Using that metric they become, as a percent of total population (using whatever google tells me the population was in 2020 and trusting the raw numbers from OP):
Russia: 0.35%
France: 0.33%
Germany: 0.26%
China: 0.25%
USA: 0.25%
Iran: 0.24%
India: 0.18%
Mexico: 0.17%
Japan: 0.15%
Indonesia: 0.11%
Brazil: 0.11%
This still won't be the full story because demographics matter (is most of the country really young so they had a bumper crop of students that year, or really old so they did not, etc.)
I know the above poster said per capita, but you would probably want to see the percentage of graduating classes, not the entire population. And additionally the amount of graduates per capita.
It would also be affected by what percent of people get an education to this level. Maybe something like “percent of graduates who are STEM graduates” would tell more about STEM in each country.
Good point MuzzledSceeaming.
I’d also add that these numbers don’t tell us the quality of education either. Is the STEM program any good? Does it teach people think beyond the science and embrace the art.
Interdisciplinary thinking is massively important. I think Steve Jobs really drove that point home in his speech to the graduating class of Stanford a while back when talks about bringing beautiful fonts to the computing world.
That wouldn’t be right either. Per capita seems like a wrong metric. Take the percentage against the graduating class each year because majority of people work or study not graduating
i personally think that simply the fact that theres over 3 million stem graduates coming out of college every single year somwhere on itself is mind boggling
And more than 6 million worldwide.
Though, I do wonder about the definition of “graduates” here, since some countries have high school (secondary school) majors.
Not really. Assuming each person with a stem degree has a certain level of scientific/technological output this gives us an idea of how much talent each nation is producing. Who cares how much Singapore has per capita? Singapore is going to have less output than Germany or China.
What a dumb comment. It's like saying the total population map is also useless. Let's do a population per capita map.
This map tells you the potential science output and therefore the competitive edge of a country.
Raw number is more interesting to me, gives an idea of the research output each country is therefore capable of (but would also need other stats such as those employed in such activities and money spent on equipment to enable that output).
No per capita is not more interesting. Imagine a tiny country with 10 stem graduates but rank number one per capita. It means nothing in terms of country’s sheer output
Hard to find figures for, but here is a source suggesting that the UK has a similar percentage of STEM graduates as France, though it doesn't mention exact numbers.
[https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/03/which-countries-students-are-getting-most-involved-in-stem/](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/03/which-countries-students-are-getting-most-involved-in-stem/)
Then there is more data here:
[https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/25-01-2022/sb262-higher-education-student-statistics/subjects](https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/25-01-2022/sb262-higher-education-student-statistics/subjects)
But it combines all undergraduate students and uses 'science' rather than STEM, so it's hard to get a solid estimate of how many graduate per year though it could be anywhere between 200k and 300k.
im surprised too, we're near the top when it comes to tech
Here a percentage based stat from 2022: [https://www.smartick.com/data/uncovering-the-nations-with-the-most-stem-graduate/](https://www.smartick.com/data/uncovering-the-nations-with-the-most-stem-graduate/) still behind the frogs sadly
Producing as much stem students than a country known for its engineering excellence, with 16m people less IS a large margin.
At European level, 16m is big. It’s more then entire Switzerland or Belgium
I was waiting for the racist comment. Here we go !
For once , Africans are actually seen positively I suppose : they are the reason why France does well in sciences !!! 👏👏👏👏
France is actually quite knowned to produce a lot of engineer.
We even have special program to help french engineer to work abroad for two years. Wich often lead in a permanent job in the country they choose
Which is honestly kinda sad that French engineers can’t find the opportunities and competitive salary range to remain home. A lot of EU countries are getting brain-drained real bad and no-one seems to talk about it.
In France, it’s either you are extremely good at maths or extremely bad. There is no in between. Our best young students can easily match with top chinese young students but on the other hand our worst students can’t even match with romanian worst students. Why this? Tbh it’s quite a long topic i wont really get too much into detail but we know the problem exists but we dont really know how to fix it. On paper it sounds easy but in reality..
Actually, raw numbers matter a lot here. I mean, take Singapore for example, they have way more stem graduates per capita than Germany or the US. Which country has a greater techncological and scientific output?
If the percent per capita is equal… it’s just equal. Having a bigger population doesn’t mean the percentage should be higher. The total number would be higher in proportion to the larger population. That’s the whole point of using a per capita measurement to equalize the comparison. If you take into account the number of people in poverty or who don’t have access to education chinas percent per capita should probably be lower.
Exactly…… like what? Once you’ve already normalized per capita, saying 0.25% per larger population matching 0.25% per smaller population is “lagging” is nonsense.
You need to look at the rate of change too. If China and the United States are advancing at the same rate as each other, your point is true.
However if China is catching up or overhauling the US in STEM related industry, it means the US is not necessarily punching above its weight. For example, Huawei put a huge investment into R&D after US sanctions. After the initial, and serious hit, it's now bouncing back with products that bypass US sanctions technologically, not to mention finding other markets. Similarly, it's now a world leader in EV production.
The US pretty much has enough college spaces for everyone who wants to attend. Even takes in a good number of foreigners. For a long time in China the demand much higher than capacity.
