Perspective: Where Do We Get the STEM Graduates?

For some time now I have been writing that the United States leads the world in the creation and application of digital technology, which combined with the windfall we are reaping from the new discoveries of abundant and low cost fossil fuel energy, puts the United States in the cat bird seat in the world wide market we call globalization. Manufacturing is also returning to the United States because of these two advantages. However, there is another factor that is slowing our ability to capitalize on this incredible opportunity. It’s that we lack the graduates with the commensurate skills needed to implement and manage the digital technology and new energy sources to make our economy grow at sufficient speed to meet our Country’s needs.
I am going to start off with a fifth grade word math problem to see if you can figure why we have a shortage of the skills I mentioned. These skills are in science, technology, engineering and math, STEM for short.
“In 1970 there were about 60 men college graduates to 40 women. Today there are 60 women to 40 men. In 1970 about half the boys graduated with majors in STEM while only about 5% of the girls did. Today about half the men graduate with STEM degrees, while only about 10% of women do. How many STEM graduates out of a hundred did we have forty years ago and how many do we have today?”

If you are as smart as a fifth grader, you should have found that there were 32 per hundred graduates in 1970 and 26 today. So, our schools turn out 20% fewer per hundred graduates with STEM majors today than a mere generation ago. As the problem illustrates the reason we have a shortage of STEM graduates is two fold; (1) the men, half of whom normally major in STEM, are not going to college in the first place, and (2) the women who do go to college do not major in STEM.

This problem is not going to be easy to solve, but we must solve it! To be frank, it is not clear that society knows why the men have dropped out. While many writers, notably Bill Bennett, have written about it, they only note that is has happened. If we cannot define the root cause of the problem, we will not be able to solve it. However, it is not clear that society cares enough to even find out why or how solve it.

With regard to the women, it is not that they cannot excel in these majors, but they just do not want to work in those fields. How to get the women to enter and graduate with STEM majors is the challenge. Hopefully, when women learn that they can make twice as much salary with STEM degrees than with non-STEM degrees they might become more interested. If for example, they researched Google, they would find that a graduate engineer’s starting salary probably exceeds $100,000, whereas a major in history or English will usually earn less than $50,000, if indeed there are jobs for these non-stem majors at all. Since both stem and non-stem students end up with the same amount of student loan debt, which graduate is going to be able to manage the loan better?

Now, before the feminists question what right have I, a man, to comment on this, let me state my credentials. I married a Johns Hopkins Medical School 1954 graduate and she, as an MD, immediately entered the medical profession where she practiced and advanced to manage a drug related clinic while I worked as an executive of the DuPont Company. Together we raised three children. One of the children, our daughter, is a Senior Vice President in the field of public relations, who along with her husband, who works at his own profession, are raising their two children. So, I know something about two generations experiencing the stress of two professionals, both in high level jobs, having and raising children together. However, as complicated as managing two careers while raising children is, it can be done. I have always encouraged people, including children, and especially women, to be all they wish to become. Today we need women with STEM degrees more than ever.

The literature is filling up with research to determine why women will not take the lucrative majors, and additional literature is being produced to find out how to motivate them to make the change. However, because of political correctness, genetic differences between males and females cannot even be mentioned. But it seems natural for girls to think of STEM as a “boys thing” because they don’t see many women making careers in these fields. Consequently, many women have no idea this opportunity presents for them. From my point of view it does not matter if it is genetic, because if our Nation is going to be able to capitalize on our assets of enormous energy supply and leading digital technology, we simply must find a way to have women tackle these tasks for the benefit of themselves and the country whether the root cause is genetic or not. The alternate is to increase the number of immigrants who have obtained these coveted STEM majors in our United States schools.

Obama’s idea of what to do to increase STEM graduates is to add pre-school programs. The usefulness of that plan is doubtful considering how Head Start worked out. But in any event, do we have fifteen years to solve this problem? Of course not! A better plan would be to approach females and males in their sophomore year in high school and explain the opportunities we are talking about. Recently I had the opportunity to help a daughter of friends to learn of this opportunity, and I am pleased to say that she is entering college to major in civil engineering. These lessons could and should be integrated into the high school curricula so these young folk can use their high school years to plan for their best post-high school education.

