Should we be encouraging people to stay the science course? There are a glut of science phd's in the workforce. I dropped out of my phd program to just do an MS because I found I simply wasn't smart enough to hack it. My research wasn't going anywhere, and I was barely holding on with my grades. After school, I will stay in engineering. I wish someone had told me I wasn't good enough rather than spending 3 years here.
Science is hard, soul-crushing and not that well-paying. Better to quit before they go into grad school than to waste years to be me. Only the truly dedicated and brilliant will survive.
Studying science doesn't mean pursuing a science degree or a job in a scientific field. For myself I've always been enthusiastic about science, I learned on my own, I took pretty much every science class available in my high school and took AP tests in physics, chemistry, and biology. In college I got a degree in math and pursued another degree in chemistry before finding a career as a software developer.
I'm a huge critic of the flaws in the educational system, but I wouldn't give up my experience studying science in school for anything. It's molded who I am, it's made me a better person and a better developer, and I wish that more people would share that experience.
There are many people who defend studying "the humanities" as something universally valuable and universally desirable, and I think there's truth in that. I think there's just as much truth that studying science is universally valuable and universally desirable, regardless of ones eventual career aspirations.
The article is talking about the much broader STEM category. It's not taking sides in any pure vs. applied or academia vs. industry debate. Your decision to get an engineering MS wasn't an exit from the category.
Science is hard, soul-crushing and not that well-paying. Better to quit before they go into grad school than to waste years to be me. Only the truly dedicated and brilliant will survive.