[melling]

It seems to me like there are still lots of problems to solve. Many STEM jobs still go unfilled even though they tend to pay more. If you want to build the next Android or iPhone, you need large teams of people, for instance. Some people will choose tennis while others choose medical research? I don't think anyone has mentioned the fact that there aren't enough hours in the day for people who do research or creative work.

Personally, I image that if we could put 7 billion people to work on the more important problems, we'd still need a lot more fall short on resources.

[jeena]

Yeah but to fill the STEM jobs you need educated people to do so. To get educated people you need to make the process of education far less expensive and risky for the individual, only then you will get more people through the STEM education.

I'm kind of old (35) and a CS student, I started fairly late in my 39ies. But I only was able to do so because I payed a high price for that. Nearly everybody else at my age has a family with kids, many of them even have bought their first house. Not me, I'm studying, I'm one of the very fiew 35 years old students at the university.

And yes there are legitimate reasons why I couldn't start to study earlier (which I won't get into right now). What I want to say is that education is _very_ expensive for the student, even if here in Sweden I don't even have to pay for the university myself. Many people who would be able to learn and do the STEM jobs can't because they're stuck in survival mode earning a living at a job which doesn't help humanity, instead it is only there to keep someone ocupied.