But the high percentage of female college graduates presents another challenge. Women will have to take more of the leadership roles in technology, health, business, education and government than ever before regardless of whether it is good for them or society. This will place a strain on them, and on their families. And then there is the question of how will the human species be perpetuated? Someone has to produce our replacements, and biologically speaking, only a female can perform that duty. Moreover, since it takes eighteen years to turn the helpless baby into a responsible citizen with a working moral compass, who is to be in charge of that? Historically, Mom played the dominant role of raising the children while Dad “brought home the bacon”. For most animals, including man, largely the female assumes the role of the nurturing care-giver for the young. How to deal with this reversal of the natural order of things is the question of our time. It is the first time in all of history we are doing it on such a huge scale, and there are no precedents. We have to solve this problem!

Whether the activists like it or not, the world that they will be entering as managers and leaders was organized by men centuries ago. It will not be possible to change it to the way women might like or how women might have organized it had they been the organizers centuries ago. Now, if you have trouble following what I am talking about, consider the language used in the business world. “We are at war with our competitor”; “We are arming ourselves with a new market plan to attack so and so.” This is the language of men because they have had to fight “wars” with nature, and other men to survive and protect their women and families for millennia. We all know that women do not normally use that kind of language. The language is loaded with blunt and aggressive terms, indigenous of the male animal, and the organizational structures look like a military chain of command.

Another problem pointed to by the AAUW and many women’s organizations is the salary gap between men and women. It is real as the data show,* but we do not fully understand why. It may relate to what we talked about earlier, namely the rules of the game made by men centuries earlier. However, I encourage women not to become mired in this problem because I believe this gap will narrow as women learn how to play the game by negotiating what they want in job assignment or salary, and as their bosses become more sensitive to the advantages that women bring.

The good news for our young women and men who will be assuming these new roles is that there is a growing body of literature sponsored by the American Association of University Women and other organizations that can be found via Google that is very useful to understand what women face and are experiencing. One of the best is a full length book entitled “Lean In”, by Sheryl Sandberg that I highly recommend. Ms. Sandberg is an extremely bright young woman, now in her forties, who currently is the COO of Facebook. Her experiences in college, business school, government, with Google and now Facebook along with her getting married and having children while in the high pressure of her work world ,provides first-hand knowledge of what is going on and how to deal with the issues women are facing.

In short, women becoming leaders in the global economy that has been dominated by males for centuries, is a new ball game. How the men play and have played the game for centuries is radically different than how the women would play, and that can’t be changed overnight. Women will find that they have to speak up if they want their point of view heard or, if for example, they think they deserve a raise, or, in extreme cases they may need to change jobs to get what they want and deserve, even if that feels unnatural for them. Ms. Sandberg talks about this!

In closing, I recommend that if you know a high school female who is getting good marks in math and science, and doesn’t hate these subjects, that you inform her of the opportunities in science, technology, engineering and math. Chances are she may not know about them. To really catch her attention, simply down load the numerous studies that have been made. As I mentioned earlier, many are sponsored by women’s organizations as the AAUW from whose report the following salary data have been obtained.



*Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2013, Women in the Labor Force:A Databook (Report 1040) (Washington, DC), Table 11

Note: Each STEM occupation  employed more than 85,000 people in 2011 according to the U.S. Department of Labor. In some large STEM professions, such as biological science, chemical engineering, and engineering management, no significant gender difference in median earnings was found.

Perspective: The Fossil Fuel Supply is Virtually Endless.

Did you ever think that you would live to hear or read such lines as “We will never run out of oil, and fracking is safe”? Well, the title on the cover page of the May, 2013 issue of the Atlantic was “We will never run out of oil”, and in late July, 2013 the Associated Press reported that a landmark Depatment of Energy study showed no evidence that chemicals from the fracking process contaminated drinking water in aquifers in western Pennsylvania.

