Storyingtelling & Art boost STEM
Giving a shout-out to Rick Nelson, editor-in-chief of Evaluation Engineering. He writes about the need for English majors to stick around.
Read here: https://www.evaluationengineering.com/applications/article/21113099/december-2019-editorial
I am an English major from back in the day. Here's what I experienced as a major. I decided to attend summer school in order to reduce tuition and graduate a year early. Normally, in the 15-week format, we read one book a week. Now we crammed 15-weeks into 5 weeks with the same reading list. Do the math, folks, that's one book every day plus tests. I made it through. I had no social life at all.
I remember a Dilbert cartoon, published years ago. Dilbert's company hired an English major. Her job? To wave her arms up and down when the movement-sensitive lights went out. That was obviously because none of the engineers had moved enough to activate the motion-sensors.
It was a joke then, but as Rick explains, it is not joke at all now. I will quote a few statistics from the Evaluation Engineering article derived from the National Center for Education Statistics.
From 2009 to 2017: saw a decline in English graduates of 25.5%
During that same time period: math, engineering, and computer science college majors increased by 55.2%, 67.8%, and 88%.
Despite our impressions of graduate marketplace success, English majors actually ALSO had a lower unemployment rate (in 2017) than math and computer science majors (measured amongst 25-29 year olds).
"English majors may be filling an underserved niche, whereas STEM majors may face a glut of competition at home and abroad," writes Rick.
Think about that!
