July 18 (Bloomberg) -- In recent years, a lot of people
have been concerned about the relatively low numbers of science
majors among American college students. The percentage of
science and engineering graduates in the U.S. has been far below
that in China and Japan. On various math and science tests, the
performance of U.S. students has fallen below that of students
in South Korea, Singapore, Japan, England, Finland, Israel,
Australia and Russia.
This is a real problem, because science majors can
contribute to economic growth and because many of them end up
with especially good jobs after graduation. In the employment
market, students with degrees in STEM (science, technology,
engineering and math) can be at a comparative advantage. The
relatively low number of American graduates in these fields has
created what some people call “the STEM crisis.”