WOW! Do you realize how significant these two reports are? The mainstream Media is telling us that we have an enormous supply of fossil fuels, and that digging them out of the earth in the United States is safe. This means that we are no longer dependent upon oil from the Middle East, and more than anything else, this also means that a sensible Energy Policy for the United States could be implemented at last.

Oh, but you say, what about global warming which is allegedly caused by the carbon dioxide emissions from the combustion of these fossil fuels? Well, let’s assume that global warming is man caused and that carbon dioxide is the culprit. The question then is, can we control CO2 emissions? Actually, we know of a number of possible ways to manage carbon dioxide emissions. Yes, it’s true that these ways are not currently economic and will require research to bring the ideas to fruition. But so are so-called “green’ technologies currently uneconomic, but the government funds these and most have gone or are in the process of going bankrupt.

So do you squander government research funds on wind and solar projects that are uneconomic, where the available energy that could be produced from these sources could ever meet the rising demand for energy the economy of the US requires and where transporting the energy from the wind and sun sources to the end-user is impracticable, or do you want to conduct research to make fossil fuels environmentally acceptable, where the supply is virtually infinite and the transportation facilities are already in place?

If this sounds like a no-brainer to you, go to the head of the class!

Does anyone believe that our government doesn’t know that we have all of this fossil fuel supply and that research could be supported to take care of the CO2 emissions question? Of course the Department of Energy, Congress and yes, even our President, all know this! So why then are they not jumping on the fabulous opportunity? Something else is going on!

I hate to be cynical, and I definitely don’t generally believe in conspiracies, but the answer is staring us right in the face. Ever since President Obama has come onto the political stage he has mouthed one thing, namely, that we must transform the United States to obtain social justice. What better way to transform the country without our being willing than to frighten us with dooms day scenarios about Climate Change caused by CO2 emissions.

But how can the government control CO2? By taxing it! But how do you levee a tax if Congress is the only government agency that can levee taxes, and they have refused to do that? The answer, the President can have the Environmental Protection Agency label CO2 a toxic gas.

But every school child knows that CO2 is not a toxic gas! And besides, what fool would believe that since without CO2, life on this earth would not exist? I hate to let you in on this, but Obama takes all of us for fools!

So, do we and our Congress want to twiddle our thumbs while Obama, single handedly, blocks our country from using our massive fossil fuel supplies and our leadership in digital technology, which together, will allow the United States to experience its greatest century ever? If we do, the current voting generations should be ashamed and the generations that follow should hate us!

Perspective: Is Congressional Gridlock Bad?

It should be clear to anyone following what is going on in our Federal Government that nothing significant will be accomplished during the second term of President Obama. The question is this: Is that bad? According to the Media and Obama himself this is terrible considering the huge problems that the Nation faces. OK, so what are the huge problems?

• Immigration? Since this problem has been festering since 1986, can this be considered a crisis?

• Guns? Inasmuch as most murders are committed with hand guns by black on black in our major cities where hand guns are banned and by an isolated few mentally ill persons who get their hands on someone else’s gun, can this be considered a crisis that Congress could solve?

• Global Warming? Carbon dioxide is considered to be a major factor in greenhouse-caused global warming, so why did Obama fail to get a law passed to reduce it’s production when his party controlled both houses? Does that sound as though the Nation considers global warming a crisis?

• Obamacare? The plan is to provide thirty million persons, who don’t purchase insurance, with medical care mandated by the government program. Since most are young and healthy and decide not to buy insurance, is the need to insure this group a crisis?

• Foreign Policy? Since we now have all the oil and gas we will ever need, is worrying about what to do about the Arab Spring in the Middle East a crisis worthy of our attention and involvement?

The Media and the President are obsessed that the Congress cannot get its act together to work on and develop plans for these so-called crises. But from the point of view of “We the People”, shouldn’t we be pleased with this gridlock? If Congress did indeed create plans to solve the above crises, would you want to bet whether the plans would be ones we would like and could afford?

