recent STEM hype aside, it has historically been very challenging to find work as a "straight" biologist, especially with only a BS, and if you can it's probably going to be scut-level underpaid lab or field work.
Part of the reason I think STEM is horseshit is that it is so broadly defined as to be without meaning. You just can't reasonably talk about something as one labor market if it includes zookeepers, pharmaceutical chemists, medical doctors, facebook engineers, economists, and advertiser...er, data scientists.
> Everyone knows that the United States has long suffered from widespread shortages in its science and engineering workforce, and that if continued these shortages will cause it to fall behind its major economic competitors. ... Such claims are now well established as conventional wisdom. There is almost no debate in the mainstream. ... The truth is that there is little credible evidence of the claimed widespread shortages in the U.S. science and engineering workforce. ... No one has been able to find any evidence indicating current widespread labor market shortages or hiring difficulties in science and engineering occupations that require bachelors degrees or higher
As i recall at the time, even IEEE's response was "there is no shortage and certainly no skills gap; employers just won't pay you what you're worth and people won't work for peanuts."
>"there is no shortage and certainly no skills gap; employers just won't pay you what you're worth and people won't work for peanuts."
That cannot be IEEE's response. It makes no sense. The market decides the rate, not the employers nor employees. If no employer wants to pay what you think you're worth, you're not worth that. Having said that, the market rate does give you some indication as to what the wider supply and demand looks like.
You are missing the argument. It is the same one that RAND https://www.rand.org/pubs/conf_proceedings/CF194.html gave when commissioned by congress to determine whether their was a “STEM shortage.” If there was a STEM shortage, wages would rise. Since rising wages aren’t observed, the situation is that the employers complaining of a shortage don’t want to pay the market rate. Instead they want extra-market forces (political programs to push workers into STEM training) to lower the market rate for them.
The crazy wages that tech companies pay aren't a data point? One of my co-op student got offered a position in the States with starting salary north of $120k - straight out of university and not even by one of the big 5 or even a Fortune 500 company. The guy was good and he'd have done well in the market, but not that good.
>Since rising wages aren’t observed, the situation is that the employers complaining of a shortage don’t want to pay the market rate.
Again, I'm having a hard time parsing this. Employers would always like to hire more people for less money. Employees would like to work less and make more money. You're correct in that technically there are never any shortages of anything ever, because you could always pay more money as supply dwindles. Even Venezuela, if you're willing to pay exorbitant prices with hard currency, I'm sure you could get anything you want. That's not what is meant by a 'shortage' though.
>Instead they want extra-market forces (political programs to push workers into STEM training)
That is such a weird way to phrase it. Every industry always tries to market itself to kids and students as a great career option. I'm not worried about the fact that companies in IT want more kids to go into IT.
I'm getting a 'rent seeking' vibe in this thread. It seems like people here want to kick out the ladder after they climbed it into their career choice so as to reduce the supply of future professionals so that they can be the beneficiary of that reduced supply.
One data point - a co-op student of yours - is not reflective of STEM as a whole. As this Sydney Morning Herald article points out, STEM includes fields like biology, which don't have crazy wages.
As an analogy, consider someone fresh out of high school who plays for a professional sports team and is paid $5 million per year. That 'crazy wage' for a 19 year old does not mean that all professional athletes are well paid.
What do you think "shortage" means? Because my understanding agrees with bloomer's. There is no shortage of Volvo V60s simply because new ones aren't available for $10,000. But the calls for STEM training sound very much like that sort of complaint.
While it's true that (nearly) "Every industry always tries to market itself", those are market forces.
"Extra-market forces" would be like the government including two years of plumbing training for all high school graduates. That's a non-market way to drive the cost for normal plumbing jobs down. (Note that this means other topics would be covered less.)
Similarly, the government might greatly increase the number of $10,000 scholarships for CS majors. This would almost certainly result in relatively more people with CS training, compared with other fields. The prediction is that this results in a higher supply of programmers relative to demand, and thus a lower salary.
A market solution is to have companies including training as part of hiring new employees. Companies don't like this because it places the expense on them. It also increases risk in two ways. First, someone may decide after 9 months that this isn't the career for them. They still get paid for those 9 months. Second, after the training is over, the employee may decide to take that training and go elsewhere for better wages. Calls for increased STEM funding can reasonably seen as a way to push the risks onto the student, and onto the government ("socialized", rather than "free market").
