Wasted Education: How We Fail Our Graduates in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math - Softcover

Skrentny, John D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226845419 ISBN 13: 9780226845418

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2025

Synopsis

An urgent reality check for America’s blinkered fixation on STEM education.

We live in an era of STEM obsession. Not only do tech companies dominate American enterprise and economic growth while complaining of STEM shortages, but we also need scientific solutions to impending crises. As a society, we have poured enormous resources―including billions of dollars―into cultivating young minds for well-paid STEM careers. Yet despite it all, we are facing a worker exodus, with as many as 70% of STEM graduates opting out of STEM work. Sociologist John D. Skrentny investigates why, and the answer, he shows, is simple: the failure of STEM jobs.

Wasted Education reveals how STEM work drives away bright graduates as a result of  “burn and churn” management practices, lack of job security, constant training for a neverending stream of new―and often socially harmful―technologies, and the exclusion of women, people of color, and older workers. Wasted Education shows that if we have any hope of improving the return on our STEM education investments, we have to change the way we’re treating the workers on whom our future depends.

About this title

About the Author

John D. Skrentny is professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego. He has authored and edited books about education and employment opportunities, and his work has appeared in Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226845419
• ISBN 13: 9780226845418
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256