Shove it up your pipeline

I know that I should treat this report on preparing students for non-academic careers as a good thing, because it involves academic physicists and professional societies finally recognizing that we need to get serious about the fact that most physics majors will go into industry, not the PhD pipeline/pyramid.  I should be glad that people are recognizing this, and that the Important And Serious Types get it.

The problem is that I hate the important and serious types because they are always so disconnected from reality, half of them still say all the Acceptable And Serious stuff about PhD production, and it seems like they only figured out 4 minutes ago what the physics community should have figured out 4 decades ago:  That most people don't get PhDs and don't wind up in academia.  How can I take these jokers seriously when they started revising their Party Line yesterday while I've been taking students to industry meetings and teaching computational physics and applied optics since I was a junior professor?  These jokers will no doubt get the world to pat them on the back for "Steering the Conversation to Recognize the Need for Change" while some of us have been in the trenches doing this stuff for a long time, and we figured it out without the Serious And Important People issuing reports and trying to "Change The Conversation" or whatever.

And they dress it up in all of their administrative language instead of plain English, speaking the language of administrivia and bureaucracy.  And I know, I just KNOW, that when the next grant opportunity comes along, if it's for some PhD pipeline bullshit they'll be talking up the importance of that when five minutes earlier they were talking about preparing students for industry.  Because they're a bunch of parasites.

Gritty reality

I just came across this article from May arguing that grit research is over-hyped.  Essentially, the claims are that (1) the effect of grit is sometimes exaggerated, (2) a lot of other known variables (e.g. the much-maligned standardized tests) are more predictive, and (3) grit is not nearly as novel as Duckworth claims.  It was mentioned in the comments on this article, where the author worries that if grit is the key to success then advantaged kids are more likely to be in environments that emphasize it.  The problem is that advantaged kids are, by definition, the ones with the greatest access to the secret sauce of success, whatever you think that secret sauce may be.  Also, whether we respond to [insert latest success fad here] by seeking to help the poor get access to it or by blaming the poor for not having it depends not on our theory of success but our theory of the poor.  If we see them as victims through no fault of their own then compassion will move us to help them develop [grit, growth mindset, whatever the latest trendy thing is].  If we see them as people of low character then we will blame them for not possessing our trait.  We don't need a humane theory of success, we need a humane theory of poverty.  I've said this before.

As an aside, Duckworth spent some time at McKinsey early in her career.  Those people are everywhere.

The Post-Literate Society

Today an administrator sent out a request that faculty fill out a survey as part of some study involving educational fads.  Since I love to be the fly in the ointment I naturally took the survey as soon as possible.  Among the questions on the survey were a few about whether/how frequently we use videos in our classes.  The context strongly implied that assigning students to watch videos is considered a good, progressive thing to do.  Reading assignments did not receive commensurate attention.

Mark 2016 as the year that one of my "superiors" openly embraced the post-literate society.

Alternative is back in style, so I said "What about Breakfast at Tiffany's?"

The editors of Nature deign to notice reality:

Alternative career paths should be celebrated, not seen as a compromise.

Do go on.

...but young scientists have more reason than most to be disillusioned when things do not go to plan. Almost all have completed a PhD. And almost all would have been told that the qualification — and the effort and dedication involved — was the first step on the ladder to a permanent academic position. 

Nature and others have long pointed out that this is a lie. There are simply too many PhD students and too few senior posts. Hence the purgatory of the postdocs: trapped in transition and trying to accrue the necessary credit to move on.

Well, I'm not sure how "long" they've pointed it out.  Their link is to 2011.  If they'd pointed this out in the 1970's I'd be more impressed.

Up next:  The editors of Nature suspect that these newfangled desktop computers might have an effect on how people do science.

Niches vs. Competition

I was talking to a student, and I was articulating some of the points that I make on this blog, concerning the folly of trying to send everyone to college or get everyone to succeed equally in the same programs.  He asked me if I believe that in any group of people there will inevitably be a winner and a loser.  I paused, and tried to come up with something less stark, and came up with this:

If everyone tries to succeed at the same thing then there will indeed be a winner and a loser, because it really is that zero-sum and stark when everyone is trying for the same path.  But if people find their niches, then you can avoid that brutal competition because people mostly avoid going head-to-head.  The only time competition really matches econ 101 and really gets at the absolute efficiency limits of the most ideal econ models is when everyone tries to go head-to-head.  When people find niches then you still get a good outcome for consumers via choice, and there's a moderate level of efficiency so they do get the benefit of innovation and (some) cost competition, but it isn't so brutal that everyone's profits go to zero (when opportunity costs are taken into account) and nobody can get ahead and everyone is constantly sweating.  The best growth opportunities come via niches.

If we try to send everyone to a classic 4 year degree program then the world will be a stark place.  Credential inflation will strip away any value from education.  If we recognize that people need a variety of paths, and that no one path is for everyone, then we can develop people to their potential without sacrificing quality and rigor.  I hope we go for sanity and embrace a diverse range of paths for people.  The worst part of US economic and social policy for the past few decades has been the belief that increasing the production of 4 year degrees is the only way forward in a post-industrial economy.

SF story accepted

I forgot to blog this, but last weekend one of my stories was posted at 365 Tomorrows, a daily blog for flash-fiction sci-fi stories.

