Paris In A Day Jukebox and Open Thread

Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

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13 Responses

  1. Shazbot5 says:

    Re: STEM majors from the symposium a while back, everybody should take a look at Freddie’s post here, citing a cool study debunking the claim that we need more STEM majors:

    http://lhote.blogspot.com/2013/04/hate-to-say-i-told-you-so.html

    Am interested to hear what people think about the study.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Shazbot5 says:

      Cutting and pasting:

      The flow of U.S. students (citizens and permanent residents) into STEM fields has been strong over the past decade, and the number of U.S. graduates with STEM majors appears to be responsive to changes in employment levels and wages.

      For every two students that U.S. colleges graduate with STEM degrees, only one is hired into a STEM job.

      In computer and information science and in engineering, U.S. colleges graduate 50 percent more students than are hired into those fields each year; of the computer science graduates not entering the IT workforce, 32 percent say it is because IT jobs are unavailable, and 53 percent say they found better job opportunities outside of IT occupations. These responses suggest that the supply of graduates is substantially larger than the demand for them in industry.

      Is there an apples to apples comparison to the numbers for Liberal Arts? I mean:

      For every X students that U.S. colleges graduate with Liberal Arts degrees, only Y is hired into a Liberal Arts job.

      What’s X? What’s Y?

      From what I understand, there are more people who graduate every year with a journalism degree than there are existing jobs in the industry. (Not open jobs, mind! Existing jobs!)

      If you’ve got a 50% change to get a job in your career field when people from Liberal Arts degrees have a 7% chance to get a job in their own, 50% starts to look pretty sweet.

      (Of course, as someone with a degree in philosophy, it is impossible for me to get a job in anything but my field.)Report

    • Will Truman in reply to Shazbot5 says:

      I saw that. Even tagged it, I think, for a future Linky Friday or a standalone post.

      I think it’s mostly right. But I think the question of whether or not they specifically go into their STEM field is secondary to whether or not they get a good job, with a good income, and so on. If a STEM degree prepares you for a career in finance, business, or whatever, I’d still consider it worthwhile.

      Three caveats:

      1) Of course, STEM degrees include a number of fields. Some more indicative of future earning than others. As always, they should not be treated equally.

      2) Self-sorting may account for some of the earning potential of STEM grads. Essentially, the same “Rush Stamp” argument I used for college in general (signalling power, etc.). So if everyone got a STEM degree, it’d be similar to my concerns about “everyone should get a college degree.” I’d put it in a different category, though, because STEM degrees are self-limiting in the way “a college degree” is not.

      3) The fact that there isn’t a shortage, if this is right, seems rather tied to the large volume of talent we import. So even then, we still aren’t making enough. We’re just importing the difference. Which is fine, but worth noting.Report

      • Shazbot5 in reply to Will Truman says:

        I think the post suggests that we are making enough homegrown STEM talent and we import some, so we have more than we need.

        I think the idea is that STEM degrees don’t prepare you for non-STEM jobs more than liberal arts degrees. That isl STEM degrees are good, but we don’t gain much or anything economically or in terms of employment or future earnings by pushing more people into STEM degrees.Report

        • Will Truman in reply to Shazbot5 says:

          It actually doesn’t tell us all that much about future earnings. That’s in the data presented previously. Some STEM majors don’t do so well, but a lot do quite well.

          There’s a difference between what society gains by pushing lots of people into STEM degrees and whether or not an individual should do it. It’s the same argument I apply to college in general (I’m encouraging my kid to go, but unlike you I don’t see societal gains by sending most or all kids to college).

          If society doesn’t have that much to gain by having more STEM types, we should re-evaluate why we are importing so many. Honestly, I could go either way on this.

          But from an individual standpoint, see above: it tells us more about whether or not they get a career in STEM, not what they’re future earnings look like. It could just be the Rush Stamp. Either way, though, I’m going to encourage engineering over US History.Report

    • Kimmi in reply to Shazbot5 says:

      1) wages remaining flat is a good thing, as compared to other fields
      2) all those wall street people who have a physics degree? Or, hell, are in medicine being “systems analysts”? They’re still getting better pay than nurses.Report

  2. zic says:

    Well, we decided not to move.

    Great job with awesome company. Three-digit salary, and they offered an additional $10,000/year plus $5,000 moving expenses when we expressed concerns about rent prices in the neighborhood.

    But it meant moving back to the city. Leaving my beloved mountains in Western Maine; the place where I feel rooted. I just couldn’t do it.

    I’ve wept all morning at what my husband has given up for me. He loves me very much. I need to be a better spouse to be worthy.

    But in celebration, I post my first link ever to a cat photo. (I admit to posting a video the other day, so maybe it’s number two?)

    Cats in fashionable knitwear do make me very happy.Report

    • Will Truman in reply to zic says:

      Well, at least this way, there’s an off-chance we’ll end up in your neck of the woods. That would have been a lot more unlikely had you moved to that other place.Report

    • Kimmi in reply to zic says:

      Cats in fashionable knitwear raise warranted alarms with me. My husband’s good friend got sent to the hospital after having the temerity to dress his cat in a bumblebee costume for Halloween. You’d think he’d know better.

      In response, I shall post a different friend of a friend:
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqbg6SihiYY

      (They appear to have found a park whose cops won’t chase them out on sight — or perhaps more correctly, on hearing).Report

    • Kimmi in reply to zic says:

      Also, if your husband is ever looking for “work from home” work, there’s always work to be had in the video game industry. They can’t seem to find (or keep) good musicians.Report

      • zic in reply to Kimmi says:

        Kimmi, he’s not ‘looking,’ work came looking for him because of the work he already does in the software industry that supplies musicians with tools to make digitized music.

        He’d rather play the sax and piano and compose on the spot in front of a live audience with a small combo of other skilled players. But the market suggests that that kind of extraordinary talent is of little value. A jazz musician is someone who puts a $5,000 instrument in a $500 car to drive 50 miles for a $5 gig.

        I think if I suggested he take a gig making music for video games, he’d divorce me. But thank you, it’s a suggestion my children might find interesting.Report