The Real Reason Why Gen-Z Is Rejecting Careers In STEM
The 90s and early 2000s glorified STEM for kids — but younger generations say the field is often toxic.
Pavel Danilyuk | Canva Editor's Note: This is a part of YourTango's Opinion section where individual authors can provide varying perspectives for wide-ranging political, social, and personal commentary on issues.
When I was a kid, my parents wanted one major goal for me: to become a Princeton-educated scientist in the field of software engineering. That was their gold-tier dream that would prove they did well as parents.
My parents were far from the only ones who wanted a kid in STEM, which stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
The 90s and early 2000s glorified STEM for kids — especially for girls who were traditionally locked out of these fields.
Every parent wanted a STEM kid and it was a flex to say you worked in the hard sciences. It was generally assumed that if you had a pulse and worked in STEM, you were loaded. It was a safe assumption to make.
In the 2000s, being a software engineer or IT person was a good career choice with ample stability. It still is.
Yuri A / Shutterstock
However, there’s a new trend that people are noticing: America’s youth is increasingly uninterested in STEM careers.
A new Gallup poll revealed that less than a third of Gen-Z wants to pursue science, tech, engineering, or math careers, and it’s sending a ripple throughout the country.
I can’t blame them. If you take a look at how Gen-Z and Gen Alpha see STEM careers, you wouldn’t want to do much with these fields, either. Here’s why STEM is becoming increasingly unpopular with America’s youth.
A STEM career involves lots of schooling and effort, and unstable futures.
College was expensive when I was 18. If I had to pay for college, I wouldn’t have gone at all because the sticker price horrified me. College loans cannot be discharged through bankruptcy either, so if you rack them up, you will pay until it’s cleared or until you die.
Gen-Z and Alpha have watched my generation struggle and buckle over the unmanageable debt of college. It’s gotten worse since then. College enrollment is down because kids are nervous about saddling themselves with debt they can’t afford.
If you go to college now, you have to be sure you want to do the thing you get your degree in. Pre-med and law are two examples of schooling options that STILL make sense. Most other STEM and heavy-load courses? Not so much.
High schoolers have seen lucrative careers in STEM get outsourced overseas. Programmers, IT people, and network security people have to bust their asses to get degrees in their fields, but why would they?
The jobs they want to get that once required degrees might not be there. With that said, going through a coding boot camp can land you a job with about the same level of luck with less investment.
Still, STEM jobs are HARD. And they’re not as stable or well-paid as they used to be. Wall Street is the new STEM in America.
Many STEM fields are downright toxic and gained a reputation for toxicity as a result.
Speaking as someone who quit software engineering because she couldn’t stand their classmates, STEM has a serious problem. The Society of Women Engineers notes that sexism is rampant in STEM fields — and it’s something I can attest to.
Many fields, especially in medicine and computing, have issues with women being participants. 2023 research found that half of all women with STEM careers quit their careers with at least part of the reason for it being job dissatisfaction.
I’ve recently done a little bit of professional software engineering work, mostly requirements trawling. It’s been a blast from the past and enjoyable because I had a good team to work with.
However, most experiences with other tech companies I had were awful. There’s a reason why “tech bros” have a bad reputation among women and why they generally aren’t seen as likable.
Way too many STEM fields have a serious issue with misogyny. Some fields also happen to have racism baked into their cultures. It’s an open secret that increasingly dissuades people from working in those fields, regardless of the money.
It’s not just the stigma of working in the field that gets people STEM-avoidant. Some people don’t want to go into STEM because they just don’t want to be grouped in with the venomous attitudes that are so rife in those communities.
I ought to know. I’m one of them. Most of the time, hearing a man say he works in computing, netsec, or medicine gives me the heebie-jeebies because of the type of people I’ve seen in those fields.
Our political sphere is increasingly anti-science.
It’s no secret that people have become increasingly leery of science and medicine. There’s a rapidly growing anti-vax movement that’s been causing outbreaks of disease throughout the country. Politicians are regularly putting down medical experts in favor of theology.
Believe it or not, teenagers are not stupid. They notice when educated people end up getting harassed, threatened, or bullied because of their choice to point out scientific facts.
If you think that this anti-science rhetoric is doing us any favors, you’re wrong. I met people who decided against becoming doctors and nurses after they saw how medical staff were treated in US hospitals. I can’t blame them.
The work-life balance in some STEM careers isn’t there.
fizkes / Shutterstock
Admittedly, the work-life balance in STEM is still better than it is in the creative life. I eat, sleep, and breathe my work. With that said, some STEM careers are all-consuming.
If you want to be a doctor, registered nurse, or science teacher, your life will be consumed by work. It’s not fun. And Gen-Z tends to prize the limited free time they get.
Many Gen-Zers just can't hack a career in STEM.
America’s educational standards have been swirling down the toilet for years. Schools have been told to teach to the lowest common denominator and pass students regardless of how bad they are, and most teachers have all but given up trying to teach because they have no support from anyone.
While students and parents might be chuffed about the easy way kids are being passed with little effort, it’s not a good thing. When those kids hit college (and sometimes not even then), they’re stuck being unable to understand basic scientific concepts.
This is not the fault of Gen-Z. Prior generations failed them and so did their schools. We got so used to covering our behinds that we forgot why we needed education in the first place.
STEM also takes critical thinking — a skill that has been slowly phased out of the mainstream curriculum over the past three decades. Is it that shocking to find out that students don’t want to put in the effort to learn those skills for a career they may not even be able to find?
America needs STEM, but STEM needs a makeover.
I genuinely would not want my kid to work in STEM because of how toxic that environment has been to me. If she chooses that path, I’ll support her but will also try to get her a job in the arts.
If America wants younger generations to get into STEM, we’re going to need to overhaul our school systems, accept science as fact, encourage inclusion in STEM, and also get people in those files to knock those toxic attitudes off. Sadly, I just don’t see us doing that anytime soon.
Ossiana Tepfenhart is a writer whose work has been featured in Yahoo, BRIDES, Your Daily Dish, Newtheory Magazine, and others.