Supporting STEM subjects doesn't mean knocking Humanities

I don't know a single Humanities colleague who doesn't support the campaign to get more women into STEM subjects. And I don't know a good scientist who doesn't want to support Arts and Humanities. The issue for most of us is a simple one: there are women who are extremely talented in STEM subjects who may be being put off from all kinds of more or less hidden prejudice (just as there may well be girls whose talent lies with the double bass who are pushed to the flute); we want to encourage them in.

We want young people to follow their talents, regardless of gender. There really isn't an academic argument here.

So it is deeply depressing seeing the Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan) using support for STEM subjects in such a crude way, and pretty close to bashing Arts and Humanities. To be honest, for me, Morgan attacking Humanities is as off-message as Gove was.

No doubt it is well intentioned. But she throws around statistics and "facts" and argument without any obvious sign of having thought of the complexities, or what the basic aim is: namely we dont want kids to be forced by gender into subjects in which they wont excel. (We want boys to do Art History, as much as girls to do Further Maths.) That's different from trying to push kids into specific subjects regardless of talents. That is only part of a modern myth that we could be good at anything, so long as we put our minds to it and fulfil the assessment criteria. Sorry, everyone, I would NOT be good at Physics or Further Maths.

Morgan's speech is also sprinkled with dubious and potentially misleading statistics. She quotes a figure that says that people who study maths to A level have lifetime earnings 10% greater than those that haven't. I have two reactions to that. The first is to say that I would not push a student into a subject at which he or she had little talent, or in which he or she had not much enjoyment on the basis of a life time extra earning. What I have see is that a Maths degree might give you a £60k lifetime extra over an English degree (which is a bit over £1000 per year....little compensation if you are doing what you dont want to do).

But the real problem is the cheap swapping of statistics, which are really too complicated than they seem. So I could reply to Ms Morgan that only 7.4% of English graduates are unemployed six months after graduating, whereas 8.5% of Maths graduates or 13% of Computer Studies graduates were unemployed. But I (and she) would know that all this depends on the ethnicity of the students, the class of degree, and the ostensible prestige of the university, and so on. You can access some of the figures here. And there is more complicated stuff here.

It is all very complicated, but try telling a black woman with a third class degree in Maths at a new university that this was a better than doing a degree in Classics (at which she was good, and in which she was interested).. and she would tell you where to get off.

The basic point is that we will do our best by the country if we encourage the talents of our kids, who will do best for everyone if they do what they are good at, gender notwithstanding.

Thanks by the way to Steve Kimberley who pointed me in this direction.