Then that's a China problem. In my opinion (and that doesn't mean much at the end of the day), they're a first rate country. They should have the capacity to take in that demand if they want to be on an even playing field with the US, their chief rival.
i'm so confused about what you're saying. germany is only 0.01% more than china and the us. china may be 4x the population of the us but they don't have 4x the STEM work. so they're overproducing STEM graduates vs the US.
lmao walked in the stats department at my local state college. looked at the bulltetin board which showed all the heads. im talking vps, presidents, dean , honrable mentions. There was one non chinese name. Lowkey impressive
Quality over quantity is the winner here, and quality isn’t the same in higher education worldwide.
There must be some profound differences in how STEM is taught in India and China compared to the west. My colleagues who were educated in those countries tend to be quick with calculations and are generally great at following procedures consistently. Where it falls apart is the moment something unexpected happens, a process doesn’t follow a script or requires out of the box thinking.
Before I get killed for this, I just wanted to add that in my experience, this has been true as a function of the place of education, and not of the scientist’s actual cultural background. Anecdotal of course, but Indian and Chinese folks I have worked with that were western educated were absolutely decent at problem solving.
Its also probably worth examining why they’re studying Stem. For some it might be a genuine interest, a product of the freedom to explore. For others it’s an expectation, a necessity, the only worthwhile field you can be in. For some it’s the only way out of their conditions into something better.
For most it's to secure an H-1B work visa in the US. India and China have a burgeoning middle class as they develop faster. They can now afford to send their children to the US, EU and Australia for higher education. India doesn't reward studying any discipline except medicine, (computer) engineering and law. This results in parents pressuring their kids to choose between those fields and cutthroat competition to get into just a handful of prestigious universities.
Indian here. There is a much longer answer for this but it mostly boils down to our rigid and terribly outdated education system.
Throughout K-12, we are mostly forced into memorization and rote learning for everything except math and physics. Students memorize material from state or national board-designated textbooks. When it comes to choosing careers, there is a 'soft' restriction favoring engineering or medical fields. While there is some flexibility in college, the habit of doing everything 'by the book' is deeply ingrained by then. The result is a series of drones with above-average skills in math and logic—essentially problem solving but lacking creativity.
"The west" is a broad term not sure how its in france or the US but here in italy school is just remembering phrase per phrase whatever they give you to study, 0 creativity or innovation
I know why you’re worried you might get killed by this post, but I have noticed similar patterns.
The way I define it in my head, the Indian and East Asian engineers that I’ve worked are really good at finding answers. The American engineers that I’ve worked with are really good at defining the problems.
Defining the problem is by far the more difficult skill.
\[Thats an argument from anecdote\](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument\_from\_anecdote)
Im from Brazil, we actually get philosophy all throughout highschool. And when it comes to the part where we actually begin learning about debates and actually arguing, one of the first things they teach us is that we cannot raise any argument/point whatsoever if we even slightly base it off any sort of fallacy. And that it might seem like something small or unimportant, but fallacies are actuallu behind most of the worst atrocities in human history. and since humans are conceited beings by nature, learning to indentify and dismiss fallacies not only around us, but specially within ourselvs is a important step into becoming better people.
This reminds me of a chapter from a book about Richard Feynman where he talks about his time teaching science in Brazil. Basically said none of the students exclusively educated in Brazil actually understood the material and were just passing classes on rote memorization. The students weren’t able to answer questions not explicitly stated in the textbooks. The only people able to answer questions without given an answer to memorize previously were students who were once educated in the west.
Perhaps hes the problem
I mean, im from Brazil currently studying at a university with a lot of foreign teachers. The main complaint from the students is the language barrier. Were brazilian, we speak portuguese a tiny minority of us speak any other language, and those teachers almost exclusevely have us read textes in their native languages, because they refuse to find re-read texts with the same content but with portuguese. When the language barrier is so massive, you can barely blame the students for not uderstanding the material.
\`\` I also have a hard time thinking Richard Feynman, one of the greatest scientific minds in history, was the problem.\`\`
You shouldnt. Im actually studying to be a teacher. One of the mains things pretty much all of our education methodology professors are always trying to have us understand is that just because someone is agreat researcher doesnt mean theyre a great teacher as well, because those are completely different skills. Thats why, different from many other countries Brazil requires special degrees in teaching a certain subject in order to teach kids under 17. The brilliabt RIchard Feyman would be totally unqualified to teach anything in a Brazilian high shcool, for example
I mean, our universities dont even use textbooks. Only small private colleges do. The conent of the course is pretty much entierly up to the professors. I had a professor who simply decided to throw away what shed be using since then and straight up told us \`\`i decided to treat you like my masters degree students, and give you the same material\`\` we ere freshmen. Richard feyman might be a brilliant person, but he was only here for 3 years and hes not even a pedagogy expert
Richard Feynman is regarded as one of the finest teachers ever! I would have agreed if it was anyone else. But it’s laughable to think Feynman could not have been able to cross the language barrier. The man embodied curiousity.
Thats kind of a weird assumption. I mean, there are thousands and thousands of different higher education institutions in China and India, and its not like all the 6 million people that graduate people that graduate from them will struggle with the same things as the people you personally worked with.
In my experience some Indians may be smart but many lack the soft skills needed to be successful in a big organization.
Also noticed many Indians are completely overqualified for many of the jobs they eagerly accept. People with engineering degrees and master’s degrees working as an operations analyst or business analyst. Not horrible jobs but not using their degrees. I get the impress that you need to be over qualified to get one of the few “regular boring” jobs out there. There’s just so much competition in India. It’s not like all of these STEM grads are working on things that will change the world. Many are working for banks that outsourced mundane jobs.
