STEM: Careers Advice

Investigating the supply of students studying STEM subjects, the Higher Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects report noted that those choosing their GCSEs and A Levels need to be aware of how their selection will affect their career options later.

The Government launched a National Careers Service in April 2012, and the Select Committee makes the recommendation that it provides advice about:

• STEM subject choice at school, and the consequence of this for further study and careers
• Choices available in STEM subjects at the Higher Education level and beyond
• The advantages of pursuing a STEM degree
• Jobs available to STEM graduates within STEM and other industries

Much of this information is already available online, from both government and commercial sources, so this may provide an opportunity to consolidate it in one location. Existing resources include:

National Careers Service – from the Department of Business, Innovation & Skills
Cogent - a Sector Skills Council licensed by the government, providing careers advice in scientific sectors
Prospects - “The UK’s official graduate careers service”, providing careers advice and job/internship listings
HECSU – a charity supporting careers advisory services, and providing graduate employment research
Future Morph – highlights STEM pathways from school age, created by the Science Council
National STEM Centre  - STEM resources for teachers
GetSmaart – career role profiles
Informed Choices – a comprehensive guide to making decisions about post-16 education from the Russell Group (h/t @DavidBarrRSC)

In addition, there are careers pages on job sites such as NewScientist Jobs and Target jobs which provide similar information. Everythingyouwantedtoknow also appears to be a useful resource, including links to the job pages of the Times Top 100 companies, careers fairs and other careers advice sites.

Online resources aside, the inquiry recommends improving the quality and provision of careers advice within schools. Given most teachers lack the experience to advise on careers within STEM industries, and with many “having limited experience of work outside the education system”, the Select Committee also makes the recommendation that

“schools should ensure that support for careers education through continuing professional development (CPD) is provided to those offering careers advice to students.”

If nothing else, the HECSU What Do Graduates Do? reports should be compulsory reading for anyone providing careers advice in the UK. These include information on the number of graduates from each subject, and their destination 6 months after qualification. A focus on the 2011 chemistry stats can be found in a previous post here.

STEM: Industrial placements

Many government reports have identified that Higher Education (HE) has a duty to not only educate, but also to improve the employability skills of their graduates and postgraduates (eg, the 1963 Robbins Report, the 1997 Dearing Report and the 2002 Roberts Review).  The Higher Education Authority defines “employability skills” as

“a set of achievements, (skills, understandings and personal attributes) that make graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations, which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy”.

Work placements and internships are seen as a key factor in gaining employability skills. This was supported by a range of institutions providing evidence to the Select Committee inquiry, including the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Russell Group of universities, industry (both Small and Medium Enterprises [SMEs] and large companies) and a student panel.

However, there was perceived to be a disconnect between this universal support and the actual provision of industrial placements. The report suggested that a few, select universities offer STEM placements, and most of these are with large companies. The majority of SMEs don’t offer placements, partly due to their perceived value to the company and the resource required to manage them, but also due to the potential barriers of interacting with Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).

In this respect, chemistry students are fortunate. Of the 15 highest ranking chemistry departments in the UK (according to The Complete University Guide 2013), the vast majority offer an MChem or MSci course with an industrial placement. This is generally a 12-month placement in the third year (Bristol, Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield, Southampton, Surrey and Warwick), or final year (Durham and York). 

The Scottish universities in the top 15 - Edinburgh, St Andrews and Strathclyde - offer a 12-month placement in the fourth year of their 5-year chemistry course, although high achievers may be able to fast-track and avoid taking the first, foundation year of the programme. Southampton and Warwick additionally offer MChem courses with a 6-month industrial placement, while Imperial College has chosen to extend their MSci course to five years, with the fourth year in industry. Only Oxford and Cambridge do not appear to offer chemistry degrees with industrial training.

Regarding internships, the Science Council noted that

“the number of [graduate internship] vacancies in STEM industries seems  to be much lower than in many other sectors... and that it is easier for a STEM graduate to find an internship in a business-oriented environment than in a scientific or technical one... STEM  graduates [also] appear to be  less likely than other graduates to pursue internships. Given the call from employers for graduates with higher levels of practical and technical skills, it was surprising therefore that there are very few genuinely scientific or technical internships for graduates”.

