By Regan McCarthy
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wfsu/local-wfsu-990073.mp3
Tallahassee, FL – Lawmakers hope to make education changes that focus on Science Technology Engineering and Math, or STEM fields. They say the change will help to prepare Florida's students for the jobs that are available in the state, but Regan McCarthy reports some social science programs like Anthropology have gotten caught up in the cross fire with Governor Rick Scott holding up anthropology as an example of a degree that leads to unemployment.
Republican Senate President designate Don Gaetz says one of the best things the government can do to help improve Florida's economy is to ensure Florida's students are getting the right kind of education. Gaetz, of Destin, says a college degree doesn't automatically mean a job anymore.
"There's a feeling that all of us as parents have that if our parents get a 4-year college degree that that guarantees them a job and a house and a white picket fence and two-and-a-half kids. It turns out that's not really true anymore. It turns out our higher education institutions, great as they are, and many of them are very good, are not really focusing on those kinds of skills that would a graduate to walk off the graduation stage and get a job.
Gaetz says the problem isn't that there aren't jobs out there, but that students aren't getting the right kind of education to get the jobs that are available.
"When 60-percent of the growth jobs in the next 10 years in Florida require skills in science engineering and math and only 17-percent of the degrees that are being awarded by our state colleges and universities are in the areas of science technology engineering and mathematics, no wonder that only 20-percent of our graduating class in this country last year found jobs in their major fields of study."
That's the kind of thinking that led Governor Rick Scott to make this statement:
"How many more jobs do you think there is for anthropology in the state? Do you want to use your tax dollars to educate people that can't get jobs in anthropology? I don't. I want to make sure that we spend our money where people can get jobs when they get out."
Scott has also spoken similarly about majors in fields like journalism in his criticism of degrees he says might not be good choices for a quick hire after college, but it's the anthropology degrees he's mentioned time and time again. Lane Wright is Scott's spokes person. He says Scott's statements really have nothing to do with anthropologists at all.
"Governor Scott doesn't have anything against anthropology majors. He's just saying that there isn't a lot of opportunity for growth, in the field of anthropology at least not in this state. He's really just trying to make the point that we need to be focusing more of our attention on the STEM programs the Science, Engineering, Technology and Math.
But anthropologists like Brent Weisman, chair of the anthropology department at the University of South Florida, are frustrated because they say Scott's example simply doesn't work. Weisman says people with degrees in anthropology are highly employable.
"The job market for those with anthropology degrees is good and improving. We do have statistics from the department of labor that indicates the job prospects for anthropologists are actually increasing in the next several years with gross figures that they say are better than many other professions."
The American Anthropological Association says nation-wide, 61-percent of people with a masters in Anthropology are hired within a year after graduating. And beyond that Weisman says anthropology jobs *are* stem jobs.
"It's a science. It receives funding through the National Science Foundation. Anthropologists work side-by-side with chemists, with biologists, with civil engineers, with industrial engineers, with cancer researchers, with a whole host of people that the governor would recognize as being hard scientists and engineers."
He says a prime example comes from the TV show Bones. It's a fictional program and dramatized sure. But weisman says the work the main character does as a forensic anthropologist is realistic and is something students studying anthropology at his school are learning to do. And that's a job Weisman says his students are walking right off the graduation stage to get. The American Anthropological Association has asked to meet with Scott in order to educate him about the important role anthropology plays in the state, but they say Scott has declined the offer. In an interesting twist Scott's own daughter did major in anthropology. She's in graduate school now pursuing her MBA.