and Political Science hold that STEM degrees do not. Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. I am a … We also found that lack of fit may have a more detrimental effect on work satisfaction for those in STEM majors. Regression results and relative weight analysis predicting well-being outcomes (Study 1). A meta-analysis of the relationship between interest-based job fit and job satisfaction also suggests that perception of fit is more strongly related to satisfaction with supervisor, coworkers and work in general compared to satisfaction with pay and promotion (Morris, 2003). Helliwell, J., Layard, R., and Sachs, J. Society continually degrades these professions and yet fundamentally relies on them. Educ., 17 December 2019 American Academy of Arts Sciences (2013). STEM Attrition: College Students’ Paths Into and Out of STEM Fields Statistical Analysis Report NOVEMBER 2013 Xianglei Chen RTI International Matthew Soldner Project Officer National Center for Education Statistics NCES 2014-001 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF Society artificially designed the feud, meaning student must not let the STEM versus humanities fight influence their academic path. But these are only temporary fixes on a small scale. Inside Higher Ed. In addition, interest fit accounted for significantly more variance in work satisfaction and life satisfaction, compared to the major field. RWA web: a free, comprehensive, web-based, and user-friendly tool for relative weight analyses. doi: 10.1038/s41562-017-0277-0, Johnson, J. W., and Lebreton, J. M. (2004). College graduates self-reported their major field. Organ. Multiple regression is appropriate for this study as it examines whether a set of independent variables significantly predicts the outcome of interest. For example, an RS-RW of 50% means that the predictor accounts for 50% of the explained variance in the outcome. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. They are forced to exist in a world without individualism, dialogue or conflict. (2003). Facts & Figures The debate over the role of the humanities in higher education and American life reached new fervor this summer with the publication of several high profile reports and articles. Available online at: https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BUDGET-2016-BUD/pdf/BUDGET-2016-BUD.pdf (accessed November 6, 2017). This list of humanities majors with successful careers, both within and beyond what they studied, is endless. Hulleman, C. S., and Harackiewicz, J. M. (2009). History and use of relative importance indices in organizational research. As with any study, our research has some limitations that should be considered. Behav. Where would we be without trash collectors? The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2019.00143/full#supplementary-material. The data that support the findings of this study are available from Gallup, but restrictions apply to their availability. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});Although strict academic definitions seem to drastically differentiate STEM and humanities, the two are naturally associated with one another. Weighing in at 555,545 U.S. graduates in 2016, STEM is a fierce opponent whose curriculum seeks proficiency in traditionally hard sciences, which rely on testable predictions, controlled experiments, mathematical models, quantifiable data and objectivity. The results also indicated that the interaction between interest fit and major was only a significant predictor of work satisfaction (b = 0.04, p < 0.001), such that the effect of interest fit on work satisfaction was stronger for STEM majors (b = 0.65, p < 0.001) compared to those in the humanities (b = 0.58, p < 0.001). 23, 98–103. The editor and reviewers' affiliations are the latest provided on their Loop research profiles and may not reflect their situation at the time of review. Why STEM Students Need Humanities Courses The more science and technology dominate our culture, the more we need the humanities By John … Table 2. Waiters? Psychol. Available online at: http://www.aacu.org/leap/presidentstrust/compact/2013SurveySummary (accessed October 17, 2017). Janitors? These findings are in line with the data reporting that STEM careers offer a considerable salary premium over non-STEM jobs (BurningGlass, 2013). Humanities Indicators (2017). Psychol. In other words, while financial metrics of personal income point to an advantage for STEM majors, human well-being metrics are mainly a function of the individual's perception of fit, and lack of fit may result in lower well-being independent of the major field of study. Available online at: https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2016-01-29/in-kentucky-a-push-for-engineers-over-french-lit-scholars (accessed October 17, 2017). Jebb, A. T., Tay, L., Diener, E., and Oishi, S. (2018). Wri… Science 326, 1410–1412. J. These plots indicated that these assumptions were met for both samples. In line with this research, our results point to the important role of the match between individuals' interests and their career to their future well-being. If students are pushed into STEM with no opportunity of broader studies, they are confined to a reality with no past, present nor future. Behav. Bivariate correlations among the study variables are reported in Supplementary Table 2. Career Assess. Public Interest 5, 1–31. Humanities perspective is needed in all global challenges The second conviction around which the debate swirls is that the world desperately needs the insights of the humanities. The New York Times. A rising call to promote STEM education and cut liberal arts funding. 