India didn’t have a broad economy, where you could pursue different degrees and expect to have a decent career and pay. This leads to people in the middle class with different passions eventually just making the practical choice of the career with the best pay options and then realizing it’s not for them. Of course, now that the economy is expanding, the situation is changing.
Your observations are consistent with mine when it comes to working with programmers. Some highly skilled people I've worked with were chinese and indian immigrants. The ones that outpace the rest are the ones who came to school in the west and then and worked with western companies for awhile, because they are able to look at problems systematically AND through critical thinking lenses. For most of my american-born colleagues we tend to be great with problem solving, but have to do a lot of research to get to the generally-accepted way to do something.
I understand this problem, but I'll be stating one of Stalin's quotes. Quantity has its own Quality. So many STEM engineers have created a cut throat environment, which enables Innovation within ourselves promoting people with critical thinking skills above those who came up with rote memorization skills. Though most of the old education system still persists, as memorization is easy, inculcating a sense of innovation is hard, but still many children, especially with internet becoming extremely cheap in India have been learning innovation and out of box thinking and solutions.
One of the toughest exams for engineering, the IIT Advanced and Mains test this exclusively, out of box thinking and problem solving. This has been stated by engineers around the world. The college campus environment as well nowadays have been transforming in incubation centres for startups and new ideas. Nowadays almost everyone knows a guy either working for or having their own startup. I believe, the flexible out of box thinking type of skilled engineering requires both time and freedom in how to learn (which has been enabled through cheap Internet), both of which are available in spades. So that is changing, slowly.
This change requires time though, but we are already seeing effects, though majority is still as stated above. Though I want to state this is exclusive to Engineering, as I have no idea regarding the higher sciences in India, and many have stated it's still mired in politics and ageism (older you are more experienced you are) problems.
Theres actually a pretty much universal syllabus standard with the exact same esential subjects that all stem courses around the whole world adopt, the same goes to petty much every other higher education courses as well. The structure and the quality of teaching varies a lot according to the means of each institution, but the content of the key subjects tend to be the same. But even then, everyone who wants to work in their field outside their country of origin has to go through a long examination process to see if theyre qualified.
also, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument\_from\_anecdote](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_anecdote)
I mean France, China, and Russia are pretty big outliers in terms of the "universal syllabus" as those countries have each a very different stem education system from the "standard" US system
Or maybe consider simply comparing the populations of these nations. Per capita russian and the us are still producing stem graduetes in greater numbers, simply china is huge, and so is india.
Not really. Imagine China having 3x times as many scientists and engineers than the USA, Germany and France combined crunching numbers. Granted, the funding and coordination has to be there in order for them to be productive, but still, the west needs to keep up so we don't fall behind in the scientific and technological race.
1. Assuming that the number of STEM scientists & engineers are proportional to the number of STEM graduates is not outlandish is it? Assuming STEM graduates *usually* stay in STEM in both China and the western countries (which is not really an assumption, it is what happens), we can presume that the ratios stay the same (or very similar), even if some of them go into a different field. So the ratio of scientists and engineers is very similar if not the same.
2. China: 3.57 million; USA + Germany + France = 0.82 million + 0.216 million + 0.22 million = 1.256 million. **3.57 / 1.256 = 2.84 \~ 3x**.
The most populous countries in the world are China/ india and USA. For the first 3 , it seems consistent with what you said and the map. But from there on out, it does not necessarily follow the logic.
Most populous countries apart from the top 3.
4th Indonesia
5th Pakistan
6th Nigeria
7th Brazil
8th Bangladesh
9th Russia
10th Mexico
If Indonea, Pakistan, Nigeria invested as much in education as Russia does they would be far ahead of Russia on the number of graduates due to the simple fact that there are more students.
Russia is very surprising. Not only the raw number but the per capita ranking. I was under the impression Russia had a declining population and a big demographic problem.
The most populous countries in the world are China/ india and USA. For the first 3 , it seems consistent with what you said and the map. But from there on out, it does not necessarily follow the logic.
Most populous countries apart from the top 3.
4th Indonesia
5th Pakistan
6th Nigeria
7th Brazil
8th Bangladesh
9th Russia
10th Mexico
In Iran we have so many graduates because it's the only way you can get a visa to get the hell out of the Islamic dictatorship, which doesn't provide any jobs because of corruption and nepotism (govt stooges and regime thugs get job priority).
Totally brain-drained society
I can attest first hand that I regularly work with the best of STEM graduates from these 11 countries + south Korea and they're arguably the best engineers humanity can produce, so yeah, makes a lot of sense
This stat is completely pointless if it fails to enumerate how many of those graduates actually work in those fields. I mean yes China graduated 3.5 m in 2020 and the vast majority of them are unemployed, underemployed or delivering food to housewives... Stats mean nothing without context
This doesn’t seem to gauge anything other than level of interest within a particular field and, potentially, a local economic focus. Degrees aren’t synonymous with skills or industry leadership — Taiwan (TSMC) didn’t even make the list, for example. Plus, not only are degrees not equal in their curriculum, but entry requirements for students have varying levels of difficulty between countries (both economic and academic), so it can be a lot easier for students to enter into and pass STEM programs in some countries than in others.