The false ecumenicalism of STEAM

There's an editorial that I half-agree with in the latest issue of Scientific American, and like many things that get at half of an issue it's almost as dangerous as simply ignoring the issue.  The editors make the completely valid point that our society need more than just people who are trained in natural science and engineering, that we also need people who study the humanities and social sciences.  I agree completely, as you might gather from the fact that most of the books I've blogged about here are written by people who aren't trained in math, natural science, or engineering, and are primarily about non-technical issues.  I denounce the short-sightedness of politicians who want to focus our higher education system primarily on STEM.  Partly because (as I've said before) putting STEM on a pedestal is actually quite bad for STEM* and partly because the rest of society (i.e. the world beyond the walls of the science buildings on campus) also needs more than STEM.

The editors of SciAm get that society needs more than STEM, but they can't help but couch this need in terms of the economic competitiveness of high-tech industries:

The need to teach both music theory and string theory is a necessity for the U.S. economy to continue as the preeminent leader in technological innovation. The unparalleled dynamism of Silicon Valley and Hollywood requires intimate ties that unite what scientist and novelist C. P. Snow called the “two cultures” of the arts and sciences.

Steve Jobs, who reigned for decades as a tech hero, was neither a coder nor a hardware engineer. He stood out among the tech elite because he brought an artistic sensibility to the redesign of clunky mobile phones and desktop computers. Jobs once declared: “It's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough—that it's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing.” 

A seeming link between innovation and the liberal arts now intrigues countries where broad-based education is less prevalent. In most of the world, university curricula still emphasize learning skills oriented toward a specific profession or trade. The ebullience of the U.S. economy, which boasted in 2014 the highest percentage of high-tech outfits among all its public companies—has spurred countries such as Singapore to create schools fashioned after the U.S. liberal arts model.  

My problem with this is that it still has STEM on the pedestal:  There's nothing about the value of the humanities and social sciences** in their own right, only their significance for high-tech industries. Personally, my reason for reading and blogging about so many books on history, social issues, and so forth is that I want to understand people, not that people often work in STEM.  Teaching is an activity in which one can benefit from knowledge of history, psychology, etc. irrespective of what discipline one is in.  The value of humanities and social science for my work can thus be measured by how much my work involves people, not by how much humanities and social science help STEM.  More importantly, the value of humanities and social science should be measured according to more than just the extent to which they matter for my work (or anyone's "work", as opposed to the rest of life).

Now, in academia I can sense a backlash starting to stir against the current STEM craze.  However concerned I might be about how this pedestal will affect STEM, I can hardly expect sympathy from people who aren't in STEM.  The pedestal might have its downsides, but not being on the pedestal has even more downsides.  Consequently, some administrative types now talk about "STEAM", which stands for "Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics."  Nobody is entirely sure whether the "Arts" only include visual and performing arts, or also the liberal arts*** more broadly.  I'm less interested in definitions listed in some particular document and more interested in usage. When I hear administrators talking about the "A" in "STEAM" I've heard several different points, some of which could be roughly summed up as:

1. "Designing technology requires attention to aesthetics."  This is a completely valid point that has been known for millenia, hence the field known as "architecture."
2. "Designing technology requires attention to human factors more broadly."  Again, a completely valid point.
3. "Scientists can learn a lot about their field from historians and philosophers of science and technology."  This is a point with which I also agree completely, and it informs much of my blogging here.  Indeed, I strongly encourage students to make connections between their major and their general education by taking classes on the history of science.
4. "Solving workforce issues in the sciences requires the involvement of people who have considered the cultural factors and problems of inequality that affect the pipeline of talent."  While I might dissent from some of the most common narratives offered in regard to these topics, I completely agree that these are important areas for inquiry.  I would like to see more and broader inquiry on these issues.

However, do you notice that in each case the "Arts" (however construed) are examined only in regard to how they interact with STEM?  That's fine if the specific topic on the table is whether to include some non-STEM people in a STEM-focused endeavor, but not if the topic on the table is the purpose and future direction of a comprehensive university.  The STEAM buzzword could probably be invoked to justify hiring an art historian who emphasizes architecture, an English professor who is an expert on teaching technical writing, or an ethnic studies professor who studies equity issues in STEM.  However, I'm not sure that it could be invoked to justify hiring a historian who studies the cultural history of China, an English professor who's interested in 18th century American poetry, or an ethnic studies scholar who's interested in representations of ethnicity in cinema.  These people might fit under the Arts (at least in the sense of Liberal Arts) but I doubt that they would fit under any but the most bland (and thus pointless) definitions of STEAM.  STEAM is false ecumenicalism, a way of offering University Strategic Initiatives that are nominally inclusive of disciplines beyond STEM while still measuring those disciplines by the yardstick of STEM.  As long as the paramount yardstick of academic inquiry and teaching is relevance to STEM the Academy is going to suffer.
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*In a society that is democratic in the way described by de Tocqueville, those academic fields that are deemed most important will have an obligation to take in the huddled masses, however unprepared and untalented they may be.  This may provide some benefit for members of the masses as individuals, at least initially, but it tends to impede the pursuit of excellence, and eventually the phenomenon of credential inflation will rear its head, to the detriment of all, but disproportionately hurting the least privileged.

**Whether or not the social sciences are included in STEM depends on whether the "S" in STEM is implicitly "NS" (Natural Science).  I personally exclude the social sciences from STEM, not because I disrespect the intellectual rigor of those fields but because I eschew linguistic prescriptivism in favor of looking at how people actually use words.  To wit, consider the following thought experiment:  We have two students, both of whom start off majoring in chemistry.  One of them then switches majors to physics, while the other switches majors to economics.  Would a typical "STEM crisis" hand-wringer react to both with equal nonchalance, saying "They're still in STEM", or would they evince more concern over the new economics major than the new physics major?

***We could also ask which disciplines get counted as "liberal arts", or the extent to which the liberal arts overlap STEM, but let's set that aside for now.