Wendy et al

As several people have already commented, it’s a complicated issue and there are different points of view:

Some people think we already have an over-supply of graduates (including STEM):

https://www.cipd.co.uk/publicpolicy/policy-reports/overqualification-skills-mismatch-graduate-labour-market.aspx

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00071005.2011.578567

Or it might be more complicated than that:

http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/13757/1/briefing-paper-the-supply-of-and-demand-for-high-level-stem-skills.pdf

http://www.smf.co.uk/publications/in-the-balance-the-stem-human-capital-crunch/

But there are considerable efforts to try and understand what might be important:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/327492/evidence-report-81-ukces-employer-skills-survey-13-full-report-final.pdf

http://www.nap.edu/catalog/21698/educate-to-innovate-factors-that-influence-innovation-based-on-input

http://sciencecampaign.org.uk/?page_id=14040

And it’s clear that there are benefits to individuals:

http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/earningbydegrees/

Hopefully some of these sources help you navigate to an answer you can work with!

Andy

OECD reports are definitely worth looking at. But you may have to do some data mining.

In particular, check out the OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers.

For example:

Auriol, L., M. Misu and R. Freeman (2013), “Careers of

Doctorate Holders: Analysis of Labour Market and Mobility

Indicators”, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working

Papers, 2013/04, OECD Publishing.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5k43nxgs289w-en

It won’t answer the question, but it may provide pointers.

Find them here:

OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers - OECD iLibrary

http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/science-and-technology/oecd-science-technology-and-industry-working-papers_18151965

Unlike many OECD documents, you don’t have to find ways of getting at them. No paywall here.

MK

Hi all,

This report by BIS: ‘The relationship between graduates and economic growth across countries’  

Answers the general question about graduates, but not specifically about STEM graduates:

-          1 per cent increase in the share of the workforce with a university education raises long-run productivity by 0.2 – 0.5 per cent. (Increasing the stock of graduates in the overall economy added 20 per cent to GDP between 1982 and 2005.)

(Productivity here being the measure of gdp or gva per hour worked)

I would imagine that there is a report somewhere looking specifically looking at STEM graduates, but there would need to be a fair number of assumptions as Dom suggests.

Hi Wendy

What an interesting question (much more interesting than the other things I have to do this morning).

Unfortunately, I don’t think you’re going to find this in a convincing form, because your question begs a number of other questions. Here are a couple that spring immediately to mind:

-       What is a STEM graduate? Can we get comparable data from different countries? In this country, Geography (for instance) sits in a very ambiguous position.

-       As the article that you pointed us to suggests, what is the likely time-lag between someone graduating and them having a meaningful impact on the economy. It’s definitely measured in years; it might be measured in decades.

-       What is the impact of immigration? In the UK, we are a net importer of people with graduate level skills, so there are lots of graduates who were not produced by the UK education system, but who might well have a positive impact on the UK economy. The converse is true in a country which is a net exporter of graduates.

-       How do we cope with countries with different types of economy. We might expect the impact of STEM graduates would be different in a country whose economy has a strong primary sector (eg Canada, Australia) compared to one without (eg the UK).

So I think even if you could get a nice neat correlation, then I think you would have to hedge it round with so many caveats that it would become meaningless. My feeling, therefore, is that this isn’t something we can realistically “prove” in any meaningful sense. It has enormous rhetorical power, but I wouldn’t scratch the surface of it too vigorously.

Dom

I’ve been doing a fair bit of trawling online but haven’t been able to find any convincing data that an increase in STEM graduates correlates to a better economy for a country?

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