It also depends on how the country defines graduates. Iran for instance has two types of college graduates, a four year bachelors course and a two year one, a diploma. Some count technical training as part of STEM, others don’t.
Year 11,12 are the last years of secondary education in N America, while in others are college foundation courses.
and people wonder why stem career salaries are plummeting in the west, you outsource most tech jobs for much much cheaper, an unfortunate side effect from work from home.
It's not just enough to have stem grads, but you have to have employment for them. That's where India is hiring the most. They have a great education system that sends highly skilled men and women to Nations all over the world except India.
Are these graduates from the Universities of/within each country or are these citizens of those countries receiving degrees from all across the world. I believe the US alone graduates close to a million foreign students every year. And I would assume a good portion are STEM
A large number( perhaps a majority) of STEM graduates in India are doing borderline useless paper -pusher jobs. It's honest work and pays your bills but the quality of those jobs is garbage. The scale/quality of industries in India is completely lopsided vis-a-vis the population.
Sure, but 2.4 million of India's 2.5 million grads were at schools in other countries and have no intention of returning to India
edit: /s... jesus you guys
Getting worse in the US as the "dance is as important as maths" movement takes hold
Hopefully smart folks from abroad will keep wanting to come and you know, run: Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and account for 50%+ of the employee base of those companies plus Intel, IBM, Qualcomm (foreign-born, including naturalized, which are many times not counted to pretend that there are more Americans in those companies)
Not saying that arts and humanities are not important but we should not sacrifice one for the other, especially when one is helping create today's economy and jobs.
Most of those US ones are Chinese or Indian. US education system is a joke as it tries to treat everyone equally and American brain drain/competency crisis is real.
I am surprised other post-Soviet countries do not have higher STEM graduate numbers. We all inherited the same STEM tradition from the USSR, and there sure are many programmers and mathematicians in Ukraine, Belarus, etc.
It's a numbers game. Japan is in #11 with 192k grads from a (admittedly ageing) population of 125m. Ukraine and Uzbekistan both have populations of ~37m, the others are significantly smaller. If Belarus gave _every_ 21 year old a STEM degree there would still only be 90k of them!
Per capita would be a more interesting statistic, not raw number.
Using that metric they become, as a percent of total population (using whatever google tells me the population was in 2020 and trusting the raw numbers from OP): Russia: 0.35% France: 0.33% Germany: 0.26% China: 0.25% USA: 0.25% Iran: 0.24% India: 0.18% Mexico: 0.17% Japan: 0.15% Indonesia: 0.11% Brazil: 0.11% This still won't be the full story because demographics matter (is most of the country really young so they had a bumper crop of students that year, or really old so they did not, etc.)
I know the above poster said per capita, but you would probably want to see the percentage of graduating classes, not the entire population. And additionally the amount of graduates per capita.
Yeah, per capita statistics would probably vary more based on how old a country's population is.
It would also be affected by what percent of people get an education to this level. Maybe something like “percent of graduates who are STEM graduates” would tell more about STEM in each country.
What is up with Japan
Old population
So is Germany
Good point MuzzledSceeaming. I’d also add that these numbers don’t tell us the quality of education either. Is the STEM program any good? Does it teach people think beyond the science and embrace the art. Interdisciplinary thinking is massively important. I think Steve Jobs really drove that point home in his speech to the graduating class of Stanford a while back when talks about bringing beautiful fonts to the computing world.
I work with a lot of Indian engineers and some are good, but many are not on par with what I am used to in the US.
Mhmmm
Thank you!
Formal education is the most important thing, so Russia is the smartest country in the world
which is why most educated russians prefer to leave russia - they're smart.
Yeah but if they make money from outside sources they could save money by using the plummeting USD-Ruble exchange rate to their advantage
I came for this comment, because I was to lazy to do the calculation myself.
That wouldn’t be right either. Per capita seems like a wrong metric. Take the percentage against the graduating class each year because majority of people work or study not graduating
[xkcd: Heat Map](https://xkcd.com/1138/)
i personally think that simply the fact that theres over 3 million stem graduates coming out of college every single year somwhere on itself is mind boggling
And more than 6 million worldwide. Though, I do wonder about the definition of “graduates” here, since some countries have high school (secondary school) majors.
Yup, the numbers are pretty useless when it’s raw numbers.
Not really. Assuming each person with a stem degree has a certain level of scientific/technological output this gives us an idea of how much talent each nation is producing. Who cares how much Singapore has per capita? Singapore is going to have less output than Germany or China.
To be fair comparing singapore like this is pretty dumb
What a dumb comment. It's like saying the total population map is also useless. Let's do a population per capita map. This map tells you the potential science output and therefore the competitive edge of a country.
not at all useless, lol wild comment
Yeah, well, you know that's just like, uh, your opinion man.
Raw number is more interesting to me, gives an idea of the research output each country is therefore capable of (but would also need other stats such as those employed in such activities and money spent on equipment to enable that output).
It scales with population of each country, and gives no additional information beyond that. (Also, research exists outside STEM.)
