Communications of the ACM
Is the STEM Shortage a Myth?
Credit: Mommy Monologues
Amid the heated immigration debate, many businesses claim there aren't enough high-skilled, domestic IT workers to fill the vacancies within the STEM industries. But that may not be the case, according to a recent study released by Economic Policy Institute, which found that U.S. colleges do produce a sufficient number of STEM workers to meet the market demand. The study, which focused only on the IT/Computer Science field, found that for every two American students who graduate with an IT degree, only one is hired into a STEM job. A third of the graduates who did not take an IT job said it was because such jobs were unavailable.
Hal Salzman, a Rutgers professor and one of the authors of the STEM shortage study, argues that at least 50% of new IT job openings are being filled with H-1B visa candidates. That number is unacceptably high, he argues, and should lead others to question whether there is really a STEM skills shortage and whether there is an inability of the U.S. to produce talented people for these IT labor markets. The authors of the study looked at the domestic labor pool supply and found that overall colleges graduate twice as many STEM graduates as are going to STEM jobs. More specifically, only about 65% of computer science graduates go into an IT job. When those who were employed were asked why they had gone into a field other than IT, one-third said they couldn't find a job in IT and half said they found a better job elsewhere.
From Inc.com
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