69, 64–89. This gives way to an even larger, generational dilemma. *Correspondence: Hoda Vaziri, hoda.vaziri@unt.edu, Front. Humanities centers and institutes are key to improving the image of the humanities among the public and policy makers, writes Aaron R. Hanlon. Astronomy and physics, for example, are ancient fields of study. 13, 216–232. Choose from hundreds of free courses or pay to earn a Course or Specialization Certificate. Below, we discuss the implications of our study along with its limitations. While personal income is positively linked to emotional and cognitive well-being, research has shown that there is satiation point, beyond which limited gain or even lower life evaluation is reported (Jebb et al., 2018). Detailed information about the operationalization of variables is included in the Supplementary Materials. Acad. Women are overrepresented, compared to their 49% share of the U.S. college-age population in 2012, among recipients of bachelor’s degrees in psychology, biological/agricultural sciences, and social sciences. Humanities Report Card. The past ten years has seen dramatic shifts in the majors of college graduates. The results of the regression analysis (Table 2) suggested that even after controlling for cognitive ability and ability/motivation, perception of interest fit was a significant predictor of work satisfaction (b = 0.53, p < 0.001), life satisfaction (b = 0.35, p < 0.001), and financial satisfaction (b = 0.07, p < 0.05), but not personal income (b = 0.05, p > 0.05). Humanities, those branches of knowledge that concern themselves with human beings and their culture or with analytic and critical methods of inquiry derived from an appreciation of human values and of the unique ability of the human spirit to express itself. Multiple regression was used to examine the influence of major choice and interest fit on each well-being outcome, while controlling for demographic and individual characteristics. However, as statistics blogger Nate Silver has pointed out, this trend can be partly explained by the fact that more people are pursuing higher education. Morris, M. A. These results provide partial support for hypotheses 1 and 2. STEM Graduates in Non-STEM Jobs 4 Contents Executive summary 1 Key research findings 3 Overall conclusions 9 1. How Do We Solve the STEM vs. Gender gaps in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) college majors receive considerable attention, and it is increasingly recognized that not all STEM majors are equal in terms of gender disparities ([ 1 ][1]–[ 4 ][2]). Speaking to the interdependent nature between STEM and humanities, Turner continues, saying, “I don’t believe we can understand the humanities without understanding something about human biology. Thi… Accordingly, we seek to understand the extent to which congruence between individuals' interests and their occupation is important and predictive of important well-being outcomes (i.e., work satisfaction, life satisfaction, financial satisfaction, and personal income) as compared to STEM or humanities educational track. doi: 10.1177/1745691612449021, Nye, C. D., Su, R., Rounds, J., and Drasgow, F. (2017). It may be the case that individuals' interests may shift as they continue to work in a particular setting. Given that we are interested in exploring the most important predictors of well-being outcomes, we also conducted relative weight analysis (RWA; Johnson and Lebreton, 2004; Tonidandel and LeBreton, 2015). What matters is what they learn, and how they learn, throughout the educational process. The choice of majoring in STEM or humanities must be motivated by a fascination and intrigue in said subject — not from societal pressures and myths. She aims to do just that while staying true to the specific purpose of STEM education. Much has been made of the so called 'debate' between the liberal arts and STEM, despite the fact that one field does not overshadow the other. Table 1. Vocational interests and performance: a quantitative summary of over 60 years of research. 