the STEM elite

shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
spent a night in a brewery in long island city with a load of of Americans with with PhDs in chemistry and that kind of thing. it's been a recurring theme in my life that I'm around people in this kind of work and as I get older these are the people with the most money and the most comfortable lives. is this a new thing? I wonder a bit how this is going to play out in the long run, as these kinds of people become the people with control over resources and culture and so on. it's a particular kind of person with a particular set of experiences, and a particularly easy trajectory through the world
 
V

version

Well-known member
Seems as though that sort of thing's the only stuff worth going to uni for atm, what with the level of debt you have to take on, the time invested and the lack of job prospects if you opt for something in the humanities and don't want to be an academic.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
It's funny, here's me with my two physics degrees and my wife, who studied literature, earns a good deal more than I do.

She's also much more driven, ambitious and hard-working than I am, though, which might have something to do with it.
 
WashYourHands

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
shakahislop said:
spent a night in a brewery in long island city with a load of of Americans with with PhDs in chemistry and that kind of thing. it's been a recurring theme in my life that I'm around people in this kind of work and as I get older these are the people with the most money and the most comfortable lives. is this a new thing? I wonder a bit how this is going to play out in the long run, as these kinds of people become the people with control over resources and culture and so on. it's a particular kind of person with a particular set of experiences, and a particularly easy trajectory through the world
Click to expand...

yes, middle/upper middle class Americans with PhD’s have it relatively easy
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
WashYourHands said:
yes, middle/upper middle class Americans with PhD’s have it relatively easy
Click to expand...
yeah exactly but it's also different kind of life and character to how it would have been when it was you know literature professors screenwriters and lawyers. people taking it slow and steady from thier 20s onwards. rewards accruing to a persistent slog in labs and on computers. becoming an expert in technical but orderly details. understanding machines and mechanical languages. the mind of an arranger and a systematizer. you can see them wanting to put the world in order
 
WashYourHands

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
education sector is particularly top-heavy your ends though

any notion of a postgrad in humanities and the debt incurred mean there’s no professional pay off

conversely you can’t move through a humanities section here without bumping into expat Yank PhD’s hoping no-one notices their volume of over-representation
 
V

version

Well-known member
shakahislop said:
spent a night in a brewery in long island city with a load of of Americans with with PhDs in chemistry and that kind of thing. it's been a recurring theme in my life that I'm around people in this kind of work and as I get older these are the people with the most money and the most comfortable lives. is this a new thing? I wonder a bit how this is going to play out in the long run, as these kinds of people become the people with control over resources and culture and so on. it's a particular kind of person with a particular set of experiences, and a particularly easy trajectory through the world
Click to expand...

Are they aware of it themselves? Is it a topic of conversation?
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
version said:
Are they aware of it themselves? Is it a topic of conversation?
Click to expand...
One striking thing I think is that it's a group of people who particularly think they deserve what they have, because what they're doing is so technical and complicated, they are quite aware that they are needed and that there aren't that many people who have the skills. Which is very different I think. Some of leftist critiques don't touch them
 
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