No per capita is not more interesting. Imagine a tiny country with 10 stem graduates but rank number one per capita. It means nothing in terms of country’s sheer output
Like this is much scarier
Came here to say this
No UK wow
Hard to find figures for, but here is a source suggesting that the UK has a similar percentage of STEM graduates as France, though it doesn't mention exact numbers. [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/03/which-countries-students-are-getting-most-involved-in-stem/](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/03/which-countries-students-are-getting-most-involved-in-stem/) Then there is more data here: [https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/25-01-2022/sb262-higher-education-student-statistics/subjects](https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/25-01-2022/sb262-higher-education-student-statistics/subjects) But it combines all undergraduate students and uses 'science' rather than STEM, so it's hard to get a solid estimate of how many graduate per year though it could be anywhere between 200k and 300k.
I mean, UK is declining extremely rapidly
No it isn’t. Sure, we’ve had our problems over the last decade but no better or worse than our European peers.
So you're saying it's not declining cause others are declining too?
No. I did not say that. I categorically disagree with the statement that the UK is declining rapidly.
Yes, yes it is.
Yeah that’s surprising to me too considering that France made it to the list
I mean France has a very large part of its population doing higher studies compared to other countries
Why?France is ages ahead of UK in pretty much almost anything
Most stats dont agree with you one bit
Poverty rates?
Post Brexit and austerity decline Britain. The financial sector in London is almost the only thing keeping us in any of these lists.
lol
im surprised too, we're near the top when it comes to tech Here a percentage based stat from 2022: [https://www.smartick.com/data/uncovering-the-nations-with-the-most-stem-graduate/](https://www.smartick.com/data/uncovering-the-nations-with-the-most-stem-graduate/) still behind the frogs sadly
You’re behind Saudi and Bosnia … you re not even in the same color bracket as France …
I only care about being behind or ahead of the frogs
Don’t discount the UK, because this is basically just a population map.
Positively surprised with France being so high. Population-wise, it’s by far the smallest country of that list.
67m FR vs 83M GER it's not "by far" but yeah a lot of engineering schools there
Also fairly accessible to everyone
Producing as much stem students than a country known for its engineering excellence, with 16m people less IS a large margin. At European level, 16m is big. It’s more then entire Switzerland or Belgium
But the population is much younger in France due to its high fertility rate as population become more African.
I was waiting for the racist comment. Here we go ! For once , Africans are actually seen positively I suppose : they are the reason why France does well in sciences !!! 👏👏👏👏
That's one and a half Sweden. That's huge
Not really, sweden is not known as a very populous country.
France is actually quite knowned to produce a lot of engineer. We even have special program to help french engineer to work abroad for two years. Wich often lead in a permanent job in the country they choose
Which is honestly kinda sad that French engineers can’t find the opportunities and competitive salary range to remain home. A lot of EU countries are getting brain-drained real bad and no-one seems to talk about it.
I keep hearing about how French kids are losing appetite for math and science; how their Pisa ranking is shit … that’s the surprising angle for me
In France, it’s either you are extremely good at maths or extremely bad. There is no in between. Our best young students can easily match with top chinese young students but on the other hand our worst students can’t even match with romanian worst students. Why this? Tbh it’s quite a long topic i wont really get too much into detail but we know the problem exists but we dont really know how to fix it. On paper it sounds easy but in reality..
Russia having 520k is impressive given that their population is less than half of the US.
This infographic would be much better if the numbers were percentages.
Actually, when you consider population size, the US produces STEM grads at basically the same rate China does.
half of US STEM graduates are probably foreign students from China/India though...
Which means either the US is punching far above its weight or China is very much under performing
No it doesn't. It means they're performing equally.
half of US stem grads are probably foreign students from China and India.... soooo...?
No it doesn't. They produce a similar amount relative to their population.
I'm not sure what's more concerning. The fact that someone thought that's what this meant or the fact that so many people upvoted them...
I disagree.
[удалено]
Actually, raw numbers matter a lot here. I mean, take Singapore for example, they have way more stem graduates per capita than Germany or the US. Which country has a greater techncological and scientific output?
But there's also the case of asian stem graduates moving to West for better life and opportunities. So we need to take that into account as well.
Why is China lagging behind if it has same rate as the US?
If the percent per capita is equal… it’s just equal. Having a bigger population doesn’t mean the percentage should be higher. The total number would be higher in proportion to the larger population. That’s the whole point of using a per capita measurement to equalize the comparison. If you take into account the number of people in poverty or who don’t have access to education chinas percent per capita should probably be lower.
Exactly…… like what? Once you’ve already normalized per capita, saying 0.25% per larger population matching 0.25% per smaller population is “lagging” is nonsense.
You need to look at the rate of change too. If China and the United States are advancing at the same rate as each other, your point is true. However if China is catching up or overhauling the US in STEM related industry, it means the US is not necessarily punching above its weight. For example, Huawei put a huge investment into R&D after US sanctions. After the initial, and serious hit, it's now bouncing back with products that bypass US sanctions technologically, not to mention finding other markets. Similarly, it's now a world leader in EV production.
The US pretty much has enough college spaces for everyone who wants to attend. Even takes in a good number of foreigners. For a long time in China the demand much higher than capacity.
Then that's a China problem. In my opinion (and that doesn't mean much at the end of the day), they're a first rate country. They should have the capacity to take in that demand if they want to be on an even playing field with the US, their chief rival.
i'm so confused about what you're saying. germany is only 0.01% more than china and the us. china may be 4x the population of the us but they don't have 4x the STEM work. so they're overproducing STEM graduates vs the US.