We have seen this before. Consider how earlier solutions for the aforementioned crises have worked out.

• Immigration: Regan’s plan to deal with limit illegal immigration in 1986 actually resulted in the number of illegals expanding from about 3 million in 1986 to about 12 million today.

• Guns: The ban on high power guns ten years ago did not stop the use of such weapons

• Global Warming: The Government’s selection of such clean-energy “winners” as Solyndra and the other solar energy producers have all ended in financial disasters at enormous expense for the tax payers.

Now, there actually are two crises that need be addressed!

• The National Debt and the Deficit!

• The lack of jobs for the under skilled, coupled with the lack of skilled workers for the high-tech jobs that exist!

The best answer to these two crises is to get the Congress out of the way! The collateral to this is that we don’t want the President to do anything that “We the People” don’t want either.

The less tax payer money spent to solve problems that need not be solved, the more likely we will be able to balance the budget and make inroads on reducing the National Debt. Likewise, the less the Government does to regulate and tax business, the more likely the private sector will create jobs for the unskilled unemployed, and the more likely industry will be able find and train persons to meet the high skilled jobs that are currently expanding faster than there are workers who have the needed training and skills in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) to fill them.

If we understood the principles involved here, we would stop berating the Congress, and instead compliment them for blocking the work that we don’t want. Maybe then their rating in the polls would rise from about 10% to about 90%.

In a sentence, the best news is that Congress is gridlocked and thus can do no harm. And oh, by the way, did anyone ask how the members of Congress got their jobs? That is correct. “We the People” elected them. Now, if “We the People” wanted our representatives to do what the Media says Congress should do, wouldn’t you expect that “We the People” would select candidates who would do what the Media says we should want? Isn’t it just possible that Congress, as a body representing us, is doing exactly what we want done, namely NOTHING?

Oh, maybe if they do NOTHING, they should be paid NOTHING!

Perspective: What Would the Founders Say?

I wonder what the Founding Fathers would think about what is going on with our current Administration. If we still taught Civics and the Constitution in high school, perhaps more of us would be as fearful about government’s power as the Founders were. The Founders feared government so much that they added amendments to the Constitution to protect the people. Consider these:



First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.”



Second Amendment: “The right to bear arms shall not be abridged.”



Forth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause supported by Oath.”



Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people.”



Let’s begin by listing a few items that we have recently learned about that would have given the Founders concern.



• The Government has obtained access to phone messages and e-mails of certain members of the press without prior notification or Court Warrant.

(1st Ammendment)



• The government wants to register all who own arms. (2nd Ammendment)



• The Government has obtained access to our phone messages, e-mails, Facebook, etc. without prior notification, probable cause or Court Warrant.

(4th Ammendment)



Now, let’s visit some recent actions of the Executive Branch of the government that should give us pause viz a vis the 10th Ammendment.

• Who authorized the IRS to extend their purview to harass certain political groups

• Why is the President expanding the use of drones to kill enemies on foreign soil without informing anyone, including the leader of the foreign country involved?

• Why is the president unilaterally, without consulting Congress, authorizing a tax on coal with the announced objective of shutting that industry down? By the way when his party controlled both houses of Congress, that body voted against this scheme

The Founders would have been appalled at these power grabs by the Executive without congressional approval.

Now it is true that during wartime Presidents such as Lincoln and Roosevelt did exercise extreme powers. In the case of Lincoln suspending the right of habeas corpus in the civil war, and Roosevelt imprisoning Japanese Americans in WWII.



In the case of Obama one does not know if we are war or not. He never labels those who do want to attack us as “Terrorists” and then just recently he announced that the war against Terrorism is over. OK, if there is no war just bad criminals that can be handled by the police, does the Administration have to violate our Constitutional Rights to manage criminal activity? This is the central question that we need to ask ourselves as We the People.