There is no need to reference rent seeking for this interpretation, which I believe is also the standard interpretation.
>As this Sydney Morning Herald article points out, STEM includes fields like biology, which don't have crazy wages.
Correct. The comment was clearly directed at the programming profession.
>That 'crazy wage' for a 19 year old does not mean that all professional athletes are well paid.
That's true but unlike professional athletics, programmers are paid well on average.
>"Extra-market forces" would be like the government including two years of plumbing training for all high school graduates. That's a non-market way to drive the cost for normal plumbing jobs down.
I really don't understand this argument. Government isn't trying to get people into STEM in order to drive down STEM wages. That is not how government works. That is not how politics works. This is not a good metaphor to understand the motivation. Governments will always have programs and policies to move people into specific industries or move people out of specific industries. That usually stems from good-intentions, values of the population (Armenia loves Chess, and therefore teaches Chess to kids in primary school), and maybe for some economic, ideological or political reasons.
>Similarly, the government might greatly increase the number of $10,000 scholarships for CS majors. This would almost certainly result in relatively more people with CS training, compared with other fields.
And that would be preferable to what the US (and Canadian) government is doing - mainly underwriting huge loans (or subsiding tuition) for majors that have low probability in resulting in a good paying job.
Trust me, if government wasn't involved in post-secondary education, you would see an even larger move to CS because no bank would ever underwrite a student loan for a 4-year history degree.
>The prediction is that this results in a higher supply of programmers relative to demand, and thus a lower salary.
OK. This is basic econ. Having said that, the math isn't so straight forward. Sometimes increasing the pool of engineers can also increase the market for engineers because more companies relocate to the area, or more companies get started by those engineers.
>Companies don't like this because it places the expense on them.
All employees need some training because no business is identical. But OK, I understand the point you're making though I think it is nonsensical.
For example, you're not seriously expecting a business to provide a 4-year degree program to train their engineers? That would be like building a house by grabbing a guy off the street and training them on how to build a house. If a company needs programmers to work on their software they will advertise for professionals with those skill-sets. This is why they pay good money for those professionals.
You wrote "The comment was clearly directed at the programming profession."
No, it is not clear. The SMH article was on STEM. The thread concerns STEM. The IEEE position you doubted is (almost certianly) about STEM (see https://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-... ). You presented a data point about programming, which is part of STEM. Nowhere did you say that the data point was only meant to be restricted to programming.
Even then, you defined it as those tech companies which pay high wages. There are plenty of tech companies which do not pay high wages. (Especially if your definition of "tech" includes things like "biotech", though I know that's not what you mean.)
Here's another IEEE piece, this one a podcast interview (with transcript) from "Techwise Conversations" titled "Why Bad Jobs-or No Jobs-Happen to Good Workers" from 2012, at https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/at-work/tech-careers/why-b... . It concerns Peter Cappelli's book 'Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs: The Skills Gap and What Companies Can Do About It.'
You ask "You're not seriously expecting a business to provide a 4-year degree program to train their engineers?" That's of course silly. A 4-year liberal arts degree in computer science is different than job training. Few companies will require me to learn a foreign language, or take a fine arts course, as part of becoming a software developer. Or, as you point out, take a history course. Which is all fine. Colleges aren't trade schools. (And I think we need more trade schools.)
Instead, I'll quote that podcast:
> Well, the employers, if you look at what the hiring managers are saying and what they’re looking for, they’re not, for the most part, hiring people out of college anyway or out of high school. What they want is three to five years’ experience. So the shortages that they report, the difficulty hiring, are for people who have quite specific skills, and those skills are work-experience based.
So no, most employers are NOT looking for the equivalent of someone of a 4-year degree in the first place, so they aren't going to pay for someone's college degree.
In fact, that podcast concurs with my point, which you think is incredible:
> the shortfall is in giving people experience, taking people out of school who are bright and capable, and giving them the basics and getting them up to speed in these work-based skills. And the problem is, employers a generation ago used to do this routinely; now, virtually none of them are willing to do it.
Cappelli makes the argument (which I hadn't heard before):
> the craziest thing about high tech is the Silicon Valley model, which sort of became dominant in the U.S., replaced the model where IT people used to be groomed and trained from within. And the Silicon Valley model of hiring just in time for what you need came about largely because they were able to poach talent away from these bigger companies that had spent a lot of time training and developing people.