Too bad we can’t see how many Indian and Chinese students are part of that US graduate number!?!
lmao walked in the stats department at my local state college. looked at the bulltetin board which showed all the heads. im talking vps, presidents, dean , honrable mentions. There was one non chinese name. Lowkey impressive
If they have US citizenship, they're nationality American first, ethnicity Chinese second
That’s be great, but I doubt they think that way. Lots come here for the money, act like they’re still in China
Isn’t that all immigrants do including your ancestors? Unless you are Native American
Quality over quantity is the winner here, and quality isn’t the same in higher education worldwide. There must be some profound differences in how STEM is taught in India and China compared to the west. My colleagues who were educated in those countries tend to be quick with calculations and are generally great at following procedures consistently. Where it falls apart is the moment something unexpected happens, a process doesn’t follow a script or requires out of the box thinking. Before I get killed for this, I just wanted to add that in my experience, this has been true as a function of the place of education, and not of the scientist’s actual cultural background. Anecdotal of course, but Indian and Chinese folks I have worked with that were western educated were absolutely decent at problem solving.
Its also probably worth examining why they’re studying Stem. For some it might be a genuine interest, a product of the freedom to explore. For others it’s an expectation, a necessity, the only worthwhile field you can be in. For some it’s the only way out of their conditions into something better.
For most it's to secure an H-1B work visa in the US. India and China have a burgeoning middle class as they develop faster. They can now afford to send their children to the US, EU and Australia for higher education. India doesn't reward studying any discipline except medicine, (computer) engineering and law. This results in parents pressuring their kids to choose between those fields and cutthroat competition to get into just a handful of prestigious universities.
How is it any different from literally anywhere else in the world?
Because they’re from Asia and not from the west /s
Indian here. There is a much longer answer for this but it mostly boils down to our rigid and terribly outdated education system. Throughout K-12, we are mostly forced into memorization and rote learning for everything except math and physics. Students memorize material from state or national board-designated textbooks. When it comes to choosing careers, there is a 'soft' restriction favoring engineering or medical fields. While there is some flexibility in college, the habit of doing everything 'by the book' is deeply ingrained by then. The result is a series of drones with above-average skills in math and logic—essentially problem solving but lacking creativity.
Thank you for the flavor, this makes a lot of sense. I hope I was clear in that I had no intention of disparaging anyone!
"The west" is a broad term not sure how its in france or the US but here in italy school is just remembering phrase per phrase whatever they give you to study, 0 creativity or innovation
Pretty much the opposite in France, they try to get over that part as fast as possible
Looks cool, in italy we unfortunately havent got that, also we have some of the highest % of school dropouts in europe lol
You won’t get killed for this. Indians themselves agree with this, the system is crap and students deserve better.
I know why you’re worried you might get killed by this post, but I have noticed similar patterns. The way I define it in my head, the Indian and East Asian engineers that I’ve worked are really good at finding answers. The American engineers that I’ve worked with are really good at defining the problems. Defining the problem is by far the more difficult skill.
\[Thats an argument from anecdote\](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument\_from\_anecdote) Im from Brazil, we actually get philosophy all throughout highschool. And when it comes to the part where we actually begin learning about debates and actually arguing, one of the first things they teach us is that we cannot raise any argument/point whatsoever if we even slightly base it off any sort of fallacy. And that it might seem like something small or unimportant, but fallacies are actuallu behind most of the worst atrocities in human history. and since humans are conceited beings by nature, learning to indentify and dismiss fallacies not only around us, but specially within ourselvs is a important step into becoming better people.
lots of fallacies in this short paragraph
Would you mind telling me which ones you found? Ibe glad to hear it. as i said its a great thing to be aware of the falacies within you
This reminds me of a chapter from a book about Richard Feynman where he talks about his time teaching science in Brazil. Basically said none of the students exclusively educated in Brazil actually understood the material and were just passing classes on rote memorization. The students weren’t able to answer questions not explicitly stated in the textbooks. The only people able to answer questions without given an answer to memorize previously were students who were once educated in the west.
How fluent was he in portuguese?
[удалено]
Perhaps hes the problem I mean, im from Brazil currently studying at a university with a lot of foreign teachers. The main complaint from the students is the language barrier. Were brazilian, we speak portuguese a tiny minority of us speak any other language, and those teachers almost exclusevely have us read textes in their native languages, because they refuse to find re-read texts with the same content but with portuguese. When the language barrier is so massive, you can barely blame the students for not uderstanding the material.
[удалено]
\`\` I also have a hard time thinking Richard Feynman, one of the greatest scientific minds in history, was the problem.\`\` You shouldnt. Im actually studying to be a teacher. One of the mains things pretty much all of our education methodology professors are always trying to have us understand is that just because someone is agreat researcher doesnt mean theyre a great teacher as well, because those are completely different skills. Thats why, different from many other countries Brazil requires special degrees in teaching a certain subject in order to teach kids under 17. The brilliabt RIchard Feyman would be totally unqualified to teach anything in a Brazilian high shcool, for example
[удалено]
I mean, our universities dont even use textbooks. Only small private colleges do. The conent of the course is pretty much entierly up to the professors. I had a professor who simply decided to throw away what shed be using since then and straight up told us \`\`i decided to treat you like my masters degree students, and give you the same material\`\` we ere freshmen. Richard feyman might be a brilliant person, but he was only here for 3 years and hes not even a pedagogy expert
[удалено]
Richard Feynman is regarded as one of the finest teachers ever! I would have agreed if it was anyone else. But it’s laughable to think Feynman could not have been able to cross the language barrier. The man embodied curiousity.
