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A science degree is good for you

Earning a bachelor's degree in science or engineering (S&E) appears to serve the recipient well in the workforce, regardless of the job they do.

Posted by Tormod
14 August, 2006 05:08:40

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In fact, according to a National Science Foundation (NSF) survey, people who have earned an S&E bachelor's degree generally report that science and engineering knowledge is important to their job.

That holds even if the graduate ends up doing non-technical work. According to the survey, among those workers whose only degree was an S&E bachelor's, 27 percent had S&E occupations. Sixty-three percent working in non-technical fields still said their jobs were related to their S&E degree.

Some 400,000 sales workers, for example, reported their job was related to their S&E bachelor's degree. And a majority of S&E bachelor's degree holders employed as artists, editors or writers reported their degree was at least somewhat related to their job.

Of those who went on to receive advanced degrees, the largest proportion, almost 29 percent, took those degrees in non-S&E fields, namely business, law or medicine.

"S&E knowledge remained important to the jobs of most S&E bachelor's holders with advanced degrees--being reported as necessary by a majority of both those with master's degrees in business and those with other non-S&E advanced degrees," the survey said.

The data are reported in the NSF InfoBrief, What Do People Do After Earning a Science and Engineering Bachelor's Degree?

The report used data from the NSF's 2003 SESTAT survey--a pooled set of large demographic and workforce surveys--and included responses from people who had earned a bachelor's degree in science or engineering at least 10 years earlier.

About half of those who earned an S&E bachelor's earned no additional degree. Only slightly more than 4 percent earned a Ph.D. in the same field as their bachelor's. The remainder earned advanced degrees in a wide variety of fields.

Source: National Science Foundation

Comments (9 posted):

Jay-qu on 14 August, 2006 11:44:31

Well im getting my dose :) are you?

ronthepon on 14 August, 2006 12:34:07

Time to start studying then...

Mercedes Benzene on 14 August, 2006 02:03:41

Something to look forward to....

LJP07 on 20 August, 2006 09:23:28

I was thinking of doing a Science Degree in this format: Year One : Biology, Maths, Physics and combined Geology/Geography. Year Two : Biology, Physics and Geology. Year Three/Four: Either Neuroscience, Geology, Physiology or Physics.( Don't know which to pick) Is it any good doing a Science Degree, whats it like?

Jay-qu on 20 August, 2006 01:01:34

Its good fun and always interesting for me :) it just comes down to personal choice what subjects you take, im doing Physics, Maths, Astronomy and IT

LJP07 on 22 August, 2006 11:15:32

What's Physics like, is it mainly Mathematical? Would you consider it very difficult?

Jay-qu on 22 August, 2006 11:19:31

no its not terribly difficult at the moment, its learning about how things work from a quantitative perspective. The maths isnt to heavy, but it is there.

LJP07 on 22 August, 2006 11:27:54

Would you recommend for someone like me who hasn't done any Physics in 2nd level school to go to University to study it for 4 years? Although I do have an interest, I have absolutely no idea what they talk about in the prospectus, I'll just write a sample to let you know: The course is mainly split into ten topics: Electromagnetism, Electronics, Mathematical Methods, Mechanics, Modern Physics, Optics, Properties of matter, Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity and Thermodynamics with second year including Astronomy and Environmental Physics. I would have no idea of any of this, especially when they start talking about superconductors and things and gluons and particle physics etc. Would this worry be great enough for me not to do the course because I don't want to go into a course and end up hating it, rather I hope to like and enjoy it?

cwes99_03 on 22 August, 2006 07:16:51

The greatest thing about college is that they won't let you jump into an advanced class. You'll start out at the bottom and probably about half the people you see in those intro classes won't go on to any other level. Intro Physics generally recovers anything you may have learned in HS over again. Now some schools will cover everything HS covered in 1 year in the first 4 weeks (depending on how good your HS class was). This is because they expect you to have some basic understanding (that is if you take the physics classes made for physics majors.) Otherwise most colleges will have a non-calc based physics intro level (for biology and chem majors that have to also take intro physics) and a calc based class for physics majors. I recommend that everyone try to take the calc based class, because that is the only way to truly learn physics. I was taught at the HS level by a geneticist who knows almost nothing about physics, and in my first year I got straight A's at a top liberal arts college in the US (currently ranked 60, though they were in the top 25 when I was there.)