What I (and hprotagonist) wrote here is nothing exotic or abnormal in the discussions about the "myth" of the need for more STEM training. Nor does it ignore basic economics like you think it does.
Since you are so incredulous that the IEEE (or at least articles in the IEEE) can have a position which can be summarized as "there is no shortage and certainly no skills gap; employers just won't pay you what you're worth and people won't work for peanuts." , and yet it's so easy for me to find IEEE articles making that point, suggests that you need to take a closer look at what the IEEE has written on the topic before making such a blanket response, or characterizing our viewpoints as fundamentally flawed from an economics perspective.
>No, it is not clear. The SMH article was on STEM. The thread concerns STEM.
Uh huh. I would think it would be clear after my response, and yet you won't simply accept it and respond to that.
Just to be extra clear so I don't have suffer through another multi-paragraph response where you gaslight me about what I meant to say: I agree that there is no shortage of science majors. We are probably graduating too many biologists, chemists and physicists for the market or academia to take in. There are certain engineering fields that are probably saturated as well.
I can't say the same about CS. For one thing CS is a very flexible profession. Because it gives you such a good mental model of computing, you can transfer CS knowledge into multitude of domains. Regarding the demand side, the fact that bootcamps exist and that graduates of those bootcamps can actually earn a living suggests to me there is more demand for programmers than you make thing. There is no such thing as an engineering bootcamp, or a physics bootcamp, or a physician bootcamp. The fact the big tech companies (but even startups and mid-to-large companies) keep throwing around huge salaries and bonuses is another data point. The fact people here think that a six figure starting salary after a 4 year degree is perfectly normal is another data point. The fact that politicians and non-professionals have taken up a mantra of 'learn to code' is another data point.
HN title: "Not enough jobs for science graduates challenges STEM hype"
hprotagonist: "it has historically been very challenging to find work as a "straight" biologist ... I think STEM is horseshit is that it is so broadly defined as to be without meaning"
me: "The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage"
hprotagonist: "even IEEE's response was "there is no shortage and certainly no skills gap"
You: "That cannot be IEEE's response"
(I later provide a couple of links to IEEE-hosted articles which concur with what we are saying. Furthermore, you now agree that there is 'no shortage of science majors', which is the S of STEM.)
bloomer: "It is the same one that RAND ... gave when commissioned by congress to determine whether their was a “STEM shortage.”"
you: "The crazy wages that tech companies pay aren't a data point?"
me: "One data point ... is not reflective of STEM as a whole"
If it's so obvious that the thread switched away from STEM onto CS, then why did both bloomer and I get confused? Instead of me 'gaslighting' you, I think a better description is that you 'sidetracked' the conversation, while I tried to steer it back to the main thread.
Jesus. I qualified my statements over the last two responses. Can you move on already?
I would also appreciate if you didn't continue to distort my position by attributing quotes or phrasing to me that I didn't argue, and I don't believe.
>I think a better description is that you 'sidetracked' the conversation, while I tried to steer it back to the main thread.
Fine. But we have no actual disagreement about there not being a lack of supply of scientists and even engineers. I conceded that point, though 'concede' is too strong of a statement because I never argued otherwise. I live in a university town and half the people in my social circle are some form of PostDoc or PhD student/grad in the sciences. I can see how hard it is for a Math PhD to get a tenure-track position.
>(I later provide a couple of links to IEEE-hosted articles which concur with what we are saying. Furthermore, you now agree that there is 'no shortage of science majors', which is the S of STEM.)
It wasn't that I disbelieved IEEE, but rather it was an expression of surprise that a IEEE would issue a nonsense statement like that. But I said that already, and you won't leave it alone. How many more times do I have to explain what I meant without your gas-lighting?
>If it's so obvious that the thread switched away from STEM onto CS, then why did both bloomer and I get confused?
And after the tedious clarification - what's your excuse now?
>FWIW, and not that it makes any difference, but:
I understand the word 'bootcamp' is used, but those 'bootcamps' are not there to train professional physicists or engineers. They are summer camps for students to get excited about the respective professions. But you know that, so why would you purposely be engaging in this equivocation? Why even bring it up as a point when you know it's red-herring.
I ask seriously. I made a point that there are no weeks-long courses to get you to be a professional scientist, and you went ahead and googled it, found programs for students which are nothing like programming bootcamps but you still decided to post that.
>There are bootcamps for physicians, but they are for practicing physicians to get training in a specific topic.
