Following The Money

For those who still watch the Golf (Masters) on TV, you've likely seen the "ads" about the shitty performance of American students in math and science. Exxon/Mobil paid for them. One wonders why.

From a few years ago, an article describing Exxon's outsourcing of high value jobs to India.

Beyond that bit of hypocrisy, is the simple fact: folks do tend to follow the money. With the service economy meme of the last couple of decades, enrollments in science/math/engineering have fallen, while in money laundering, risen on a relative basis. Pavlov was mostly right: unless a person considers some field a "calling", they'll do whatever pays the most, regardless of the nature of the work. Welcome to social Darwinist capitalism.

Here's the science/engineering data. No similar data came up as I searched, but this paper from SFSU did. Yes, just one university, but very detailed. Just compare what happened to EE and Corporate Finance. It wasn't until after the Great Recession that enrollment in finance collapsed.