Continuing the recent “careers in science” theme, Inside Higher Ed has a story about what people with science degrees do with their lives, based on a new NSF report. From the Inside Higher Ed piece:
Many science and engineering degree recipients continue to get use from their undergraduate studies even years after they’ve graduated, and even if they’ve switched disciplines.
According to a report from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Science Resource Statistics, in 2003, two-thirds of workers whose highest degree was a bachelor’s in a science or engineering field reported that their job was related to their degree — even if they received the degree 25 years ago or more. […]That proportion was almost three-quarters for workers who had earned a degree within the last 24 years.
Sounds pretty good, right? The one loophole is that ellipsis, which is a pretty big ellipsis, as it turns out (below the fold):
According to a report from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Science Resource Statistics, in 2003, two-thirds of workers whose highest degree was a bachelor’s in a science or engineering field reported that their job was related to their degree — even if they received the degree 25 years ago or more. The report defined science and engineering as life, physical, mathematical, computer, and social sciences and engineering. That proportion was almost three-quarters for workers who had earned a degree within the last 24 years.
A little bit of poking around failed to turn up a clear statement of what “social sciences” mean in this context, but using the conventional description (which includes majors like History and Political Science and Economics), that’s a hole you could drive a truck through. This being the NSF, I suspect they probably mean stuff like Anthropology and Psychology, but I’m not entirely sure.
Other than that, I don’t really have any sweeping conclusions to draw from this. It’s just some interesting data, for those who are interested in data.
I believe you could probably fly a C130 through that hole. I hope that they the meaning of “social sciences” is limited to those that you mention.
The NSF tends to use field designations that are academically based. Industry tends to use a more teleological taxonomy. For example, many industries will have engineer or scientist as a job designation with no differentiation among (e.g.,) types of engineers or scientific disciplines. Thus, a chemist, a mathematician, and a physicist may all have job designations scientist. Alternately if they are doing production (in a general sense) work, they may be engineers.
The federal government tends to use a taxonomy intermediary between these two.
It has been my experience that most technically educated people stay in a technical occupation but the senior ones who become supervisors or managers may be designated such and get dropped by taxonomies like the NSF’s.