> Personally, I believe letting people leave the US without monetary penalties so they can pursue cultures that more match their own values is the solution.
There are no monetary penalties unless you are both much wealthier than the average person and have substantial unrealized capital gains. The hard part is finding another country that will take you, not leaving.
I'm not sure why American's don't study STEM, you'd think they wanted to study something that pays off. But maybe it is the other way around, with government funded education they only offer STEM degrees since that is what the government thinks will pay off hence more people study STEM?
My wife just got her psychology PhD. Thankfully it was in clinical psych (which from an observer's point of view is the "best" of the psych programs) and she abandoned academia so she has a decent, well-paying job.
America mints way more liberal arts PhDs than we have jobs for. Being in debt w/o a job at 30 is not a great position to be in.
Also, getting the degree (aka being a low-payed servant for her PI) wasn't far from misery. Just one datapoint, but it was not unique among her cohort.
It is not my experience that their chosen field makes them miserable. Would you mind illuminating your point? My experience is anecdotal and not very helpful.
Most people do not have the necessary personality type/abilities/interest to do well in STEM. Doing a STEM degree is not enough on its own to get the STEM payoff. To be clear, I am not saying that STEM makes people miserable by default, just that a minority of the population enjoys such things.
However the low percentage of STEM degrees can also be explained by the fact that the college lifestyle is an institution of its own in the US. Therefore more people who won't necessarily stand to benefit from college will attempt it, and they are more likely to pick easier majors (which are overwhelmingly non-STEM)
In this case it won't pay off either. It's a hard job market for mediocre engineers and many STEM fields don't even pay that much better.
The vast masses of people are already on the road to hell from birth no matter what choices they make in their lives so that expression ought to enter its retirement years
I disagree that STEM fields don't pay any better. I think it's clear they do.
Nature vs nurture. It's a mix, it's not all decided at birth. You always have the power to change your outcome. Many people will never exercise it effectively though.
I said many STEM fields don't necessarily pay better, not STEM in general. Obviously engineering/software/quant stuff pays off as long as you are motivated (a suprisingly large hurdle) I was thinking of various sciences like biology, pure maths, where it's heavily dependent on your location and other factors.
> The hard part is finding another country that will take you, not leaving.
I am aware, which is why:
> I once thought that having a system setup so that people could switch places between countries might be beneficial, one that augments the current immigration system.
I've never heard of such an idea before, so I don't know what to call it, but this is the problem it was aimed at solving when I had the idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...
> Personally, I believe letting people leave the US without monetary penalties so they can pursue cultures that more match their own values is the solution.
There are no monetary penalties unless you are both much wealthier than the average person and have substantial unrealized capital gains. The hard part is finding another country that will take you, not leaving.