The Select Committee made two recommendations in this section of the report. First, to find a way to incentivise employers to offer more work placements and encourage more students to take them up. Second, to create a central database of available industrial placements, which could be included in the Graduate Talent Pool service.  This was a site launched in 2009 by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, designed to help new and recent graduates gain work experience by offering a selection of internships, including in the “scientific services” sector. 

While many universities already have links with large companies, this service could be an effective way for SMEs to register their interest in offering scientific industrial placements. If properly administered, popularised and advertised (to both clients and companies), this could potentially become the key repository for students and graduates seeking placements and internships, rather than having to search multiple graduate and job sites. In the meantime, companies wanting to advertise positions would be well advised to look to the sites of professional organisations, especially if they follow the example of Chemistry World Jobs and offer free advertising for industrial placements and internships.

STEM: Definition is Everything

This is the first of three articles focusing on topics covered by the STEM report...

The first problem the Select Committee identified in their report, Higher Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects, was the very definition of a STEM subject.

“We found [the JACS] definition unsatisfactory because it is too broad and includes subjects that have not traditionally been considered STEM. An implication of such a broad definition is that there is a danger that a significant proportion of the growth in the number of students studying STEM subjects is made up of courses with little science content, thus hiding the true picture of the level of STEM skills available to meet the needs of the economy.”

The JACS3 STEM subjects are divided across 10 groups, including physical sciences. These are subdivided into 49 major subgroups (one being chemistry), then further into over seven hundred individual subjects (eg, polymer chemistry). The interactive table below provides further details.

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At the highest level, there is some debate as to whether medicine and subjects allied to medicine should be included in the STEM classification. Similar deliberation is made over the architecture group.  Within the biological sciences, some subgroups (eg, psychology, sports science and complementary medicine) are perceived as “soft sciences” which lack sufficient scientific content to be viewed as STEM subjects.

The interactive visualisation below lists the components within the STEM classification, and highlights potential issues with the current definition. The data shows the number of students that started each programme in 2010/11, and can be filtered by subject, course type (full/part time) and student experience (first degree/postgraduate).

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Some issues illustrated by the data include:

• The four components of STEM are clearly unevenly matched in the number of students they attract: Science (287k), Technology (52k), Engineering (84k), Maths (16k).
• The fundamental differences in subject groups across the science, technology, engineering and mathematics classifications mean they are likely to have very different supply and demand requirements and issues. It's difficult to comprehend how solutions to resolve a potential supply issue for chemists would be relevant to architects.
• Similarly, even within a subject group the individual subjects are very diverse (eg, chemistry, geology, astronomy and forensics in the physical sciences; biology, psychology, sports science and genetics in the biological sciences).
• Subjects allied to medicine (arbitrarily placed in the science classification in the chart) undoubtedly needs to be re-examined. While some subgroups (eg, pharmacology, toxicology and pharmacy) are considered scientific, others (eg, nursing and complementary medicine) are perhaps less so. In addition, the overwhelming number of students associated with the group (141k, the majority in nursing), massively distorts its host classification.
• Due to their popularity, the “soft sciences” further distort the science classification. For example, of the 77k biological sciences first years, 36k are studying psychology, and 17k sports science. The xkcd strip below comes to mind.

 The Select Committee made the recommendation that:

“... the Government should work together with HESA, the Research Councils, HEIs and professional bodies to formulate and apply a standard definition of STEM. The definition should derive from a statement of the competencies and skills that a STEM graduate should possess and the characteristics that a STEM course should contain, including direct STEM content.”

However, while “the Science Council... argued that science should be defined ‘as a methodology, rather than as a subject or group of subjects’” it is clear that any “methodology” must be used to create a defined set of subjects that are deemed to be STEM, rather than remaining just an inconsequential definition. The report noted that “UCAS and HESA are currently considering a fundamental revision of course subject classifications” to address these STEM issues.

Similarly, while the STEM classification may be useful in some holistic contexts, the issues of supply, demand and employment are going to be specific to individual subjects or subgroups. The ability of a government to understand or influence this from a top-down “STEM” approach seems challenging. Rather, a coordinated, bottom-up approach, perhaps led by the professional institutions of each subject (eg, the Royal Society of Chemistry), may be more effective in measuring, assessing and addressing the issues faced by each discipline; the role of government being to issue guidelines on the information required from each institution, and to provide and allocate the appropriate funding, resource or legislation.

