Giving Up on Math and Science Careers

LETTERS

, The New York Times,Published: November 7, 2011

To the Editor:

Enlarge This Image

Shannon May

“Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)” (Education Life section, Nov. 6) claims that the decline in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) majors occurs because beginning college courses are “just so darn hard.”

They are no harder now than 30 years ago, and no harder than comparable courses in other countries. The problem is not that courses are harder but that high school graduates are less prepared. This is because of a diminishing number of knowledgeable and inspiring teachers of math and science, which in turn is because of the widening gap (both in compensation and respect) between careers in the classroom and careers in industry available to such knowledgeable people.

Wring our hands as we may, until we narrow this gap our country will continue to fall behind.

JIM SIMONS
JOHN EWING
New York, Nov. 6, 2011

Mr. Simons is founder of the Simons Foundation, which promotes research in science and mathematics. Mr. Ewing is president of Math for America.

To the Editor:

Why do science majors change their mind? They wise up.

Your article makes it sound as if American science students are stupid or lazy, unlike their workaholic Chinese and Indian counterparts. This is glib and insulting.

It is in their second year that students typically join laboratories and see firsthand that their dreams of a scientific career include low-paying and highly competitive professorial jobs, that getting grants for scientific research is increasingly difficult and unpredictable, that they are facing many years of postgraduate work at ridiculously low salaries and that they would have a hard time supporting a family.

Compare this future with that of the economics major (lots of math) who goes to business school and can look forward to million-dollar yearly bonuses.

American students change their majors because they recognize that this country has stopped providing a reasonable future for scientists, with slashed budgets for the National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration and National Institutes of Health.

For Chinese and Indian students, science remains a way out of poverty. For American students, it’s becoming the path into it.

STUART FIRESTEIN
New York, Nov. 6, 2011

The writer is chairman of the department of biological sciences at Columbia University.

To the Editor:

For decades, the United States has not had to improve its delivery of science education. When we needed scientists and engineers, we opened our immigration doors wider and let more in.

That may be starting to change because potential immigrants can stay in their own improving societies or go to other countries if they wish. Today Canada, Europe, Australia and parts of South America have welcoming arms for educated immigrants. We have to prepare our citizens for higher echelons of the job hierarchy; there just isn’t any room at the bottom anymore.

MANBIR SINGH SODHI
Kingston, R.I., Nov. 6, 2011

The writer is a professor of engineering at the University of Rhode Island.

To the Editor:

To be an engineer, you have to be either brilliant or stubborn. If you’re neither, you’re going to change majors.

P.S. I wasn’t in the brilliant class.

GABRIEL JIM
Canton, Mich., Nov. 6, 2011

The writer received a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan.