Opinion Let Go of Your STEM Superiority Complex

The ever-present STEM versus Humanities and Liberal Arts debate makes for a less-than-memorable college experience for many. Although both STEM and non-STEM disciplines will prove essential in the workforce, STEM receives an exorbitant amount of funding.

The Biden-Harris administration recently dedicated a budget of $1.38 billion to STEM education in 2023. But considering that STEM made up only 23% of the United States labor force in 2019, disproportionate funding sends an inauspicious message about the perceived value of other occupations.

STEM has also historically excluded marginalized communities. The American Education Research Association observes that “STEM education and occupations were designed to attract White men who were heterosexual, able-bodied, Christian or atheist, and middle-class or above.”

A culture that values STEM above all other educational disciplines and occupations maintains institutional racism, perpetuates misogyny and devalues working-class labor.

Institutional Racism
Despite its reputation as objective, the roots of STEM lie in racism. Discriminatory standards and practices persist as we fight to dismantle the violent ideologies that remain printed in our textbooks. This isn’t to say that non-STEM fields aren’t racist — early philosophers like Aristotle famously supported slavery, saying the enslaved did “not have the intellectual capabilities to rule themselves.”

But these fields criticize and contradict the discriminatory beliefs of their figures. Fields like gender studies can recognize Betty Friedan for her impact on reproductive rights and “The Feminine Mystique,” while still criticizing her racism, homophobia and trans-exclusive radical feminism.

Art and writing serve as tools for racial equity as they praise those who challenge the status quo. Non-STEM fields aren’t given billions by the federal government or targeted for military use.

Holding STEM fields above others creates a culture of exclusion that keeps marginalized workers from accessing high-paying fields. The emphasis on academia and STEM creates a standard known as the Achievement Gap which creates, “an association between students of color and poor achievement, which may feed racist stereotypes about these students and their communities.”

The false implication that survival in STEM is based on intelligence ignores the impact of ethnic and racial discrimination in higher education. Weaponizing meritocracy against those who succeed in STEM, specifically the Model Minority Myth, not only harms the Asian American community but encourages discrimination towards other ethnic and racial minoritized groups. People of color, especially Black students in non-STEM fields, report lower degrees of discrimination, with Black women reporting higher levels of academic satisfaction.

When we place fields that maintain racism on a pedestal, we simultaneously allow the persistence of other forms of discrimination.

Perpetuating Misogyny
In 2019, females received around 62% of degrees awarded in Liberal Arts and Humanities. This data excludes trans experiences, but it establishes that women make up the majority of non-STEM majors.

When women do make it into STEM, they have to fight against misogyny. Still, women make up 34% of STEM occupations in the U.S. despite making up more than 46.7% of the workforce.. They remain undervalued in STEM.

By belittling the importance of non-STEM occupations, we belittle the significance of women’s education and labor. Labor isn’t limited to paid careers, with women carrying out more than two and a half times more unpaid domestic labor than men. The ambitions and labor of women are essential to the function of the U.S. economy and households. We harm ourselves by devaluing non-STEM fields and subsequently, devaluing women.

Devaluing Working-Class Labor
STEM occupations make up less than a fourth of the U.S. labor force while the jobs’ inflated values leave behind the working class. STEM fields provide some of the highest-paying jobs in the U.S. labor force. But working-class jobs, consisting of laborers without college degrees, barely make a living wage. Workers of color make up an increasing sector of the working class, specifically Black and Latine workers.

Devaluing working-class labor undermines the skills of workers and bars them from higher wages and better benefits. Working-class jobs don’t receive the same perks that STEM jobs do. While tech employees get free food and paid parental leave in addition to high salaries, working-class employees struggle against union-busting to access livable wages. And with the cost of college rising, it gets harder for the working class to get the education necessary to obtain STEM jobs and benefits.

My family and I have been working-class our entire lives, and this only recently changed. As someone with a STEM career, liberal arts connections and background in the working class myself, I’ve witnessed the effects of the STEM superiority complex of my tech peers. I urge everyone to recognize the worth of other fields. In order to make real progress, we must stop assuming the superiority of a discipline that actively contributes to systemic oppression.

https://dailyutahchronicle.com/2022/05/15/torres-stem-superiority-complex/

https://archive.ph/EC7iH

 

[Stoneheart]

STEM nerd here. Yeah shit's fucked.

just eat the shitpill and go work for a private company, less interesting but very safe and decently pay.

 

[Damocles_Sword]

I have to attend a meeting, but two quick points:

1) I'm almost certain a black woman could get a STEM degree for free at this point with all the scholarships they would throw at her, not to mention that she ticks TWO of the diversity quota checkboxes. It's just that black women don't WANT STEM degrees because they want to be "entrepeneurs" and sociologists. Which brings me to:

2) The black community is devastated with student loan debt right now, and the reason is because black women get useless degrees. I haven't read the full study yet, but apparently according to Georgetown, 40% of ALL people don't get any more money because of their degree than without it, so imagine what they percentage is for black women. Then all the black women have to vote Democrat and just HOPE that Biden will keep his word about forgiving the debt (he won't.)

Ive told this story here a few times. When i enrolled they had us take a placement test. We had someone walking around interviewing everyone, the last question being "whats your major?" My response to "engineering" was "great, we need more engineers" and the person moved on. The woman in the cube next to me said "Engineering" as well and the questioner got very energetic.

"See me after this placement test. When you sign the major declaration you'll have automatically gotten a half dozen scholorships, and you'll just need to sign in a few places to get a half dozen more. We WILL pay you to learn. Need a car? We have a deal with a local dealership. Need a place to live? We can get you free or subsidized housing. Need child care? We can take care of that."

The girl went on for a bit. I was finishing up by the time she was leaving and I asked her about scholarships and her response was "Oh yeah, theres an engineering scholarship. IF you place high enough we can get you set up to take a test, but I warn you, a chinese student has gotten the scholarship every time."

Women play life on game journalist difficulty.

Edit:fuckup on the last line.

 

[FFinfo]

I went to college a little later in life, I was 28, and I was a few semesters in when goobergrape webt down. And the poz was pretty bad. I was on an engineering track at the time and about a third of my required credit hours had to go to "the humanities". And by humanities 90% of the available classes were lgbt/darkies/other non whites in historic/current day media with a smattering of traditional basic history and the obvious sociology stuff. There WAS the "dude, watch movies for credit hours" class. It was 8:30-10:30 pm, one guy was teaching it, at the outskirts of town campus, and you still had to register for it the femtosecond they made it available or you had literally no chance of getting in. I got to know one of administrators pretty well and she got me in. Prof. Started us off with the toxic avenger. Aced the class with a final comparing the "Jack Frost: the mutant killer snowman" movies as indie film products of their time.

Tangent aside, it was impossible to avoid having to take a poz class and it was every bit an ideological indoctrination ritual as you would imagine. As a post 25 year old white male I was the devil in that class. The subject of several struggle sessions, and I just had to bite the bullet and play along. Made me just hate commies with a passion.

It might've changed since but I recall there used to be a university with a mathematics bachelors that only required 30 credit hours (10 courses) of mathematics. The other 30 courses were a mix of electives and required humanities courses. Though, from what I've heard math degree programs are apparently light because they expect you to replace your electives slots with a double major.

 

[Johan Schmidt]

just eat the shitpill and go work for a private company, less interesting but very safe and decently pay.

Sadly so, I'm probably going to end up working for GSK doing mRNA depletion or something for the next fifty years.

 

[Stoneheart]

Sadly so, I'm probably going to end up working for GSK doing mRNA depletion or something for the next fifty years.

thats not a bad job when compared to office jobs.

 

[Johan Schmidt]

thats not a bad job when compared to office jobs.

True, plus, they might pay for a PhD; GSK are pretty good for that.

 

[KiwiFuzz]

I feel so fortunate to have gone to school before the current woke infestation.

I could powerlevel here, but I was lucky to be in a small department where we were exposed to different perspectives through in-class presentations from students but the profs themselves did not give a fuck and half of the students were pretty based. The only non-white student who made it about his ethnicity was a Native American and it wasn't so much "This is how I am put upon" but rather "This is how my people think about this and we're working on a different timeline than you people," which I appreciated.

One of the classes that I thought was going to be the worst was "Global Awareness" and it was all about how the Soviet Union collapsed under its own bullshit, so lol tankies bent.

 

[Stoneheart]

True, plus, they might pay for a PhD; GSK are pretty good for that.

all big companies working with mostly STEM people are pretty good with their talent.
Bayer has a free gym with olympic pool and daycare at some of their major factories.

I would suggest even cleaning labs is more fullfilling than working in some office with 8 different bosses...

 

[Eggplant Wizard]

thats because the US education system is a joke.

normaly you have tons of lab days for a STEM degree.

The labs are usually the easy part of the course, because you’re actually doing stuff. The labs are also ignored by companies because they are easy enough that anyone can do them. As in, so long as you are almost competent the lab TA will pass ya.

So the best method is the one I described, especially since things are being randomly dumbed down every year.

 

[TheBigZee]

Gaby Torres, Opinion Writer
Gaby Torres is an opinion writer for The Daily Utah Chronicle and is a computer science and gender studies double major. Her passions lie in transforming technology into a tool for social justice and exposing how the world of tech exploits those that it marginalizes. When she isn’t coding in a library, Gaby can be found bingeing horror movies or anime like it's an Olympic sport.

This girl knows how to prep for a bay area interview.

Based on this article she also wrote

Spoiler

The University of Utah’s School of Computing feigns interest in students of marginalized identities by placing the burden of meaningful change on their shoulders. It fails to account for intersecting identities and uses affinity groups as the primary initiative to retain marginalized students, disregarding the responsibility of the wider computing student body.

The U’s SoC is ranked No. 25 in the nation for computing overall and No. 7 for the games design program. Computer science is the most popular undergraduate major at the U. Despite the accolades, only 15% of computer science students at the U were female in 2020. Comparatively, Berkeley found that in 2019, 21% of computer science bachelor’s degree graduates were female.

Manisha Magar, an Asian woman of color and a computer science pre-major student at the U, noted her struggle with academics on top of making friends in the School of Computing. “The majority of the guys think that women think creatively and men think more critically,” she said. “They literally say that, ‘Oh they’re smarter than women,’ they have said that to me.”

Gabrielle Shull, a computer engineering student, identifies as agender, biromantic and bisexual. Ey applied to be a TA for the SoC and the process wasn’t inclusive of eir identity. Shull said, “The School of Computing’s website asks for a legal name when creating an account, but doesn’t allow adding a preferred name and doesn’t allow changing the name after and it’s frustrating.”

Students of intersecting identities develop Stereotype Management to cope with negative treatment from their peers. The American Research Journal describes this as a strategy where “successful minoritized students often find an identity that is an amalgam of their STEM and ‘colored’ identities; however, this comes at the cost of altering their self-defined authentic (though evolving and fluid) identities and an overuse of personal grit, defined as perseverance and a passion for long-term goals.”

As someone who identifies as a queer woman and Latine, I have experienced racial, misogynistic and homophobic microaggressions from my fellow students in the SoC. One of these incidents affected me so severely that I felt unable to attend class and my grades suffered. This put my scholarships and my full major status at risk. Other experiences have ended friendships or resulted in my reporting behavior to the administration.

Anna Bell is a data science student who identifies as a queer woman and recently won the 2021 Women Tech Award from the Women Tech Council. She describes her experience as a gender non-conforming woman. “I deliberately try to look more passing when I come to campus,” Bell said. “I also do that when I come to woman-oriented events.”

The Computing Research Association found that LGBTQ+ women more commonly think about leaving their computing major due to lack of belonging. Additionally, “wanting to leave their major was most prevalent among female LGBTQ students who belong to two minority groups within computing.” Underrepresented students shouldn’t have to grow thick skin and water down their identities to have a chance at survival in engineering. The school should be teaching all of its students how to make engineering spaces inclusive.

The Journal of College Student Development found that queer engineering students feel that the intense course load leaves them little time to participate in their activities outside of school. For queer students, identity and community are essential as engineering spaces don’t allow them to thrive. Voluntary student organizations and events for affinity groups take precious study time away from minority students who already face a lack of time due to existing obligations. Students who aren’t marginalized by the SoC don’t need to spend hours of club time just to feel like they could be engineers.

These affinity groups based on singular identities lack intersectionality. Just as woman-oriented spaces struggle with being inclusive of gender-diverse individuals, so do LGBTQ+ computing spaces with being inclusive of students of color. Magar grapples with this: “I want to be a part of it. And I have been researching and trying to explore but there aren’t any groups that would make me feel included.”

Students who don’t face the challenges of being underrepresented in computing aren’t expected by the administration to play any part in changing the foundations that the SoC is built upon. The U’s SoC needs to place responsibility on the wider computing student body to create inclusive environments instead of depending on diverse students to voluntarily participate.

Students can use their privilege to be an advocate, but there is a reluctance in fear of negative social and academic consequences. Bell used her privilege to speak up for her classmates by being persistent. She kept asking professors and other administrators to address student concerns. “There’s always some fear that there will be repercussions like people are going to think that you’re crazy or that you’re unstable or that you’re mean, or that you’re sensitive or something like that. All of which have nothing to do with the concern that you have, or your professional capability.”

The environment the School of Computing has created is demonstrated through examples of people with privilege unapologetically discriminating against marginalized students in public spaces. Shull describes how during eir first programming course, ey experienced a professor being excessively harsh. “Whenever e would respond to a prompt from the professor, the professor would almost get to some degree angry or maybe not even necessarily angry, but would kind of answer like, loudly and condescendingly with rhetorical questions. Back at that time, e was starting to socially transition and started to wear feminine clothes and stuff like that, and didn’t really pass.”

By focusing on teaching how to create more inclusive environments, marginalized students won’t have to heavily rely on coping mechanisms to get through their degree. All students benefit from more diverse social spaces in engineering. Having friends in the degree is one of the strongest predictors of STEM retention and beneficial academic outcomes. It can help marginalized students handle negative experiences better and more privileged students learn wider perspectives.

The lack of consideration by the School of Computing demonstrates their indifference towards marginalized students of intersecting identities. Every space must be an inclusive space, not just one that students can voluntarily enter. Inclusion is everyone’s responsibility.

My prediction is she'll be single majoring in women's studies after failing to pass the required math. Because math is racist.