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Articles

Vol. 2 No. 1 (2015)

STEM and other Fields of Study

DOI
https://doi.org/10.15377/2409-9848.2015.02.01.4
Submitted
August 13, 2015
Published
2021-11-24

Abstract

Since the 2008 stock market crash in the United States of America (USA), with the multinational effects around most of the world, there has been job losses and financial insecurity felt by most working people. The lack luster recovery and the drop of oil prices in the last year (which has stabilized in recent months), have not improved much this sense and need for financial security. Financial security is largely obtained if one helps one’s young adult offspring select a well-paying profession. The paper by the authors in 2007, compared the financial wisdom of selecting STEM jobs as opposed to other fields of study. Their hypothesis that “science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related fields will have higher monthly income on average than communication, education, arts, and social science fields”, was demonstrated to be true. The monthly income based on specialty field was forecasted using 4 methods. Half of the methods were moving averages and exponential smoothing, and these were stationary series models. The other half was trend-based methods; regression analysis, and double exponential smoothing or Holt’s method. The authors showed that the moving averages forecast a difference in favor of STEM fields of $973.79 per month; exponential smoothing predicted a disparity of $934.18 per month. Further, a $1058.84 disparity in monthly income was foretold with linear regression analysis; a $1060.3 in monthly salary was forecast via Holt’s method. More recent data by Forbes shows that the top paying jobs are No. 1 Drilling Engineer with median pay of $113,900, No. 2 Petroleum Engineer with median pay of $97,300 and No.3 Mining Engineer with median pay $71,300 a year. These STEM jobs do lead to the same conclusion today that jobs outside the STEM fields do not pay as well.

References

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