Science/Engineering Careers

I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine who works (as I do) with lots of twenty-somethings. When we got around to the gratuitous praise to which Gen Y/the "Praise Generation" has become accustomed (phony praise that inflates their sense of achievement and rewards them for process rather than outcomes), he had this observation to share:

On all of this, I'll point out that, having worked with a literally never-ending stream of recent college graduates--half of everyone is 22 in my world--I notice that the people who consistently are the best to work with are ex-elite athletes. If you spent a substantial chunk of your life in sports, how could you:

• Think fairness is relevant? Losers talk about fairness.
• Fail to put stock in hard work, hoping to hide in the pack instead?
• Think hard work guarantees success?
• Fail to appreciate the importance of natural talent?
• Fail to focus on outcomes?
• Over-focus on process to the detriment of outcomes?
• Get confused by multiple goals and so fail to achieve any of them?

I say this as someone who frankly is more committed to the arts than to sports, but it has become clear to me that those who live a life in the arts and/or academics are prone to *ALL* of the fatal mistakes outlined above, and these are failures of outlook that wouldn't last past your first varsity season in high school, let alone college.

The difference is simple--top athletes are trained to focus on outcomes, period. Everything else is whining. Business is about outcomes, period. Non-athletes are shocked by that.

As an addendum, I was amazed when I got to [college] how many kids arrived there believing they had genuine artistic talent. They were going to be performers, or artists, for a living. They thought themselves that good.

No similar problem with sports. But in the arts, it's subjective. If you are the best in your high school, well, as far as you can tell, you're Kristin Chenoweth. There's no mechanism -- or incentive -- to level-set. In individual sports, there's no chance of this at all. In team sports, there's a little self-delusion, but not too much. [Anna asks: But what about teams where everyone gets a trophy? Helicopter parents invented that rank stupidity. Makes sense though that *elite* athletes don't suffer from this syndrome.]

Can I speculate that this problem is more an issue in law school, where kids majored in subjective disciplines like Poli Sci, Religon, and other stuff, and that math and physics grad programs don't have these problems? Even med schools probably don't have the problem as much?

Fascinating. Thoughts? Please comment.

Accoring to a new study by the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, only one year after college women are making 80 percent of what their male peers do, and ten years down the road the gap is even bigger.

From an article on MSNBC:Catherine Hill, the organization’s director of research, said: “Part of the wage difference is a result of people’s choices, another part is employer’s assumptions of what people’s choices will be. ... Employers assume that young women are going to leave the work force when they have children, and, therefore, don’t promote them.”

The organization found that women’s scholastic performance was not reflected in their compensation. Women have slightly higher grade point averages than men in every major, including science and math. But women who attend highly selective colleges earn the same as men who attend minimally selective colleges, according to the study.In my experience, women choose different -- and less remunerative -- majors than men do. As I've written about previously, engineers are the highest-paid majors right out of college, and I don't see women clustering in Engineering departments. Grading curves are also notoriously more difficult in Engineering than in, say, Education or Sociology or English Lit, so I find a GPA comparison unhelpful. (As do graduate school admissions officers...)

I also hear anecdotally about problems women have negotatiating salaries for their first jobs out of college. In my experience, male students are much more comfortable negotiating base pay and signing bonuses. It doesn't even occur to a lot of women to negotiate, and because subsequent raises are pegged to previous salary levels, women fall further and further behind over time, and that gap becomes ever harder to close.  It's important for women to negotiate salaries, even for their first job. See here and here and here for negotiating tips. I'll point out, though, that finding out national statistics for occupations is less useful. Better to find out what other students from your school have been making at your prospective employer (and that employer's competitors) -- that means you'll have to ask around internally.

That reminds me -- I've been meaning to write about the fear of brownnosing, and how that holds some people back. I'll start a new post for that one.

For this year's crop of graduating seniors, engineers are -- as in previous years -- the best paid majors, according to a new survey by the National Association of Colleges & Employers. At the top of the list? Chemical engineers, with an average starting salary of $59,707. Biggest increase over last year? Marketing majors, with an average starting salary of $41,285.

Read more here.

Thomas Kostigen reports on a study by the Academy of Management Learning and Education, which surveyed 5,300 graduate students in the US and Canada and found that "graduate students in general are cheating at an alarming rate and business-school students are cheating even more than others." Cheating was defined as "plagiarizing, copying other students' work and brining prohibited materials into exams." (I assume they mean "or" rather than "and" -- any one of those would strike me as cheating.)

The findings: "More than half (56%) of MBA candidates say they cheated in the past year." The percentage of cheaters among other graduate disciplines:

54% - Engineering50% - Physical Sciences49% - Medical and Health Care45% - Law43% - Arts39% - Social Sciences and Humanities

Interesting that Journalism was left off that list. I'd be curious about that statistic, given the slew of made-up stories at famous newspapers in the last few years (although the mother of all hoaxes may still be Janet Cooke's "Little Jimmy," the fictitious eight-year old heroin addict she invented for the Washington Post back in 1981).

Also noteworthy in this article: "what's holding many professors back from taking action on cheaters is the fear of litigation." I'd venture that fear of litigation (and plain old laziness) is also what's behind rampant grade inflation.

And finally: does this mean that people will finally stop portraying lawyers as the quintessence of ethical sleazemongering? Looks as if doctors, scientists, and engineers may be faring worse in that department.