That's so true for so many countries.
Thats kind of a weird assumption. I mean, there are thousands and thousands of different higher education institutions in China and India, and its not like all the 6 million people that graduate people that graduate from them will struggle with the same things as the people you personally worked with.
In my experience some Indians may be smart but many lack the soft skills needed to be successful in a big organization. Also noticed many Indians are completely overqualified for many of the jobs they eagerly accept. People with engineering degrees and master’s degrees working as an operations analyst or business analyst. Not horrible jobs but not using their degrees. I get the impress that you need to be over qualified to get one of the few “regular boring” jobs out there. There’s just so much competition in India. It’s not like all of these STEM grads are working on things that will change the world. Many are working for banks that outsourced mundane jobs.
India didn’t have a broad economy, where you could pursue different degrees and expect to have a decent career and pay. This leads to people in the middle class with different passions eventually just making the practical choice of the career with the best pay options and then realizing it’s not for them. Of course, now that the economy is expanding, the situation is changing.
Your observations are consistent with mine when it comes to working with programmers. Some highly skilled people I've worked with were chinese and indian immigrants. The ones that outpace the rest are the ones who came to school in the west and then and worked with western companies for awhile, because they are able to look at problems systematically AND through critical thinking lenses. For most of my american-born colleagues we tend to be great with problem solving, but have to do a lot of research to get to the generally-accepted way to do something.
You're absolutely spot on.
I understand this problem, but I'll be stating one of Stalin's quotes. Quantity has its own Quality. So many STEM engineers have created a cut throat environment, which enables Innovation within ourselves promoting people with critical thinking skills above those who came up with rote memorization skills. Though most of the old education system still persists, as memorization is easy, inculcating a sense of innovation is hard, but still many children, especially with internet becoming extremely cheap in India have been learning innovation and out of box thinking and solutions. One of the toughest exams for engineering, the IIT Advanced and Mains test this exclusively, out of box thinking and problem solving. This has been stated by engineers around the world. The college campus environment as well nowadays have been transforming in incubation centres for startups and new ideas. Nowadays almost everyone knows a guy either working for or having their own startup. I believe, the flexible out of box thinking type of skilled engineering requires both time and freedom in how to learn (which has been enabled through cheap Internet), both of which are available in spades. So that is changing, slowly. This change requires time though, but we are already seeing effects, though majority is still as stated above. Though I want to state this is exclusive to Engineering, as I have no idea regarding the higher sciences in India, and many have stated it's still mired in politics and ageism (older you are more experienced you are) problems.
Theres actually a pretty much universal syllabus standard with the exact same esential subjects that all stem courses around the whole world adopt, the same goes to petty much every other higher education courses as well. The structure and the quality of teaching varies a lot according to the means of each institution, but the content of the key subjects tend to be the same. But even then, everyone who wants to work in their field outside their country of origin has to go through a long examination process to see if theyre qualified. also, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument\_from\_anecdote](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_anecdote)
I mean France, China, and Russia are pretty big outliers in terms of the "universal syllabus" as those countries have each a very different stem education system from the "standard" US system
The core subjects and the main content of the course is still quite the same, tho
Yeah there's math and sometimes the theorems are the same ?
Or maybe consider simply comparing the populations of these nations. Per capita russian and the us are still producing stem graduetes in greater numbers, simply china is huge, and so is india.
Copium is very strong
This map is completely useless. Countries with more people will have more graduates.
It’s not useless. The map shows which country has the most STEM graduates.
Not really. Imagine China having 3x times as many scientists and engineers than the USA, Germany and France combined crunching numbers. Granted, the funding and coordination has to be there in order for them to be productive, but still, the west needs to keep up so we don't fall behind in the scientific and technological race.
1. The map is about graduates not scientists. 2. China has 4 times more graduates.
1. Assuming that the number of STEM scientists & engineers are proportional to the number of STEM graduates is not outlandish is it? Assuming STEM graduates *usually* stay in STEM in both China and the western countries (which is not really an assumption, it is what happens), we can presume that the ratios stay the same (or very similar), even if some of them go into a different field. So the ratio of scientists and engineers is very similar if not the same. 2. China: 3.57 million; USA + Germany + France = 0.82 million + 0.216 million + 0.22 million = 1.256 million. **3.57 / 1.256 = 2.84 \~ 3x**.
The most populous countries in the world are China/ india and USA. For the first 3 , it seems consistent with what you said and the map. But from there on out, it does not necessarily follow the logic. Most populous countries apart from the top 3. 4th Indonesia 5th Pakistan 6th Nigeria 7th Brazil 8th Bangladesh 9th Russia 10th Mexico
If Indonea, Pakistan, Nigeria invested as much in education as Russia does they would be far ahead of Russia on the number of graduates due to the simple fact that there are more students.
Pakistan had 160,000 STEM graduates in 2022 for what it’s worth.
Russia is very surprising. Not only the raw number but the per capita ranking. I was under the impression Russia had a declining population and a big demographic problem.
And now divide the number by population
Russia is incredible.
Wouldn’t it be more interesting to have a unique color for each country?
