Stereotypes of STEM
Abstract
The purpose of this article is to analyze the origins of different stigmas around STEM majors versus non-STEM majors and how they affect the sociocultural environment of college campuses. It is widely generalized that STEM majors have “the hardest majors” and non-STEM majors take the “easier route.” However, these do not reflect all angles of the argument. I argue that these stereotypical college beliefs are inaccurate and have effects on the campus social environment. I pursue this argument through using research conducted previously and interviews of local staff and their viewpoints. Counterarguments are addressed by comparing the local viewpoints of the issue and relating it to the broader scale. All points add up to the culminating argument that focusing resources on STEM majors and creating a “pro-STEM” environment on a universities campus creates a divide between the two major types and does not create an interdisciplinary approach to the academic experience.
Full Story
“What’s your major?”
“Biomedical Engineering.”
“Good luck with that.”
Personally, I have had this conversation countless times. And frankly, many STEM majors have. STEM has a stereotype. Nationally, it is known as one of the hardest fields to pursue and enter. But why is that? Why is STEM “so hard” while majors in the humanities are known as the “easy” majors. This is generalization is a nationwide concept. However, I don’t think this is the full story. Calculus might click for someone while they struggle to make it through a 500 word essay. Meanwhile, someone may effortlessly construct a paper abounding with brilliant thoughts and words yet struggle to complete a simple high school math problem. It is because of these human variances due to genetics and background that it is important to take a multidimensional approach to education. Thus, focusing resources on STEM majors and creating a “pro-STEM” environment on a universities campus creates a divide between the two major types and does not create an interdisciplinary approach to the academic experience.
So when did STEM take center stage? Back in 2007 the Great Recession hit the United States. A large portion of this financial crisis in part portrayed through the news and media as the fault of those in financial occupations and business. It created a somewhat negative view of those fields and highlighted the traditional high paying occupations associated with STEM. From research conducted by Shimeng Liu, and others, it was concluded that the rise in STEM major popularity can be attributed to the Great Recession. With this, there was also a decrease in the majoring of humanities. “…Students pursue a college major that they hope will prepare them for a career that is financially rewarding and personally enriching…” (Liu, 2019) This era created doubt and stigmas against the humanities and planted seeds that they would not be “financially rewarding” and thus implemented the rise in STEM majors on college campuses.
Coupled with the Great Recession, the integration of technology in the past 30 years has contributed to the emphasis on STEM as well. Technology has always been a part of the human experience, however, in recent years, this integration has become ever more apparent with the daily use of computers, cell phones, etc. The technological boom has opened a multitudinous amount of job opportunities dealing with “STEM” and created opportunity for younger generations to fill these positions. These empty jobs postings has geared the nation towards a “pro-STEM” approach to education, such that there are a vast amount of fully funded programs for exposing adolescence to the STEM fields and the “cool” opportunities that you can gain from exploring them. I can attest to this on a personal level. In my eighth grade year, our science class received a fully funded water quality research grant where our class was allotted time and money to collect data from the nearby rivers and streams to evaluate what was being poured into the large bodies of water of Eastern North Carolina. To an eighth grader, this was amazing, getting to work outdoors and not in a classroom. Did the English or Social Studies departments receive this type of funding? No. Similarly, at my high school, the science department received a grant to build “STEM” rooms with new technologies unlike anywhere else in the school, while the other departments did not receive this same funding and opportunity. My personal experiences exhibit a nationwide trend with a large push towards the STEM fields.
So what does this mean for college? How does this push affect what people decide to do with the rest of their lives? According to a recent study, it has been found that those who have been more exposed to STEM in high school and previous education levels have a tendency to major in STEM related fields (Wang, 2013). So with this major push for STEM, it is only reasonable that there should be an increase in the tendency for collegiate students to major in these fields. This trend has shown to be true and can be traced back to the early 2000’s.
The ever so apparent increasing trend of STEM majors has been not due to one cause in particular, but a collective effort of events in the past 50 years or so. The financial crisis of the 2000’s highlighted the benefits of the traditionally “successful” fields of STEM, in a time when STEM programs were already in dire need of people to fill new positions. This emphasis created a “pro-STEM” environment for many educational facilities and programs dedicated to STEM. For example, there are countless “women in STEM” programs nationally which encourage women to enter into the areas of STEM and provide opportunities for them to gain exposure to such. All this aside, the the research that has been collected shows a distinct rise in students entering the STEM majors in college, which has not only changed the course of economic matters, but national education.
