"Why Don't More Students Get Engineering Degrees?"

I have always felt that in the discussion of American deindustrialization the talk of education has been a red herring. America did not deindustrialize because American college students picked "soft majors." (Indeed, it is worth noting that between 1975 and the late '10s the number of engineering graduates in the U.S. tripled, with the last part of that period seeing a particular surge among American-born students.) Rather the issue was that the end of the post-war boom, the stiffening of international competition, the falling profitability of manufacturing, the opportunities opened up by deregulation, led investors to favor financial maneuvers, real estates, offshoring, over domestic production--and they have never looked back since.

Still, it does seem worth admitting that American youth may be less inclined than their foreign counterparts to this particular major. However, it seems to me that this is traceable to the paths they are encouraged to follow in their own self-interest.

Consider the stereotypical intelligent, ambitious young person who heeds the advice of their elders. Conventionally they are going for careers in medicine or law. If they want to bet on making really big money they are directed toward finance. If their inclinations are technical they are directed toward computing. If they simply do not know what to do with themselves they are directed toward generic business degrees. Meanwhile even the strident chant of STEM, STEM, STEM factors into this--by obscuring the fact that what the STEM-mongers really want is not more astrophysicists or theoretical mathematicians or professors of biology but engineers providing American industry with a larger pool of skilled labor by instead making them think that "basic" science degree-holders have more opportunity than is really the case (all as lots of college departments confuse things further by getting themselves reclassed as STEM to get a crack at the money held out for those participating in the campaign).

The young responded accordingly, going where they were told the rewards were--and their elders responded with their usual stupid outrage, in line with the prevailing view that while it is fair and right that business follow their self-interest as they understand it best it is somehow unfair and wrong, mean and shabby, that workers do the same, as though they should instead think only of "public service" when picking their majors.

Were engineering to be perceived as being as rewarding in terms of pay and prestige as medicine and law and finance one would see still more young people heading into it than is already the case. However, the reality is quite different--even before one considers the underappreciated facts about STEM major underemployment and how quickly the wage premium on a STEM degree fades even for those who do get jobs in their line soon after graduation, soon leaving the worker doing no better even if they had not departed for a job they could have done without such a degree.