Recent studies suggest that students who study science, technology, engineering and math don’t actually pursue career in those fields.

California State University, East Bay professors have weighed in on the debate.

Out of 15 million U.S. residents with bachelor’s degrees in STEM, 11.4 million of them work outside of their field, meaning there is a surplus of qualified applicants, not a shortage, said Robert N. Charette, contributing editor to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Spectrum.

One-fifth of STEM graduates immediately work outside their chosen field of study, while 58 percent leave their field after a decade according to a 2011 Georgetown University study.

There is also movement coming the other way, where non-STEM graduates fill many STEM positions or workers “[drawn] from high schools, workshops, vocational schools and community colleges,” says a report from the Brookings Institute. The numbers show STEM graduates who leave their field, rather than a shortage due to a lack of students.

“The mention of the word ‘shortage’ necessitates a discussion of prices: tuition levels for students and pay levels for college graduates,” said CSUEB Economics Professor Gregory Christainsen, Ph.D., “I am not aware of a “shortage” as economists understand the word.  Students and companies can pay for the training.  Companies can offer higher pay levels to attract workers.”

The Wall Street Journal offers a plan to reform STEM education in the country by closing education schools and sending the savings to local school districts.  Kindergarten through high school could then use the money to afford teachers with degrees in math, science, and technology, where students in poorer districts may be underserved.

Economics Professor Anthony Lima, Ph.D., at CSUEB offered similar advice on what to do with funding, although he says it is only his personal opinion and is not an expert on STEM.

“As far as I have been able to tell, most STEM funds are being routed into Education Schools and Colleges,” says Lima, “That money would be better spent attracting actual science, math, and engineering majors — people with degrees in those fields — into teaching.  Unfortunately, that will not happen because the folks I’d like to move into teaching do not, by and large, have the patience to put up with the types of courses they are required to take to get an education credential.”

Despite evidence suggesting the lack of STEM workers is overblown, others insist the crisis is real.  Growth in STEM fields need to be matched with growth in STEM education to meet the demand, while skills are also transferable to other fields.

“Employers of all stripes are looking for people with strong STEM knowledge and skills,” said Change the Equation Chief Executive Officer Linda Rosen, “but the U.S. talent pool is currently too shallow to meet their needs.”

Even during the recession from 2009 to 2012, there were almost two STEM focused job postings for every unemployed STEM professional, according to a Change the Equation study.

STEM workers also had a lower unemployment rate of 4 percent during the same period, compared to 9.3 percent unemployed for other workers.  STEM occupations are projected to grow 17 percent from 2008 to 2018, while earning 26 percent more in salary than non-STEM workers, according to the Economics and Statistics Administration.

The STEM crisis is placed in the context of boom and bust cycles throughout America’s history.  A surge in technological innovation could drive salaries up while spurring a need to hire foreign STEM workers through H-1B immigrant visas.

“When Sputnik went up, and there was a drive to put a man on the moon, suddenly there was a huge shortage of aerospace engineers,” said CSUEB engineering associate Professor David Bowen, Ph.D. “When Apollo was finished, all of a sudden the landscape changed dramatically, [both] in stratification and infrastructure.”

Bowen believes that there is a crisis for more STEM graduates is real, but warned against boxing everyone into one group, as individual breakdowns are more accurate.

American universities currently have foreign students who graduate and return to their home countries, taking their skills with them.  Fields in computer science, nuclear research, and electrical engineering can be considered national security concerns by the United States government.

“In the past, economies weren’t developed enough, so graduates would stay,” said Bowen. “With the growth of China and India, more graduates are willing to go back.”

Without more STEM graduates, high paying jobs will go unfilled, as not enough people with skills will enter the workforce, said Bowen.  He also described the importance of the Kindergarten through high school “pipeline,” which feeds colleges with students prepared in STEM education.

“One thing that gets lost within STEM is its reliance on math,” said Bowen, “it’s very serial in nature, and missing a step in math learning makes it harder to pick up skills later on.”

With pressure coming down from higher up and college chancellors across the country, liberal arts departments are feeling the pinch. In President Barack Obama’s 2012 state of the union address, he declared a “crisis” in STEM education.

Humanities majors were already on the decline, with Harvard’s departments shrinking 20 percent in the last decade according to the New York Times.  In general, humanities shrunk in half from 14 to 7 percent of the student body during 1970 to 1985.

“I think we feel pressure in the liberal arts department now,” said Lawrence Bensky, political science professor at CSUEB. “We need to justify ourselves, whereas before we took it for granted; that an educated person had a solid grounding in the humanities.  Now there’s a greater push to turning higher education into a trade school, and that’s very unfortunate.”

Devaluing the role of traditional four-year schools can have a negative effect on STEM majors, said Bensky, as well rounded students should know how to think and express themselves.  He was been teaching since 1992.

“If you graduate without skills in reasoning, analysis, writing, and communicating, you’re not an educated person,” said Bensky. “[An] education at a four-year university is about something other than learning an immediately applicable skill.”

CSUEB’s earth science and math departments did not offer comment for this article.