Next week, industrial placements and careers advice...

The STEM Inquiry

Last month, the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee published their report, Higher Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects. This was the output from an inquiry announced in September 2011, whose key objectives were stated in the November call for evidence.

“Industry continues to report shortages of STEM graduates in some areas and yet at the same time a substantial proportion of STEM graduates end up working in jobs that do not require a STEM degree. The focus of this inquiry is to explore the reasons for this mismatch and how to ensure that the UK is producing a sufficient supply of STEM graduates to meet all its needs.”

In addition to the supply and demand of STEM graduates, the inquiry would also look into the quality of STEM graduates being produced.

While the main content of the report runs to almost seventy pages, it quickly becomes apparent that the key questions asked of the inquiry remain to be fully answered.

The very definition of “STEM” subjects proved controversial, varying as it does “between different bodies within and outside Government and also from country to country”. For the purpose of the inquiry, the Select Committee adopted the broad Joint Academic Coding System (JACS), although even this was deemed “unsatisfactory” as it includes “courses with little scientific content”. 

On the subject of STEM supply and demand, the Select Committee found a “lack of reliable data... [which] makes it very difficult to assess whether there is in fact a shortage of STEM graduates and postgraduates and in which sectors”. Widespread criticism was made of the data collected and methods used by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), the company that provides stakeholders “access...to a comprehensive body of reliable statistical information and analysis about UK higher education”. 

As such, scrutiny of the supply of STEM graduates was lacking, and relied on the criticised HESA data. With respect to the demand of STEM graduates, the Select Committee focussed on reports and evidence provided by, among others, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), which indicated that “employers are still having trouble recruiting STEM graduates”. They referenced a 2009 BIS study which suggested that the shortage was specific to areas such as engineering and IT, with other evidence also highlighting shortages in IT, engineering and the electronics sectors.

Examining the HESA data for postgraduate supply and demand, one key concern was that UK domesticated student numbers were increasing at a slower rate than overseas students. Indeed, “42% of PhD students who finished their doctoral degrees in 2010 were from overseas”. However, outside of research, little was known about “what roles postgraduate provision is playing”. 

With the key focus of the inquiry derailed by a lack of data, the Select Committee considered related topics. For example, why do almost half of STEM graduates go to work in non-STEM areas? (This had already been the subject of a 2011 BIS research paper, STEM graduates in non-STEM jobs, which determined there was no “clear or simple main reason”.) Similarly, are the best graduates attracted to STEM jobs? (“The evidence is only anecdotal.”)

The remaining two thirds of the report focussed on two topics: the assessment of quality in Higher Education (HE), as “the mismatch in supply and demand for STEM graduates relates in part to a lack of high quality graduates in many sectors, not necessarily the overall number”; and the effect of policy reforms on the HE sector.

Thirty three recommendations were made by the Select Committee. The following eight (paraphrased) directly related to the core aims of the inquiry:

• Define STEM properly (recommendation 1)

• Appoint a body to collect data on the supply and demand for STEM graduates (9)

• Include data for postgraduate education in the above (10)

• Commission a government study to examine the first destination of graduates and the reasons for their career choice (11)

• Suggest that HE institutions study the career progression of graduates from “softer” science courses (12)

• The appointed body (from recommendations 9 and 10) to make recommendations on which subjects should be considered Strategically Important and Vulnerable Subjects (SIVS), but the government to make the decision on which subjects are SIVS (13, 14)

• The government to set up an expert group to look at STEM postgraduate provision (15)

The remaining 25 recommendations were associated with:

• The study of maths at school, STEM teachers and careers advice (7 recommendations)

• Quality and skills gaps (13 recommendations, including two related to industrial placements)

• Policy reform (5 recommendations)

Arguably, the inquiry was unable to identify the scale of any mismatch in the supply and demand of STEM graduates. While the recommendation to set up bodies and initiate studies to provide relevant data is laudable, it will likely be at least 2-3 years before any meaningful data is available. In the discussion of unmet demand for STEM graduates, physical sciences (indeed, any science subjects) were conspicuous by their absence – emphasising the point that the definition of STEM subjects is not only too all-encompassing, but irrelevant to this discussion. It is time to deconstruct STEM into its components of science, technology, engineering and maths, and allow each specialism to investigate and address its own issues of supply, demand and quality.