Although the emphasis on STEM is ever present, it still commands a specific stereotype that reigns throughout the college kingdom. When thinking about the hardest college major, what do you think of? Engineering? Physics? Chemistry? If so, Google agrees with that statement. In fact, the first search result to pop up states: “STEM-majors appear as far more difficult than arts…” (Shukman, 2018) And many others would agree. But why is that the stereotype for STEM majors? Why is it that these new and emerging fields are only for the “smart” people or are considered the “hardest” majors? Does this not consider the different skill levels of each person in different subjects?
Besides the majors that differ in requirements by an extra class or two, there is no objective way to decide which major is the hardest, easiest, and everything in between. Each person has too many different variations in skills for an objective stance on this. There are always surveys to detail if people consider STEM classes harder than non-STEM, however, there is still subjectivity clouding the results to determine if these majors are actually “harder”. Why is this? For one, the variance in human skill sets. Each person is different, and has their own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to school. Some may excel at the humanities, while others cannot write an essay to save their life and can complete an extremely complex math problem. Due to this, there is no way to define “hard” in such a way that it incorporates all the variations of human skill and ability.
With all this said, why is it that STEM still receives the title of “harder” majors? I believe this all roles back to educational foundation in the STEM topics. Because there are often more credit hours involved with STEM majors, it is imperative that the student comes in with a strong foundation within these so that it becomes possible to graduate with a good GPA and not to mention on time. A different approach to the topic according to Ken Yao, is that it all boils down to the basic cogitative skills a person learns while pursuing a major. “This earnings gap can be attributed not only to the differential educational resources investment but also to heterogeneous distribution of initial cognitive skills across majors,” he states (Yao, 2019). Once again, the previous exposure to STEM, will help with the development of the said cognitive skills and alter the level of difficulty one with which perceives a major.
Another way I believe STEM has gained with stereotype of being particularly hard is that many “non-STEM” people attempt to major in these fields knowing that they have a particularly high pay after college. In 1998, The Daily Tar Heel published an article about the 5 majors that are expected to have the highest pay after college, which were nursing, computer science, pharmacy, dental hygiene, and political science. Four out of five of those majors are in the STEM fields (Khosla, 1998). Does this not encourage the pursuit of STEM, even for those who should excel more in the humanities? Even so, does this reign true today? In November of 2018, Grace Tatter published an interesting article about the smooth transition from college to the working world, but she fails to find a continual increase in monetary earnings, whereas with the humanities, she finds a quick and continual increase in salary to catch up to those in STEM. Why is this? According to Tatter, “…many STEM majors end up leaving STEM occupations as their skills become obsolete and wage growth flattens.”(Tatter, 2018) With this understanding, it begs the question: Why does STEM still have a stereotype of producing people who are “more successful?” And what are we doing to change this?
For one, I believe that UNC does an especially good job at encouraging students to focus on studies and subjects that do not necessarily pertain to one’s major. It is because of the liberal arts approach to education that students are required to take courses that explore the humanities when they are STEM majors and vice versa. This approach is very conducive to the interdisciplinary approach to education and wholistic approach to life. Not only will students gain what they need to know for their field of study, but will develop to become well rounded individuals that can adapt to the ever changing world and occupation network.
So why does it matter that one is well rounded? Although it may not appear as much to the naked eye, there are biases all throughout the sciences. Many of these are completely unintentional, however their existence cannot be denied. A perfect example of this is Apple’s Face ID. Released in 2017, this invention was integrated into the iPhone 10 and beyond as a way of unlocking one’s phone with just a look and some facial recognition technology. Sounds great right? It is for most people, but for some this is an unreliable way to unlock a phone. Studies have shown that the facial recognition can be in a sense “racist.” Not in the typical sense, but it can better distinguish caucasian faces than other races. This is a consequence directly related to the developer, their coding techniques, and the unintended bias it may contain (Researchers flag up…, 2016).Thus, having a more well rounded approach to problems such as this may in turn help eliminate the biases that can be created. This is not only applicable to computer science, but STEM and non STEM fields as interdisciplinary thought and new perspectives should always be welcomed.
Overall, STEM versus non-STEM. The argument is not what is harder or easier, but are you doing what you are passionate about. There should not be a notion of what we can do to earn the most money, but are we going into a field that will align with our values, ideals, personality, etc. There should not be a regard for what would allot more success, or monetary earnings. It should be the desire and passion one has for their field of study that should determine what the major in and pursue for their rest of their life.