So nothing like bootcamps I referenced. Just like the other 'bootcamps' you used as a counter-example.
>The crazy wages that tech companies pay aren't a data point? One of my co-op student got offered a position in the States with starting salary north of $120k
Why is $120K a "crazy wage"? Perhaps labor in general, and particularly highly specialized labor, is underpaid across the board. It's not uncommon for traders or investment bankers to earn 7 or even 8 figures yet I don't hear anyone claiming there's a shortage of speculators and financiers. We just seem to have this built in cognitive bias that doctors, lawyers, and bankers are "supposed to" be highly paid but that it's somehow a "problem to be solved" for engineers and scientists to be paid similarly.
>Why is $120K a "crazy wage"? ... it's somehow a "problem to be solved" for engineers and scientists to be paid similarly.
Bless your heart. I don't begrudge anyone a salary they earned or advocate for lower salaries. $120k/year is a very good starting salary for a kid straight out of a 4 year university degree. It is also twice the household median income so let's recognize the fact that programmers are paid very well for the work they do.
My comment was also a response to the notion that somehow wages haven't risen in response to a shortage.
Only some programmers get paid that and it usually depends heavily on the ___location you live.
Here's a generic software developer payscale for Boston which comes in lower. Boston isn't exactly a low cost city. While I'm sure there are plenty of devs making more, this is a good example of what I've seen.
I think part of the issue is that tech salaries are insane in SF and NYC, everywhere else and every other field salaries are not increasing. I was looking at engineering postdocs and the typical salary is 50k. For bio postdocs it's 35k. You can make more than that as a farmhand.
I think a lot of people in commonwealth countries have no understanding of how productive and valuable a young male worker is. I got this from an itinerant professor who was educated in the UK and practiced in the United States.
In commonwealth countries they bleed young males dry and tax most of their salary away to pay for social programs like medical care for the elderly single mother care for the single mothers, free or mostly free education for the masses, and early retirement for everyone! These high tax rates further depress the salaries of the young engineers! who wants to give 75 cents of every dollar to the government??
In the United States we don't do that BS and the salary 100% pays for retirement, healthcare, education, etc that part is not something skimmed by the governement! This is why our young workers supposedly make the big bucks: because they are more responsible and are held accountable by the economy.
I think you don't know how "productive and valuable" a young female worker also is.
"medical care for the elderly" - which includes many once-young males.
"single mother care for the single mothers" - and paid paternity leave for the fathers, and single father care for the single fathers. (At least in the more feminist of countries.)
"free or mostly free education for the masses" - of which about half will become young adult males
"early retirement for everyone" - including those once-young males
"who wants to give 75 cents of every dollar to the government - what Commonwealth country are you talking about? I don't think any of them even have that high a rate for the upper tax bracket.
"we don't do that BS and the salary 100% pays for retirement ..." - We certainly do! Let me introduce you to payroll taxes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payroll_tax#United_States . Sure, it's not directly part of your paycheck, but it lowers your effective salary, and it pays for Social Security ("retirement"), Medicare ("healthcare"), and unemployment.
"they are more responsible and are held accountable by the economy" - ROFL! https://www.fool.com/retirement/2016/12/17/baby-boomers-aver... - "roughly half of all baby boomers have set aside only $100,000 or less" and 37% have less than %50K. GenX isn't doing all that well either.
>> Instead they want extra-market forces (political programs to push workers into STEM training)
> That is such a weird way to phrase it. Every industry always tries to market itself to kids and students as a great career option. I'm not worried about the fact that companies in IT want more kids to go into IT.
Well if you wanted to work in science without insane competition and crap wasted that was possible in the US until industrial policy made supply of scientific labour high and wages cheap. Sometimes employers get what they want.
You do realize the glut of PhDs is a global problem, not something confined to United States policy.
The article you cited is too much of a conspiracy theory for me to take seriously (Eric Weinstein is fun to read and listen to but he's crazy, and I wouldn't put any stock in his social commentary). Nobody orchestrated a secret plan to lower wages for science majors.
You need some perspective you are completely screwed up! $120k at FAANG is like minimum wage in the Bay area; the poverty rate in San Jose is $95k for a family of four. We with $120k you can look forward to renting a 1-bedroom apartment all your life ... The bay area is like living in Tokyo...
