President Richard V. Hurley, chair of the Virginia Council of Presidents, has addressed the topic of STEM in combination with the liberal arts in a variety of settings recently. He wrote about it for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Business Horizon Quarterly and in an op-ed published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. What follows was published online in the Huffington Post. Parents sending their children off to college these days have a right to worry: Unemployment rates are intractably high, college costs are skyrocketing, and students are graduating with unprecedented debt. As the president of a public liberal arts institution, I am especially sensitive to the “return-on-investment” question. And so it is no surprise when high school students and their parents ask our admissions conselors, “Do you offer STEM?” Without question, STEM is the new buzzword for those anxious about post-graduation employment. STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering, and … [Read more...]