2, 353–376. Interest congruence and performance: revisiting recent meta-analytic findings. Interaction plot (Supplementary Figure 1) and regions of significance analysis suggested that when the perception of fit is high, there is no difference in work satisfaction of STEM majors compared to humanities; however, when the fit is low, individuals with STEM majors have lower work satisfaction compared to those in the humanities. |, Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2013, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2019.00143/full#supplementary-material, https://www.humanitiescommission.org/_pdf/Hum_Report_Card.pdf, http://www.aacu.org/leap/presidentstrust/compact/2013SurveySummary, https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2016-01-29/in-kentucky-a-push-for-engineers-over-french-lit-scholars, https://www.bentley.edu/files/prepared/1.29.2013_BentleyU_Whitepaper_Shareable.pdf, https://www.burning-glass.com/research-project/stem/, https://www.humanitiesindicators.org/content/indicatordoc.aspx?i=34, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/01/30/north-carolina-governor-joins-chorus-republicans-critical-liberal-arts, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BUDGET-2016-BUD/pdf/BUDGET-2016-BUD.pdf, http://shc.stanford.edu/why-do-humanities-matter, http://nscresearchcenter.org/snapshotreport-degreeattainment3/#more-2111, Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). (2015). J. Vocat. Aristotelianism, Platonism, Stoicism and other later philosophical schools similarly explored metaphysics, ethics and morality in addition to what modern readers consider hard sciences — mathematics, cosmology and natural philosophy (or physics). Table 2: STEM (narrowly defined) doctoral degrees awarded by broad field and sex in the US (2016-17) On this definition that excludes health sciences, social and behavioural sciences and biological and agricultural sciences from counting as science, one can present a “problem” in that women are “only” 27 percent of STEM PhDs thus defined. The data are, however, available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission from Gallup. In addition, the 2016 United States President's budget for STEM education increased to $3 billion with little investment in humanities education (Office of Management Budget, 2016). The rhetoric from proponents of each field reinforces the idea that either STEM or humanities careers would provide higher values to individuals and societies when compared to the other. Keywords and phrases: STEM, humanities, liberal arts, education, incentives, budget cuts, education majors iv Table of Contents 1. We propose that perception of interest fit is more important than the domain itself per se. Available online at: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/01/30/north-carolina-governor-joins-chorus-republicans-critical-liberal-arts. doi: 10.2307/256699. Though some argue humanities are better defined not by the encompassing subjects but rather by how the field shapes those who take up its study. Despite a growing number of studies demonstrating the importance of fit between interests and major/career, an increasing discordant rhetoric can be heard emphasizing either STEM or the humanities in education and work. Humanities majors encourage analysis, critical-thinking, and a vast knowledge of various topics. The degree of unity between STEM and humanities is apparent even in ancient Greek philosophy. Controlling for demographic factors, we examined whether interest fit can predict well-being outcomes above and beyond the major field (Table 1). The humanities crisis is multifaceted. As such, we hypothesize that: Hypothesis 1: Educational track is a more important predictor of personal income than interest fit. Even controlling for ability-related variables and personality, interest fit accounted for more variance in work satisfaction and life satisfaction, an equivalent amount of variance in financial satisfaction, and less variance in personal income. Analysis of a national data set of college graduates (N = 8,151) shows that interest fit accounted for more variance in well-being outcomes (work satisfaction, life satisfaction, and financial satisfaction) as compared to STEM or humanities education, and an equivalent amount of variance was found in personal income. Such channeling, without attention to the perception of fit, may have a detrimental effect on an individual's well-being. Promoting interest and performance in high school science classes. Kiley, K. (2013, January 30). 30, 207–216. With rapid technological and scientific advances and a growing demand for modernization, a stronger emphasis has been placed on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors and careers. The implications of radically favoring STEM and discouraging humanities is detrimental both to society and individual students. Parents and academic counselors encouraged STEM studies as they thought it increased the likelihood of their children and students getting jobs after graduation, especially in wake of the recession. Meta-analysis of the relationship between congruence and well-being measures. “Within the social sciences, one can learn about how resources are used by people and companies, which can lead to an understanding of how the economy might develop. Behav. The results of the RWA analysis (Supplementary Figure 2) indicated that perception of interest fit accounted for 87, 50, 23, and 10% of the explained variance for work satisfaction, life satisfaction, financial satisfaction, and personal income, respectively. Kentucky Gov. 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