This individual wasn't going to the Bay area or to work for 'FAANG'. I think you need to get some perspective. For one thing, in no universe is $100k 'poverty rate' anywhere. I can guarantee those that are making this salary are not poor. To even suggest it is delusional (and I will grant that this was probably a joke).
> One of my co-op student got offered a position in the States with starting salary north of $120k
Where? If it's NYC/SF/LA etc, then look at the price of homes in that city. Then look at the CoL. Then see if engineer compensation has kept up with CoL.
That would surprise me. There may be enough people working for the big tech employers and financial industry in high cost of living areas in the US to be a mode. But the rest pretty much spans the gamut from entry level sys admin jobs in manufacturing and retail up through well-paying but not FAANG level development, architects, etc. throughout the US. Bio dale would imply you have well-paying jobs and poor-paying jobs with not much in between and nothing in my experience suggests that’s the case.
There's a shortage of passenger pigeon meat - okay, complete lack of what used to be a common and cheap meat. Yet the government did not fix that price. Indeed, its belated attempts to fix the price through laws to protect the pigeon were not successful.
Similar observations can be made about many ecological situations, like the nuts and wood from the American Chestnut Tree. Some few survive, but not enough that the line "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" resonates with the general American Christmas experience.
More generally, you should expect to see oscillations any time there's a delay in the feedback in coupled systems. This comes naturally from the predator–prey equations - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equatio... . There's no need to require government price fixing for that to happen.
What you're observing here is the "Tragedy of the Commons". Nobody owned the passenger pigeons, so people hunted them to extinction. This is not free market. For example, despite all the pigs, cows, and chickens being eaten, there is no shortage of them and no threat of them going extinct. That's because people own those resources, they are not in the Commons.
Oscillations are not shortages. For example, when there's a natural disaster, people load up their pickups with gas and water and rush in to sell it at high prices. I.e. the shortage promptly disappears. People get mad at the high prices and pass laws to prevent that (i.e. price fixing), with the predictable result of shortages while they wait for FEMA to get around to delivering supplies.
There's plenty of wood for all uses. If you drive the back country, you'll see quite a few tree farms.
> Puerto Rico
The shortages there are the ones government utilities are supposed to provide. A lot of people, however, made money providing various solar power systems. Anyone who can pay for it can get power.
It used to be part of the general American experience to eat chestnuts in fall/early winter. Hence the line "Chestnuts roasting over an open fire" which I quoted earlier.
The chestnut shortage caused that tradition to all but disappear.
The shortage wasn't caused by government setting the price. It wasn't caused by "Tragedy of the Commons".
You don't even think there is a shortage because we've adjusted. It appears to be that if people can survive without it, perhaps by using an alternative, then there cannot be a shortage of something.
Which is not what "shortage" means, at least for those who don't subscribe to the Texas sharpshooter fallacy.
(If that is what shortage means, there can never be a shortage of toilet paper because there are other ways to clean one's butt - or you can get used to having a dirty butt.)
Let's go back to the passenger pigeon. If we apply your logic then of course there's no shortage of passenger pigeon meat because really people are getting their food from other sources. Yes?
I'll note that you even acknowledge that the absence of passenger pigeon meat was not - contrary to your first assertion - based on government price fixing ("The only time there's a shortage in a free market is when the government fixes the price.") Instead, you say the problem is that it wasn't part of a free market at all.
So, what's the solution? Is is possible, within a free market system, to have saved the passenger pigeons? How does one "own" a migratory species which requires vast numbers in order to breed? And how does that ownership seem any different than price fixing by a monopoly owner, a.k.a., government prohibitions? And how does it factor in ecosystem changes caused by the presence/absence of that species?
No, because the market is artificially depressed by "visa programs". They pretend there are not enough skilled engineers, when really they are not offering enough to make the jobs attractive. Worse, people on these visas are captive labor, and cannot move along to better prospects.
It might be depressed but it's still an incredible job market. I just don't see it suppressed by immigration. In Seattle there are thousands of open jobs. My startup can't get people to even interview and we pay new bs cs grads 130k. fang pays more. We have 50 devs and want to hire 10. When I worked at Microsoft my division often had 3000 openings.
I've interviewed in a different city and been willing to relocate there. I don't have a lot of roots here besides family (who honestly probably love that I get out of the state) and this isn't a great ___location to begin with.
I can't be the only decent developer fitting those criteria - I'm sure some new grads or even mid-levels might be open to moving.
Or is your "shortage" actually a "shortage of people we deem suitable for this position and already live here" and not a general tech shortage?
