Uh oh ... Did a psych major just get his feelings hurt? :-P

I do not want to get bogged down in what can be defined as a science and what can't. It would only result in a slanging match. The STEM acronym is, however, pretty well used and understood in these discussions. Here, for example, is something from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration
http://www.esa.doc.gov/sites/default/files/reports/documents/stemfinalyjuly14_1.pdf

Please too don't misunderstand my views on history either, to my mind it is the queen of the analytical subjects. However, maybe at least in the UK we have the balance wrong. This thought prompted my question.

Hardly. I'm an EE with a serious Physics/Math background. But, psychology is still a science and to claim otherwise is simply wrong.

@ful

OK, fine, let's limit the discussion to the Hard Sciences. What exactly is your question?

Yes, I'm curious too. What is your question?

Are they a minority subject in, for example the US, as they are in the UK? And, if so, is this to the same extent?

Psychology is definitely a science. Also I could be wrong without knowing the figures, but you listed history which is one of the most popular art/humanity at uni level, whilst listing sciences that are some of the less popular in STEM....

Well, if this site is to believed, then STEM currently accounts for about 19% of US degrees.

http://www.economicmodeling.com/2012/01/11/humanities-or-stem-majors-looking-at-the-most-popular-degrees-for-us-students/

Which is clearly a probably, because we absolutely don't need one business major for every STEM major...

Good point SD, if you use EEs and MEs, your numbers would look very different.

I do not have the figures to hand, but 5 psychology students to a single chemistry student? Something is wrong somewhere in the UK.
Abge's reference gives STEM students <5% in the USA , their total more or less the same as psychology. Business students stand at ~ 19% and liberal arts at ~ 13%. Wow!

Did abgemacht get it wrong when he said 19% ? because I didn't follow the link.

I am not sure. i got it slightly wrong on the STEM subjects they should be around 6%, I apologise, but I think that the point still stands.

I'm basing it off of the bar graph: http://www.economicmodeling.com/wp-content/uploads/STEM1.jpg

They include more things in STEM than I think ful would have wanted.

Where I am from, and in my experience, Psychology at the undergraduate level is almost always an Arts degree. My school had an option for a BSc in Psyc but it was a tiny program.

Generally, science and enginneering university programs and are much more focused and rigorous than arts programs.

Furthermore, in order to have a career in pretty much any academic field (science or otherwise) one needs to have more than a simple undergraduate degree. It appears that many people enter Psyc undergrad programs with the intent of simply completing undergraduate, not entering the field.

So, perhaps you are looking at the wrong comparison. Maybe you need to look at the amount of students registered in graduate or professional programs in these fields. I would expect your numbers to appear much closer to what you're likely looking for.

I think in the UK there is much less disparity as well at the higher universities, you are more likely to get the arts (which i love incidentally) in a higher proportion at worse universities where they are almost valueless

Even without seeing the real stats, numbers like 5 psych majors for every 1 chemistry major do not sound out of whack to me. It's not like those 5 psych majors are going to go on to be 5 psychologists. The overwhelming majority of real jobs out there occupied by real people have no relevance to what their undergraduate degrees were. Most people go to college, choose a major that interests them at age 18-21, and end up with a non-related job.

we won't need psychologists if we all get clones of bimbos

@Sagem: Valley of the Dolls?

What I don't get about VotD is why if they weren't real women, did the men restrict themselves to one?

Sagem = Droid Autocorrect of Dahrm ... Which in turn is a misspelling of Dharm, which wouldn't have Autocorrected

@THM

I agree mostly with what you say, but I was specifically talking about the Business-to-STEM ratio. As we've seen, an economy based on things that aren't products doesn't work so great. In order to fix that, we need many more STEM people designing and building products than we need business people selling them.

As a business major, I take offense to the bashing of business majors. A major in business administration leads to so many different paths. Accounting, Finance, Marketing, Management, Business Law, and IT can all fall under the heading "Business Major" so its not just people selling things. And as someone else said, if you get a degree in the subject it doesn't mean that you'll end up working in it.