If history were still taught, students would know that this would not be the first time that a democracy was taken over by a dictator. What if Obama, a Solinski protégé, decided he had to abort the Constitution in order to transform the country in the name of “social justice”. Wait, Obama’s campaign pledge in 2008 was that he would transform the country in the name of social justice! Transforming the country is exactly what Hitler had in mind for Germany when he, as duly elected Chancellor of Germany, burned down the Reichstag, the equivalent of our Capital Building, and took over the government. And you know how that worked out!



Now, we can just complacently sit by and watch our government do these un-constitutional things and go about our business in a blasé fashion and just trust the government, or we can demand better answers and better behavior! Remember Ben Franklin’s advice: They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty. Our Founding Fathers are probably rolling over in their graves and probably at mach speed considering the complacency of the press and the main stream citizenry.

Perspective: What Graduates Need to Know

Our grandson, Alec Schadelbauer,  graduated from High School this year as did many of our friend's children. I wrote this poem for him and them. It is may be applicable to college graduates, as well.

       CONGRATULATIONS

HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES 2013

What you have accomplished is immense

And now you are ready to commence.

You’ve taken and handled every test

And have given every one your best.

You’ve mostly followed parent’s advice

To stay away from all sin and vice.

And next year you will be able to vote

Which means you must paddle your own boat.

You now have what you’ve always wanted

To chart your own path, quite undaunted.



There are some things you’ll want for your boat

In order to simply stay afloat.

So that your life does not fall apart

You will need a path that you will chart.

And lest you pilot a “Ship of Fools”

Be certain to stow all of life’s tools

Oh, don’t forget your Moral Compass

Lest you become complacent, pompous!

And keep someone close, you might guess,

To whom you can send an SOS.



You will sail a digital and global sea

The likes of which none ever did see.

You will not want to just drift

With the world in a paradigm shift.

You will have to be your own captain

In whatever job that you are in.

Your net is not to catch a fish.

It’s a “network” for which you must wish.

And work at and continue to explore

Today, tomorrow and evermore.



Luckily, you have a tool in hand

The Smart-Phone helps know-how to expand.

But when you need more than your remote

That’s when you’ll want God in your boat.

And you can have more joy than strife,

If you face all problems in your life.

And if you love your neighbor as yourself,

And don’t place your talent on the shelf,

Then we know that you will succeed

And will have smooth sailing at God-speed.



Wayne Pearson

June, 2013

Perspective: What Middle-east Foreign Policy?

The Benghazi event, which stems from the “leading from behind” strategy to topple Libya’s dictator, Gaddafi, raises the question just what is our foreign policy for the middle-east? Actually if you look at it even casually, it is an abysmal disaster.

The fist act of the newly elected President Obama was to go to Cairo, Egypt and apologize for all the harm the United States has done to the Muslim world. Then he demanded that Mubarak, the dictator of Egypt, step down. The Egyptian Brotherhood accommodated that wish and toppled the dictator which marked the beginning of the Arab Spring. Promptly the Brotherhood made terrible comments about the US, burned our flag and threatened our embassy. Shortly after this, Gaddafi’s troupes threatened to liquidate the rebels in Benghazi, so Obama convinced some NATO allies to liberate the rebels in Benghazi with airpower. We then added our drones and Gaddafi was assassinated. As might have been expected, Jihadists,associated with Al Queda, attacked our facility in Benghazi killing Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans. Then when rebels launched attacks to unseat Assad, the dictator of Syria, Obama encouraged them, but since Russia and Iran side with Assad and Al Queda has infiltrated the rebels, what can the US realistically do to stop the death toll which is reaching 100,000?

Meanwhile, Obama pulled all of our troupes from Iraq before their own forces were ready and capable of protecting their citizens only to find that the radicals, probably infiltrated by Al Queda affiliates, were already killing hundreds of Iraqis. Then after authorizing an immense expansion of the troupe level in Afghanistan, Obama promptly announced we are going to leave and provided a timetable allowing the Taliban to plan when to jump back in.

