I’ve heard a great deal recently from our president and from people within my company about resolving the STEM gap.

This post is my take on the two STEM gaps, the STEM gaps are the perceived lack of students who major in and are employed in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.  The second STEM gap is the low number of females in the STEM fields which irritates companies focused on improving diversity of gender.

I have felt for some time that the STEM gaps are of our own making and I want to share that opinion in this post.  In fact I began to form this opinion back when I began my chemistry degree in 1992.

The two STEM gaps, I believe, are a result of the dominant academic snobbery found in the University professor.  No where can this be seen more easily than in the majority of science professors from Ivy league schools.  There is an elitist-minded academic-class in the many of American Universities which impose their intellectual superiority on their students and on the public. This spreads to the high school level through high school teachers, being educated at these Universities and this attitude dissuades young people from entering STEM majors.

This snobbery can also be seen in news media reports, in NPR programming, in public school policy and in many movies depicting scientists.

The psychology of vast majority (not all) of 16-18 year old recoils at the prospect of allowing intellectual snobs guiding them for the next 4-8 years.  They are at a stage in their life where they are looking for independence and the freedom to think for themselves. Only students with extreme commitment and resolve to study science or engineering view these majors as an attractive prospect.  Other students who enter STEM actually admire this elitist academic type but these are a small minority. Personally I know of only a handful of students drawn to the academic-elitist type of professor and most of those who do go on to become professors themselves.

The optics of an all-knowing professor looking down his nose demanding agreement on religious philosophical issues is very negative for most future students.

One example of this demand for philosophical agreement is seen in atheism, the movie “God’s Not Dead” depicts a young religious student taking on his aggressive atheist professor and manages to show him up in front of his own class, this move seems far-fetched.

But, I can say I had a professor who demanded this from his students, a renouncing of faith was a major course assignment. This happens all too often in freshman level courses at colleges and university.

For the student unwilling to just accept and who demands the freedom to think for herself, the demands for atheism are baseless and unscientific.  The foundations and logic for this are littered with wild, and borderline irrational assumptions

Look at the current representatives of science and mathematics to children and the naïve general public, they are usually NPR actors, who actively, routinely advocate against and insult religious belief, especially in the school system. It’s not enough for these people to hold their opinions close and ignore the issue of religion thy feel the need to insult, and insist that science has ‘proven’ religion to be false.

A great many men and women have a dull hurt angry sense of being oppressed by the sciences, they are frustrated by endless scientific boasting they suspect that the scientific community holds them in contempt, they are right to feel this way. – David Berlinski

No easier can this snobbish oppression be seen in journalists quoting un named experts with the ambiguous “scientist’s say”, “experts say”.  This snobbery, this dropping of the “scientist” must stop.  As if because they are scientists we don’t need to question veracity or demand to see data. The truth is what “scientists say” in popular media and as education has been one ‘triumphant imbecility after another’ for decades, it changes continuously as we learn more and often can be purchased by govt and corporations alike.

Currently 74% of the American public reportedly believes in God, women more so than men.  Young people are reportedly are religious than are older people, why would many of these talented young women and men want to enter a field full of macho authoritarians who feel the need to disguise science in a cloak of religious intolerance?  Only a small minority of kids find this attractive. These are students who are so determined to get into STEM fields that they don’t care what the professors teach (that was me when I began) and students who already hold contempt for religion. As a result of this thousands of quality engineers and scientist are screened out of the field who otherwise would fill holes in our economy.

It is my opinion that the gap in STEM workers has been greatly exacerbated by of government involvement this is done by the empowerment of the ‘removal of religion’ crowd, and by enriching professors overwhelmed with their own knowledge, skilled mostly in lecturing and grant-proposal writing.

Science and engineering has a gap and its in the halls of the IVY league schools leading the rest of academia, it is seen on television, it is seen within NEA policies with their godless doctrines of imagined evolutionary fossil record from the 1960’s still taught as current with their assumptions not disclosed or reviewed, it is pseudo-science on a grand scale.

The child who believes in God hears almost as soon as his interest in science is sparked the following: “We know there is no God because we are scientist and we say so, you don’t need to see the evidence, because we are scientists and we say so, if you dont’ agree then you are unscientific and unintelligent.” Why would the 74% want to enter a career with juvenile messages like this dominate? They wouldn’t …hence the STEM gaps.

This political hijacking of the STEM fields created and is widening the STEM gaps.

Little is more frustrating to me than reading unnamed “scientists say” in politically motivated media reports.  Most PR wings of these Universities and agencies don’t understand science and human creativity any more than a life-long politician does.

End the juvenile attacks on religions in academia and television and the STEM gap falls away within a decade. Instead you see the opposite from celebrity twitter scientists like Bill Nye and Neil de Grasse Tyson with their Cornell degrees and their anti-God books in pursuit of children.

To sum up the STEM gap in a selfie:

STEM gaps summarized in a selfie: Corrupt government which twists science as its political battering ram, ivy-league pseudo-scientists who’ve only created television with science.

I am creating a course inspiring and helping religious students prepare for a science education, sign up for email updates below to hear when this course is released.

Also, check out this interview video an honest self-critique by a fellow academic and author about this issue – David Berlinski.