often used. Students can still get crummy grades even if they learn a fair amount of material.
Adding insult to injury, a lot of fields, like physics, have poor job prospects, especially for people with only a BA. Furthermore, graduate schools in law and medicine don’t give you credit for a low GPA just because it was in a hard major. STEM is a raw deal for marginal students. Why bother with this insanely hard major that is badly taught and will punish you with low grades? Switch to a different field, get decent grades, and have a real career.
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On the other hand, these terribly unfair conditions do sometimes give rise to practice-based classics in the sociology of science—papers such as “Electron Band Structure in Germanium, My Ass“, for example; a masterful piece of research containing in condensed form most of what you need to know about developments in Actor-Network theory since Latour.
Kieran
January 28, 2012 at 1:03 am
I don’t think your point about poor job prospects is actually correct. My impression of other physics majors is that even if the job prospects in physics itself is pure, their odds of being employed after graduation are actually much higher than other fields because their skills are thought to be generalizable. Most physics majors graduate with solid math skills and a basic understanding of computer programming. Those are skills that are highly valued for the job market, even if no one cares about Germanium.
bcommandBrad
January 29, 2012 at 12:01 am
Very much so. STEM professors are also very much underpaid compared with their colleagues in ridiculously over-paid areas, and people know what I am talking about, I guess.
HumbledSocialScientist
January 29, 2012 at 1:34 am
I’m not sure how it follows that physics graduates have poor job prospects? It seems to me that at least when the economy is, well, relatively healthy, there are plenty of jobs in the financial services industry that physics majors could get into, or other ‘analytical’ roles in business or public sector.
A Physics major who performs relatively modestly (or even poorly) will still have better maths skills than most who do well in business or economics.
Jon
January 29, 2012 at 11:20 am
For a thoroughly delightful story on leaving physics for another field, see an interview with Roderick McDonald, who built an exceptional career in in quantitative psychology. He made many contributions to the development of SEM and test theory. Between a first degree in physics and a doctorate in psychology, he pursued an MA in pre-Elizabethan poetry. The interview has some wonderfully pithy comments on theory, method, and math. McDonald has a wonderful mind, which attracted me to take his doctoral course when I turned 50. The cite is:
Howard Wainer and Daniel H. Robinson
Roderick P. McDonald
Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics September 2007, 32: 315-332.
Randy
January 29, 2012 at 3:34 pm
@Randy
I am not sure whether Roderick McDonald’s experience is typical, but isn’t that what the problem is? Although many undergraduate STEM students are very talented and even top students in high school, they have to leave their fields because of this effort(talent)-reward imbalance that they weren’t fully aware of in high school, and you have to be the genius among the geniuses to stay in the field, like those artists. Just compare the salary that a math/physics full professor gets with that of any business assist gets, the answer is very clear.
HumbledSocialScientist
January 29, 2012 at 4:16 pm
@HSS,
McDonald’s story is idiosyncratic in several ways, but you may be correct about a general cause of outmigration. I have welcomed many recovering engineers, many ex-biologists, and a few other S&T students into my courses and as graduate students. And I heard dozens of stories over the years from undergraduates who left engineering with a 1.9 GPA seeking a higher reward for their talents.
The faculty salary issue is of interest as well. I have been told many times that science and engineering salaries are low as deans and vice-presidents for research expect these scholars to augment their salaries through grants, licenses of discoveries, and spin-offs. Assistant professors in B-schools appear overpaid, but it is clear this is a market outcome, not a cultural one.
Randy
January 29, 2012 at 4:39 pm
@Randy,
The solution, as I see it, is not about teaching effectiveness or the quality of TA to make undergraduates to stay. Rather, it’s about pay-off. I would also argue that this is more of a cultural than a market outcome. Also, one’s definition of market and how it should work could be different from that of others. In Canada or many European universities, the pay gap isn’t that big at all like we have here. Plus, there is of course some ammunition from both sides about how much of a role the market should play in academia. Too much often, the best outcome for the market is usually short-lived. But on the other hand, I do see the benefit of it, not just about driving people to do the kind of research it wants, but also helping produce extremely high quality work, when check and balance exists.
HumbledSocialScientist
January 29, 2012 at 8:59 pm