STEM Arrogance: Is it a justified stance?
Education shouldn’t be reduced to something akin to transaction
STEM majors are going to school to be doctors, engineers, and physicists—people who are making a lasting impact on society. So, isn’t it a good thing to be arrogant?
— The Bates Student, 2019.
There is a commonly perpetuated narrative that post-graduate humanities students often find themselves working low-wage, service industry positions that they are well overqualified for. This societal perception is dangerous, as it can serve to diminish the value of these degrees in the public eye and reinforces a supposed superiority of STEM paths, where it is assumed that graduating with a degree in those fields guarantees a high-paying role.
The opening quote reflects the justification that STEM arrogance is not only excusable but even beneficial, as these fields are seen as “real” contributions to society in contrast to humanities students. Obviously, as a humanities student myself, it is natural to say that this arrogance is unfounded. While it is hard to deny that doctors and scientists shape the infrastructure and tangible development in various health and wellness spheres, saving and improving the lives of many people worldwide, it sidelines the importance of establishing ethical frameworks and communicating these ideas well, so that these developments can be utilized to their greatest effectiveness, helping as many affected individuals as possible.
I grew up primarily around other East Asian students, where STEM is the field that most parents—who are the main deciding factor for a lot of people’s major decisions—push their children to get into. I found myself in a very different position from my peers, where my parents told me to study “what I liked” and work hard from there. There were plenty of friends of mine who showed interest in things like programming and electronics from an early age, but there were those who seemed to only be going into STEM for the sake of their parents’ or perhaps their own financial interests.
32% of students go into a major other than their desired one, often as a result of familial pressures. Those peers, and other students like them, reduce education to something akin to a transaction, and while there is nothing inherently wrong with this line of approach, it is undeniable that having a genuine interest in something will take you much farther in pursuing it than someone who is doing it with ulterior motives.
On average, STEM requires higher grades in university or college applications, and sometimes, even to continue in STEM studies, one needs to maintain a certain grade score. Thus, there is more of an effort required to maintain a high GPA, and while obviously a high GPA in humanities is still desirable, the requirement for such is less important.
STEM roles also often pay higher, so there is more demand and competition, especially if we remove those who are studying their major out of passion, and so we would find that people who pursue their program for future financial stability would lean towards STEM roles. I do not believe that this culture is very healthy.
The GPA thresholds and competition within STEM programs can also create a system of stress and elitism, where you are almost discouraged from sharing information with your peers. This negative environment can lead to feelings of loneliness and potentially further burnout. While this happens to a certain extent in humanities programs, there is less of a focus on competition and GPA scores, and so the environment is oftentimes friendlier.
STEM students who express this arrogance also fail to address the different skillsets required for humanities students. I’ve attended friends’ Engineering lectures and found myself completely lost from the very moment that the professor opened his mouth. Likewise, STEM friends have come into my lectures and didn’t seem very engaged with the material. It certainly makes sense to me that STEM students and humanities students are not engaged with each other’s material. They are very different in nature, and it is their different natures that require knowledge of them both in many different big governing decisions. Even the work we do is very different. I’m often reading dozens of papers for a single research paper, and they’re committing difficult mathematical concepts to memory.
Each discipline has its unique understandings and difficult aspects. Arrogance is formed when one group believes their skillset or work is more valuable, rather than acknowledging that society functions on a variety of different expertise, both technical and non-technical. However, in my personal experience and in the experience of some of my friends, it is clear that neither expertise is “easy.” No matter what, an effort is required to succeed in undergraduate and graduate institutions, and those who fail to recognize this are truly misled and failing to see the bigger picture.
Arrogance in STEM often stems from disillusioned beliefs that their roles in society will be more impactful, and certainly, their contributions can often be more tangible. However, this dismisses the intellectual contributions that humanities studies can bring, which, in combination with practical application, can combine to create balanced frameworks to better society as a whole.
At the end of the day, we are all students who strive to do good work for society, and there should be no resentment or arrogance between peers studying different things but working towards similar goals.
