Beware the STEM Obsession

Many of the STEM jobs for which highly selective institutions prepare students for careers may well be automated even before they graduate.

But the larger concern is - and should be - that de-emphasizing culture, the arts and social sciences may further the disintegration of civilizations which have little understanding of their impact on socio-economic stability and growth.


Ginia Bellafonte reports in the New York Times:

The compulsion with STEM is producing tunnel vision in which one kind of life is prized above others. Stuyvesant and Bronx Science are considered top high schools because they focus on science, computer studies, mathematics — the STEM subjects regarded as the runway to lucrative careers in finance and technology. (But) the ranking of the country’s best high schools, lists the High School of American Studies and Brooklyn Latin, both centered on the humanities, above Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. It is problematic that ambitious students are not drawn to an education where the classics and history are prioritized

This week came the very dispiriting news that despite years of agonized debate over how to diversify New York City’s specialized high schools, only a small percentage of black and Latino children gained admission to them for the upcoming academic year.

A continuation of the status quo would have been bleak enough, but there were signs of regression. Even though, for example, the number of Latino children who took the entrance exam (the sole criteria for acceptance) increased this year, the number admitted actually went down. Of the 4,798 spots awarded in these schools in total, only 190 went to black students.

As ever, the focus quickly landed on the gaping disparities at Stuyvesant. There, just seven of the 895 children admitted were black. Stuyvesant is the most selective of the eight schools in the specialized high school system; it requires at least a score of 557 (out of 800) on the entrance exam known as the SHSAT. This is the highest cutoff. Fewer than 4 percent of those who take the test qualify for admission to Stuyvesant, which accepts a smaller percentage of its applicants than Harvard, Stanford or M.I.T.

That has given the school a disproportionate role in discussions of improving social mobility.

Presumably, a Stuyvesant graduate will have a better than average chance at getting into Harvard. And a great number of people in the pundit class believe that a more equitably balanced Harvard leads to a more equitably balanced America. But even if every spot in the Ivy League were filled by an exceptional student from a low-income family, a mere 60,000 or so American undergraduates would see their fortunes rise. Something like six million others would be left struggling in underfunded community colleges with typically poor rates of graduation.

Similarly, even if every seat at Stuyvesant were taken by a student from a low-income black or Latino family, a few thousand children would embark on a clearer path to success, while tens of thousands of other black and Latino children in the same circumstance would have no such obvious road in front of them.

Certainly the racial incongruities at Stuyvesant, which is populated predominantly by Asian students, needs to be rectified in some way — particularly at a moment when many colleges and universities are reducing the focus on standardized tests. (Virtually no prestigious college uses a single test as the basis for admission.) At the same time we would all do well to be less obsessed with Stuyvesant and the many other educational institutions that derive their status largely through exclusion.

The fixation with prestige that drives the mania around Stuyvesant is really no different from the status desperation that fueled the recent college admissions scandal in which dozens of wealthy parents were charged with bribing their children’s way into Yale, the University of Southern California and other highly ranked schools out of the terror, presumably, that the lives of their young charges would run off course without the right brand affiliation.

Immigrant parents in Flushing, Queens, work hard and sacrifice and spend thousands of dollars on test preparation in the hope their children will have far better jobs and live in much bigger houses, while parents on the West Side of Los Angeles fall under the temptations of con men who have found creative ways of preying on the often inexplicable but deep-seated insecurities of the American upper class.

What will shift the dynamic? In the case of New York City’s elite public high schools, it might help if educators and other officials worked to expand notions of prestige and success. Stuyvesant and Bronx Science are considered the city’s top public high schools largely because they are so selective and also because they focus on science, computer studies, mathematics — the STEM subjects that are regarded as the runway to lucrative careers in finance and technology.

It is noteworthy that the ranking of the country’s best high schools by state, compiled by U.S. News and World Report, lists both the High School of American Studies at Lehman College and Brooklyn Latin, both of which are centered on the humanities, above Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. These rankings are based not on selectivity but on student performance and specifically on the performance of black and Hispanic students from low-income backgrounds compared with the state average. Lehman and Brooklyn Latin are both part of the city’s specialized high-school cohort. Both admit a considerably higher share of black and Hispanic students than Stuyvesant or Bronx Science.

Of the more than 8,400 Asian students who took the specialized high-school test this year, more than half listed either Stuyvesant or Bronx Science as their first choice, while just 200 or so named Lehman or Brooklyn Latin as first choice.

From a cultural perspective it is problematic, too, that more ambitious students are not drawn to an education where the classics and history are prioritized, particularly in this period where political life is so fraught. The compulsion with STEM is producing a tunnel vision in which one kind of life is prized above too many others — the life of start-ups and public offerings and enormous windfalls.

When Elizabeth Holmes, the fraudulent blood company entrepreneur who is the subject of a new documentary about Theranos, was asked, as a little girl, what she wanted to be when she grew up, she had a ready answer: a billionaire.