I write with kudos to the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, or GCEW, for its recent publication simply titled STEM. Beyond just another depiction of why we need more STEM graduates to strengthen our workforce (although the authors do a stellar job at breaking down this argument), the authors do something more. The report gets into the tricky territory of defining just why STEM literacy is important both inside and outside STEM fields and sheds light on how those who seek to enter STEM fields — as well as those who are successful in doing so — eventually divert from the STEM pathway.
In the report, GCEW Director Anthony Carnevale and his team used data from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET), a resource center sponsored by the Department of Labor/Employment and Training Administration that houses detailed information on more than 965 occupations (STEM and non-STEM), including those cognitive and non-cognitive competencies that workers in said occupations are meant to hold. The researchers then cross-walked this information with occupational data from the Current Population Survey by the Department of Census — thus yielding a rich set of data from which to draw out skills inherent to the STEM jobs that our nation’s public and private sectors claim again and again are in high demand.
One can readily see how training in STEM aligns with other abilities that also are in demand in and out of STEM jobs — abilities like deductive reasoning, mathematical reasoning and problem sensitivity — those “problem solving” and “analytical skills” that employers are increasingly criticizing our nation’s higher education system for not providing its graduates. The STEM authors also point to the non-cognitive competencies associated with STEM occupations, including realistic and investigative “work interests” and the STEM work values of achievement, independence and recognition.
This brings us to another potent argument for more STEM degrees — the need for those cognitive abilities and non-cognitive interests and values that STEM education and careers provide. And it reveals a much needed intersection between STEM and non-STEM departments when it comes to educating future STEM and non-STEM graduates alike.
