What an unutterably bizarre article. "By cajoling more children to enter science and engineering [...] the state increases STEM student numbers, floods the mark

What an unutterably bizarre article. "By cajoling more children to enter science and engineering [...] the state increases STEM student numbers, floods the market with STEM graduates, reduces competition for their services and cuts their wages." It almost makes one wonder whether the author knows what STEM stands for - he seems to see it as just a type of labour, in the sense that an oversupply of plumbers, STEM graduates or scaffolders will depress the wages of that group. Perhaps I'm just irretrievably biased, but STEM seems, as well as being an enormously vast field it seems lazy to lump together, to be the engine of human advancement and economic growth. If student A, an engineering student, is put in competition with student B, who could have been a good lawyer but chose a Maths degree, and student C, who had to choose between music and physics but chose physics at university, then A's wages might end up slightly lower but we are all likely to end up better off. But it's not just that I am a science-biased technocrat - I don't especially want to drive our future judges and music professors into engineering careers. I think it more likely that technical education is just under-taken-up at all levels compared to what would most benefit society, and people who could perfectly well cope with technical careers end up taking jobs in the service sector that provide little training. To take a shortage of technically-trained people, paint that as a benefit for the wages of the currently qualified, and argue to maintain the status quo on that basis is just short-sighted nonsense.