@gold

Yes, you make a very good point. I understand business doesn't only include sales, despite what my poorly written sentence indicates. The point I was trying to make is that if you want an economy that actually produces things, you need to make sure you have the right number of producers and and sellers (which includes those who create the infrastructure for sale, such as accounting, marketing, management, etc).

Goldfinger, abgemacht is merely demonstrating his love for other disciplines by repeatedly bashing them / dismissing their scientific credibility.

Engineering is more rigorous at the undergrad level because its a technical program, designed as job training, not liberal education. They're completely different things. It's like comparing law school with an undergraduate degree in political science. A dumb comparison.

People also confuse the fact that your course program is laid out for you without any allowance for exploration or deviation with 'rigor'. No, it just means your program of study has a lot of prerequisites in order to take the next course. The hardest course I took as an undergrad by far was a Sociology course, which is a very rigorous discipline with intensive research methods requirements. The course involved reading close to 20 dense texts and doing two large research papers as well as a very time consuming group project This wasn't part of my major's program of study and it sure as fuck wasn't hard science.

I don't think any major is worth bashing over another... business = education = chemistry = psychology = philosophy .... seems logical enough to me.

@Putin

If you try reading my posts, you'll find that isn't what I've said at all.

Right, sorry, we just need more people like you and less people like goldfinger. Got it.

No, we could also use more authors or artists; they make things, too. But, as you can see by the OP, this conversation wasn't about them. It was about STEM in particular.

I get what you were saying, abge, I just thought there was a misunderstanding I could clarify.

Countries in Asia are graduating huge amounts of people...
& note that in N.america, there are now girls in University than boyz

'STEM' is where most of the wealth of modern nations are created from...

I forgot a more word in there lol

check out the Mars pics in here - wow
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/gallery-indexEvents.html

@Dharmaton I'm not a conspiracy theorist but I feel slide 44 makes you realize these pictures are not from Mars at all, anyway the shadows are going in the wrong direction. My guess is El Teide, that is where they filmed some of the old moon landing back in '69.

Shut up, the moon landing was filmed ON THE MOON.

Elvis is still alive, George W. Bush caused 9/11, the moon landing was filmed in a studio... all signs of hate and ignorance toward some of the iconic images and people in human history.

ILLUMANTI

*ILLUMINATI
awks.

I find the idea that Moon Landings weren't faked to be quite unlikely. I very much doubt that the US would have risked the biggest propaganda coup of the century on the chance that the camera might break during flight. Almost certain that they'd have had a pre-made back up recording on stand-by just in case.

If it could easily be seen to be faked would the USSR not have said something? It was pre Detente and relations were poor, I doubt they would have let it slide if it was faked

Did anyone see slide 44 ......

Nigee, did you read the caption on slide 44....?

I don't think the Moon Landings were faked for a moment, and I think the footage of them we saw was most likely genuine, but I also wouldn't be surprised in the least if fakes were made in case genuine footage was unable to be made.

As far as the USSR goes, if they knew the Moon Landing had happened but the footage was fake, would they have made a fuss about that? It would look a lot like sour grapes, which is bad for the national image. Maybe they would have anyway... Who knows?

I was talking more about them landing on the moon or not. That said I still think they would have been like that was a fake - the pr catastrophe for the states would be great, even if they had landed, if they were caught lying like that. The idea that fakes were made is interesting though, and not easily discounted.

@Bo - caption schmaption, that is what I and my Yiddish friends say, of course my Italian friends always say "bada bing bada boom ", they can't seem to stop themselves, like it was pre-ordained

Nigee, if you had Yiddish friends, they'd call you either a "barimer" or "Kuni Lemel."Go look those up. They might even call you "shmegegg" sometimes. Try a Romanian steakhouse sometime if you want to learn more.