If this were not enough, Obama significantly expanded the use of drones in Muslim related foreign lands to conduct the war against alleged Islamic Jihadists without notifying the sovereign governments of those lands or worrying about collateral damage to innocent civilians or being concerned whether the terrorist is an American citizen or not. This drone program has heightened the anger the Jihadists have for the US and will doubtless grow more terrorists.

During this four plus year period, praise has been heaped on Secretary Clinton, to quote the song, “for traveling a million miles for one of those Arab smiles” while being oblivious to and having no knowledge of the danger her ambassadors are in. And after one was assassinated along with three other Americans in Benghazi, she shouted at the Congressional investigative panel: “What difference does it make?” Does Obama and Hillary expect to get pats on their backs for a middle-east foreign policy that can best be expressed by:

“What difference at this point does it make that the Middle-east in shambles?”

Finally, after contributing to the havoc that exists throughout the middle-east and disregarding the indisputable fact that the Arab Spring is infiltrated with Al Queda wantabes, Obama has the unmitigated gall to announce a week or so ago that the war against terror is over.

For perspective, if any corporate organization’s Chief Executive did this much damage to the corporation’s well being and to its image, that person would be unceremoniously fired on the spot.

Now, since observing the enormous damage Obama’s foreign policy has wrought to the middle-east and how it jeopardizes the world’s oil supply, we have just recently discovered y that the United States has a larger supply of oil and natural gas than all of the middle-east and then some. Can you imagine this? The US is no longer dependent upon the middle-east for its energy supply! How lucky can we get? This windfall of fossil fuels presents a once in lifetime opportunity to change our foreign policy in the middle-east.

We could just walk away and let those left behind try to crawl out of the rubble, but a more prudent and civilized approach would be, as good citizens of the world, to offer to help form a partnership of those who need middle-east oil. That partnership would consist of China, India, Japan and needy European countries, where the United States should only act as a facilitator. We should have only one stipulation, namely that the partnership becomes responsible for protecting the good middle-east governments and especially including Israel. Who believes the current Administration could pull this off?

Perspective: What is the Benghazi Story?

In the old days, before our government was inundated with lawyers, we would not require unequivocal proof that something might not be true. If those earlier folk noticed an odor that smelled like horse manure, they would not jump to the conclusion that the aroma probably came from breakfast cereal. The aroma from Benghazi is not breakfast cereal and every one of us knows it.

This is what do we know about Benghazi. The day of the attack those on the ground in Benghazi reported to their superiors, and that includes the President and Secretary of State, that our embassy in Benghazi was under attack and the that attackers were affiliated with Al Qaeda with whom we have been at war for 17 years. With this news our President went to bed to rest up for the strenuous fund raising trip to Las Vegas the next day, and he was never heard from again. Meantime, the military, not having a clue as to the number or strength of the attackers, jumped to the conclusion that they could not get there in time to save anyone. Meantime, our Ambassador and three other Americans were murdered.

A few days later we Americans were informed about this disaster by Susan Rice, Ambassador to the UN, who stated that the attack was instigated by a person who created a video that was upsetting to Muslims. Thank God we captured that idiot and have him licked up, but of course we can not find or capture the culprits who killed our Ambassador.

Of all of the scandals the Whitehouse is involved in, namely, the egregious treatment of AP and Fox correspondents and the out-of control IRS, Benghazi is the worst. No correspondent or tax payer was killed in the AP and IRS scandals, and we will probably never find out who told the perpetrators of these heinous acts to do what they did. But in the case of Benghazi, the Commander in Chief and the Secretary of State were in charge and were the key deciders. Their abandoning of their posts is tantamount to dereliction of duty. In the private world they would be fired unceremoniously on the spot. But of course they will not be fired. Worse, they will be defended on the basis that since nothing could be done, why try? And according to Secretary Clinton “What difference does it make anyway?”

If you think that that the aroma surrounding this fiasco is coming from breakfast cereal, you should contact your Ear, Nose and Throat specialist!!!