U.S. News Hosts “Cool Science”

Panel on "Making STEM Cool".

U.S. News, Dell, Inc., and AT&T held an event this morning at the Press Club, “Making Science Cool,” examining how to make STEM fields more appealing to American youth. Governor John Engler, President of the Business Roundtable, and a polished panel of key players in STEM education policy discussed the issues affecting STEM education in the U.S.

There were the usual highlights about the deficiencies in U.S. STEM education: from high school to college, the interest among youth to pursue STEM education is lacking; STEM education needs to increase its appeal and solicit its applicability to students; the demand for qualified STEM workers drastically outweighs the supply.

Because 90% of jobs require some type of STEM-based knowledge, STEM education is applicable to almost everything, and subsequently it ends up with nothing. It’s a societal problem. It’s individual responsibility. Change exists through small actions. Change exists through widespread scalability. It’s a thousand questions with a thousand answers, each siphoned off into a myriad of solutions that manifest in programs, initiatives, rhetoric, and ever-expanding circular discourse.

Full list of panel participants can be found here.