I have seen wages go up pretty steadily since I moved here 25 years ago and started at Microsoft. I've worked at 6 companies now, through the 2000 .com crash and the 2008 crash. Both times some smaller companies didn't make it, partly because they didn't get new funding, but most jobs, salaries, etc kept up or didn't fall much. I know I've been fortunate but I'm nothing special, just a dev in seattle. I think you must be in a town without so much varied software jobs. I feel for you, and would be unhappy if I had the overtime demands you mention. That's just a very different world than I experience here.
What if we all don't want to live in Seattle or be told what do do by some PM with a physics degree from fill in the blank who never had to grind out code themselves?
The market colluded to drive wages down, screams at the top of their lungs about shortages to get wages down, it tried to scare people to talk about wages to drive wages down, it tells lies about unions to drive wages down. Market rate means absolutely nothing about real value.
When you say things like that, do you actually have a mechanism in mind that enables this 'collusion'? Because to me, it sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory on the level of moon-landing denial.
And what wages are down? Programmers make very good salaries. There are people who go through a few weeks of coding boot camps and land good paying programming jobs - what other area (outside of commission sales) could you land such a position with a comparable level of experience/education background?
>Market rate means absolutely nothing about real value.
It means something. It tells you how valued your particular skills are to another individual.
your assertion that a few weeks of coding bootcamp can land a good job is highly suspect. I can assert that I know of community college graduates who are teaching at MIT. My assertion holds as much water as yours!
Half of bootcamp attendees had less than 50 hours of experience. On average bootcamp alumni saw a $20k salary increase in their first job after completing the bootcamp.
I thought that part was added just to try to draw in the younger folks who are too little afraid of the scary science and maths parts to consider learning about tech stuff.
The difference between science and engineering (education-wise) is that an engineering degree is strictly defined with regards to subjects learned, with little choice of electives by the student: everybody is learning the same thing.
With science (and most other degrees) the student can pick and choose their topics.
Electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, and chemical engineers have quite different courseloads. Even within electrical engineering, semiconductor physics, radio frequency electronics, electromotion, and power systems are all completely different from computer architecture and one another. That's without delving into specialties in each.
The person you're replying to never suggested that there weren't differences between the engineering degrees' course loads. I believe you may have missed their point completely.
Are you suggesting that engineering students have no choice about which areas to study, just because they have labels? Many study more than one, and take multiple degrees. I knew one who got seven bachelor's degrees in various engineering and science fields.
I'm saying that if you did a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical) you've done EXACTLY the same course material as every other student in that course, even across different universities.
An employer getting an Engineering graduate knows exactly what they are getting.
> I'm saying that if you did a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical) you've done EXACTLY the same course material as every other student in that course, even across different universities.
While engineering (including EE) programs tend to have less flexibility within schools, and probably also between them, than other fields, it is by know means zero difference in classes.
I was graduated with a BSEE. I can say with certainty that I did not take the same set of classes as anyone else, and most who graduated with me also did not. I don't know what kool-aid you have drunk from, but falsehoods about other fields of study are not welcome here.
this is also wrong, though. You will not have done exactly the same course load! Universities have specializations and areas of research focus that influence and dominate their course material and presentation. You will, however, have been exposed to all the material that ABET thinks is necessary to accredit that program as being an electrical engineering one.
assuming you went to an accredited school, of course.
In Australia, the courses are certified by the Institute of Engineers. Everybody does the same maths, physics, chemistry subjects. Only in the final year or two do the students get a choice of elective subjects.
Most Engineering students share a common first year (again, no electives) but the subsequent years differ depending on speciality (electrical, mechanical etc).
Contrasted to a science degree, where two people with a "Physics major" may have done very different work, both in subject matter and in difficulty.
My degrees are all in engineering, and we had plenty of coursework opportunities to specialize even in undergrad. We had a departmental bias towards one end of the spectrum for the discipline, but plenty of my cohort broke the mold and did their own thing fairly easily. We were also very heavily research-focused, so the other easy divide between engineering and science ('applications' vs 'basic research') isn't nearly as clean-cut as you might think.
Part of the reason I think STEM is horseshit is that it is so broadly defined as to be without meaning. You just can't reasonably talk about something as one labor market if it includes zookeepers, pharmaceutical chemists, medical doctors, facebook engineers, economists, and advertiser...er, data scientists.