New Scientist: Are More Science Graduates Really Needed?

Charlie Ball, deputy director of research at the Higher Education Careers Services Unit, asks: Do we really need more science grads?

The prevailing wisdom in recent years has been that we need more students studying science in high school and college.  But is that actually the case?

Writing at NewScientist.com, deputy director of research at the Higher Education Careers Services Unit, Charlie Ball, has this to say:

One thing everyone seems to agree on is that we need more science graduates (and here I mean science, technology, engineering and maths graduates, a group usually abbreviated to STEM). There are not enough people taking science degrees and something must be done.

Teach First, an organization that places graduates in challenging UK schools, are the latest to enter the fray of the science debate with their recently-released report entitled “Addressing the STEM Challenge.”  In it, Teach First calls for more science teachers so that the public education system can better teach young people science.  This is in hope that more of them will choose to study science-related subjects at university.  A lobbyist organization called CBI recently issued their Education and Skills survey, and of the CBI members questioned for the study, roughly 84 per cent felt the number and quality of STEM graduates should be a priority for universities.  The UK government says they have a strategy which commits to increasing the number of young people studying science subjects.

Yes, we need more science graduates. Definitely. All agreed then?

Except…

At the start of July, new data on what students who graduated in 2010 are doing now was released by the Higher Education Statistics Agency. First, it shows us that initiative after initiative to try to get more young people into science don’t yet seem to be having much impact. There are some minor changes in graduate numbers, but with the exception of a rise of 5.5 per cent in the number of maths graduates this year, there’s nothing of great significance.

Among those who were physics graduates, 11 per cent of them were still out of work 6 months after graduating, and only 3 per cent were in a job in science. History and psychology did slightly better, at 8.5 per cent and 8 per cent of graduates unemployed respectively.  This is an issue because these are the figures that will be going onto the websites that the A-level students of the future will be using to check the employment prospects of the courses they’re going to be paying a lot of money for. When they see the outcomes for science courses compared to other subject that aren’t suffering a “shortage”, some of them are going to wonder what on earth the fuss is about.

Read Ball’s full column here.