Care to explain why this was modded down? I think the lack of resources for new graduate students is sad, and it blights the lives of many people in science. There are too few tenure track spots, so many PhDs have to wait until their 40s to have a normal job and salary. People are not willing to question authority or publish negative results because that would slow down the all-consuming struggle to outcompete the other 50 people applying for the same fellowship / grant / position / whatever.
A little competition is good, but most STEM careers are a ridiculous vow of poverty at this point. If we're not going to fund it more (and we should...) we should at least be honest to kids about what's waiting for them. The idea that there was ever a shortage of STEM graduates is really a very deceitful piece of propaganda, when the real shortage is funding.
Perhaps the issue isn't that a STEM career is a vow of poverty. I have met many people who are quite wealthy in STEM. I have personally done very well. In America we have become good at identifying talent, and promoting it. And we reward people higher up much more than people lower down the ladder.
I'm not going to say whether I think it's good or bad, but it's quite clear the the rich are getting richer, while the rest stay the same.
"STEM" isn't a single thing (another reason why it's a deceitful term.) The term encompasses a lot of different fields with a lot of different economic situations. For example, you might find it difficult to find a job in nuclear engineering, but easy to find a job in computer engineering. There isn't really a "shortage" of people in almost any math or science related field. Whenever you hear management talk about a personnel shortage, what they really mean is that "we have to pay people more than we think we ought to."
If people want to advance science faster, the way to do it is to divert some of those truckloads of money that are going to blowing up stuff in Iraq and putting it back together, or buying fighter planes that even the air force thinks we don't need. Paying scientists and engineers less (by having more of them competing for the same pool of resources) won't advance science and may even hold it back if it makes the best people go into other fields where they can earn a decent living (like finance of medicine).
