STEM

About that "shortage" of engineers.

A revealing article recently appeared in BusinessWeek. To cut to the chase, the authors found that there is no shortage of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) graduates in the United States. Instead:

U.S. colleges and universities are graduating as many scientists and engineers as ever, according to a study released on Oct. 28 by a group of academics. But that finding comes with a big caveat: Many of the highest-performing students are choosing careers in other fields. The study by professors at Rutgers and Georgetown suggests that since the late 1990s, many of the top students have been lured to careers in finance and consulting.

Advanced Skilled American Engineers Forced to Declare Bankruptcy

Now this should come as no surprise. Anyone involved with anything scientific knows the U.S. Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Professionals have been getting the financial and career shaft for years now.

The San Jose Mercury New is reporting an alarming increase in career long technical professionals are being forced into bankruptcy.

A growing number of high-tech professionals are filing for bankruptcy, joining real estate, finance and construction workers who were in the first wave of bankruptcies last year.

Overall filings were up 50 percent to 2,399 in the first three months of this year over the first quarter of 2008, according to records of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Jose. The court covers Santa Clara, Monterey, San Benito and Santa Cruz counties.

Women Techies Getting the Diss & Silicon Valley Uses the Crisis as an Excuse

Just what women techies need to hear when massive layoffs are headed to Silicon valley. Oh yeah, get this, the layoffs aren't really layoffs but more of an excuse to offshore outsource even more jobs, age discriminate and our usual high tech blame game, insulting people working their ass off as dead wood to justify their staff thrashing....(TechCrunch loves to blame the victim and promote global labor arbitrage).

Back to women techies....they are not having families, working their ass off, much more than their male counterparts and yet...all of that effort just isn't paying off:

TechiesTargeted - Twice as likely to lose Jobs by Outsourcing

There is a new study out hinting at some quantifying number of jobs being offshore outsourced. Outsourcing is very hard to get hard data on, simply because Corporations do not want you to know the hard data (for you might demand Congressional Action!).

From the Study abstract:

Despite significant public, media, and academic interest in offshoring, there has been very little data available through which to assess how offshoring has affected US-based information technology workers. In this study, we use data from two new, nationally representative surveys to examine how offshoring has already affected the US based IT workforce, and to test the hypothesis that offshoring is making interpersonal skills more valuable for US-based IT workers.

India "Showering" Jobs Overseas (that's the United States to them)

I find this article most amusing.
Indian Companies showering jobs overseas
:

With a dollop of IT companies in India being the best recruiters offering jobs to thousands of professionals are now more interested in offering overseas job opportunities. The main motive behind this is the shortage of skills and in turn better productivity.

We Have Too Many PhDs

Universities Produce too many PhDs

The latest federal data show about 45,600 Ph.Ds were awarded in 2005-2006, 5.1 percent higher than the year before. It was the fourth straight increase and tied for the highest percentage gain since 1971