Just when you thought only liberal arts degrees were a waste of money comes news that science majors suffer, too.
A UC Riverside study finds that “many skills and practices that could help scientists make use of technological and computational opportunities are only marginally being taught in California’s formal graduate programs in the environmental sciences.”
“These findings raised a red flag for us,” Rebecca Hernandez, lead author of the study published in the December 2012 issue of BioScience, told UCR Today. “We conducted the study because we were concerned early career and aspiring scientists were not being trained with the skills and tools they will need to handle large, complex data sets that have become ‘normal’ in scientific labs and institutions across the globe.”
Hernandez explained that the findings suggest that scientists are not being trained as well as they could be in keeping up with the pace of technology and computation, UCR Today reports:
“At a time when jobs have become internationally competitive, scientists also need employable skills,” she said. “Knowing basic programming or how to infer meaningful and accurate information from large data sets could be the difference between unemployment and a job offer.”
Nearly 500 scientists participated in the UC Riverside study. Hernandez and colleagues conducted an online survey in June-August 2011 and solicited responses from master’s and doctoral students in academic departments related to environmental or ecological sciences from 27 California universities, including 4 private schools, 9 public universities in the UC system, and 14 public universities in the California State University system.
The researchers focused on environmental sciences because the field includes biologists, plant scientists, geneticists, ecologists, modelers, oceanographers, earth system scientists, evolutionists, foresters, geographers, energy scientists, and others.
The sad thing is, these science majors were probably too busy fulfilling needless elective requirements instead of learning important skill sets at universities that spent money on “diversity and inclusion” efforts rather than offering and enrolling students in relevant classes that help them compete globally.
Click here to read the entire UCR Today article.
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