References
Khosla, J. (1998, September 21). 5 Majors Top List of Moneymakers. The Daily Tarheel, pp. 11–11. Retrieved from http://newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92068245/1998-09-21/ed-1/seq25/#date1=&index=5&rows=20&searchType=advanced&sequence=0&proxdistance=5&date2=&words=majors science&phrasetext=science majors&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1
I found my source by searching through the database of The Daily Tarheel articles and forming a search related to my topics. It is an article about which majors are found to have the most economic prospect after college. Of those, many are STEM. I plan on using this source to speak to how different majors are viewed on campuses and how they can impact their social environment. The source is a newspaper article pdf, in the nonfiction genre. Analyzing this source will differ from my others as this source is a primary source which had implications on the concept and events I am writing about. The publication of this article may have also affected the way some determined their major, thought about life after college, etc.
Liu, S., Sun, W., & Winters, J. V. (2019). up in stem, down in business: Changing college major decisions with the great recession. Contemporary Economic Policy, 37(3), 476–491. doi:10.1111/coep.12396
This article is cited in APA as it is composed of research on the social and behavioral sciences of university majors. The main purpose of the article is to speak on the recent increase of STEM majors and the decrease in business majors. It concludes that these shifts are partly due to the Great Recession. It may have a bias towards the STEM fields as the increase comes from a negative event that occurred. In the overall “critical conversation” this article speaks to the effects of the Great Recession but also connects it with the unintended consequences that prevailed upon America’s university systems. It builds upon sources that focus on the Great Recession in general and the consequences that stemmed from it. I plan on using this article to support my argument by integrating it into the background and influence that STEM has on the university setting. I believe it will be valuable as I elaborate on the how “STEM” is on most campuses, very highly regarded.
Osikominu, A., Grossmann, V., & Osterfeld, M. (2019). Sociocultural background and choice of STEM majors at university. Oxford Economic Papers, doi:10.1093/oep/gpz034
The article was cited in APA format because it speaks about the sociocultural background of STEM majors. The article focuses on research conducted to compare the sociocultural backgrounds of differing majors for those who attended universities. The study concluded that the majority of those who majored in STEM are typically men from conservative backgrounds as women with unaffected by sociocultural backgrounds major in language. It may contain biases towards STEM majors as it was completed by a researcher using mathematics and core STEM concepts. This study was conducted using previous tools discovered, but takes a new approach to the topic. I plan to use this source to explore the different types of people who tend to major in specific area and how that can create certain stigmas around the majors themselves.
Researchers flag up facial recognition racial bias. (2016). Biometric Technology Today, 2016(5), 2–3. doi:10.1016/S0969–4765(16)30079–0
Saxena, V. (2016, April 18). Funding disparity between STEM, humanities programs impacts enrollment. Retrieved from https://badgerherald.com/news/2016/04/18/funding-disparity-between-stem-humanities-programs-impacts-enrollment/.
Shukman, H. (2018, June 28). Ranked: The most difficult majors in America. Retrieved from https://thetab.com/us/2017/03/13/hardest-major-62699.
Tatter, G. (2018, November 6). College Major Myths. Retrieved November 9, 2019, from https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/18/11/college-major-myths.
Wang, X. (2013). Why students choose STEM majors: Motivation, high school learning, and postsecondary context of support. American Educational Research Journal, 50(5), 1081–1121. doi:10.3102/0002831213488622
This source was cited in APA format as it deals with the social sciences and behavioral studies. This source revolves around the study of what motivates and inclines students to choose STEM majors over other majors in college. It provides evidence that those who study STEM tend to have solid exposure to STEM fields in high school and previous level of education or experiences. Written from a psychological standpoint, it may have a bias towards more scientific approaches to the problem and may not account for all the different factors that may contribute to choosing one’s major. This is a research publication that takes common theories and perspectives and applies them to this specific topic. I plan to use this source as I divulge into why people choose one major over the other. By going into these details, I will be able to give my argument depth and provide a background around my topic.
Yao, K. (2019). Heterogeneous skill distribution and college major: Evidence from PIAAC. Journal of Applied Economics, 22(1), 504–526. doi:10.1080/15140326.2019.1665310
This article is in APA citation format because it focuses on a topic in the social sciences. This article examines the gaps between the different collegiate majors and how they are created based on skill sets, cognition, job opportunity, expenses, etc. It may contain a bias towards STEM majors as it speaks of STEM with positively connotated words and phrases. This contributes to the critical conversation of the effects of STEM on life “after college” and how it may lead to certain decisions while in college. The build upon many different resources that analyze different college majors as a whole. I plan to use this article as I expand my argument outside of the college setting and look at the how it affects the job markets.
