[tomp]

> less people willing to go for it

Or capable. I imagine the IQ bar is set quite a bit higher for STEM-like courses and careers... Also, there's much less room for bullshit (at least in programming - your code either works, or it doesn't work, and that's really easy to verify at university and when applying to jobs - as opposed to e.g. marketing, where it's much harder to quantify someone's skill).