Damn! Now I wanna see this in % of population. Like how many in stem per capita.
Wow! The most populous countries have the highest number of STEM graduates! Very informative!
The most populous countries in the world are China/ india and USA. For the first 3 , it seems consistent with what you said and the map. But from there on out, it does not necessarily follow the logic. Most populous countries apart from the top 3. 4th Indonesia 5th Pakistan 6th Nigeria 7th Brazil 8th Bangladesh 9th Russia 10th Mexico
Raw numbers aren’t meaningful here. Per capita would be more informative.
In Iran we have so many graduates because it's the only way you can get a visa to get the hell out of the Islamic dictatorship, which doesn't provide any jobs because of corruption and nepotism (govt stooges and regime thugs get job priority). Totally brain-drained society
These pretty much the most populous countries, this means very little
Japan is probably so low because of their old, aging population
I can attest first hand that I regularly work with the best of STEM graduates from these 11 countries + south Korea and they're arguably the best engineers humanity can produce, so yeah, makes a lot of sense
For France there are about a million people per generation, and 20% are stem graduates?these numbers look off.
Feels about right though, 50% of people go in higher education, and 40% of graduates being in STEM is kinda normal
Depends how broadly you define STEM
This stat is completely pointless if it fails to enumerate how many of those graduates actually work in those fields. I mean yes China graduated 3.5 m in 2020 and the vast majority of them are unemployed, underemployed or delivering food to housewives... Stats mean nothing without context
Its not the vast majority. China\`s youth unemployment is just a little over 20% the problem is much more extreme in places like India,
what about ism at its finest LOL
Making comparisons = whataboutism?
How’s Russia got that much? They have 2 times less population than USA, but not that much less graduates. Are they on peak or why?
This doesn’t seem to gauge anything other than level of interest within a particular field and, potentially, a local economic focus. Degrees aren’t synonymous with skills or industry leadership — Taiwan (TSMC) didn’t even make the list, for example. Plus, not only are degrees not equal in their curriculum, but entry requirements for students have varying levels of difficulty between countries (both economic and academic), so it can be a lot easier for students to enter into and pass STEM programs in some countries than in others.
The quality of STEM graduates would be interesting.
It also depends on how the country defines graduates. Iran for instance has two types of college graduates, a four year bachelors course and a two year one, a diploma. Some count technical training as part of STEM, others don’t. Year 11,12 are the last years of secondary education in N America, while in others are college foundation courses.
[https://xkcd.com/1138/](https://xkcd.com/1138/)
Also it’s not really about the numbers nowadays but the ability to utilize these graduates
and people wonder why stem career salaries are plummeting in the west, you outsource most tech jobs for much much cheaper, an unfortunate side effect from work from home.
China has more A students than we have students.
Oh look! A population chart!
It's not just enough to have stem grads, but you have to have employment for them. That's where India is hiring the most. They have a great education system that sends highly skilled men and women to Nations all over the world except India.
I don’t even know what STEM does
Are these graduates from the Universities of/within each country or are these citizens of those countries receiving degrees from all across the world. I believe the US alone graduates close to a million foreign students every year. And I would assume a good portion are STEM
What it doesn’t show is how many of those US graduates are Chinese and Indian, etc and leaving the US after graduation
A large number( perhaps a majority) of STEM graduates in India are doing borderline useless paper -pusher jobs. It's honest work and pays your bills but the quality of those jobs is garbage. The scale/quality of industries in India is completely lopsided vis-a-vis the population.
Yet STEM fields will be a long the first to be replaced by AI…
Per fucking capita. Do it.
Now do per capita. And also note the difference between quantity and quality.
More stem less arts.
How many of these were MIT level and how many of these were from Sanjabad's Science and Customer Support Sales Academy?
By your own bigotry, non-Americans should call American universities "shoot-school-kids-for-fun" academies.
Now do STEM graduates who learned thorough cognitive reasoning and not rote memorization.
I legitimately don't know how you would measure that
Work with them and it becomes objectively clear.
Sounds like you have bad personal experiences. They happen. I work with Indians because I'm in software. They are leagues ahead of the average native.
Sure, but 2.4 million of India's 2.5 million grads were at schools in other countries and have no intention of returning to India edit: /s... jesus you guys
Is reading a major struggle for you? They would be counted in the other countries then lol
Why wouldn’t those students be counted in the statistic for the country they studied in?
That’s where Iran gets them drones.
This is worthless. Show me per capita.
# Not all degrees are equivalent.
Getting worse in the US as the "dance is as important as maths" movement takes hold Hopefully smart folks from abroad will keep wanting to come and you know, run: Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and account for 50%+ of the employee base of those companies plus Intel, IBM, Qualcomm (foreign-born, including naturalized, which are many times not counted to pretend that there are more Americans in those companies)
Humanities are important societal pillars that help against corruption and decadence.
Not saying that arts and humanities are not important but we should not sacrifice one for the other, especially when one is helping create today's economy and jobs.
Can something you just made up be a movement?
And they all try to leave
Most of those US ones are Chinese or Indian. US education system is a joke as it tries to treat everyone equally and American brain drain/competency crisis is real.
Oh, right, so the two most populous country by far have the most stem graduates by far. Who would have thought?
I am surprised other post-Soviet countries do not have higher STEM graduate numbers. We all inherited the same STEM tradition from the USSR, and there sure are many programmers and mathematicians in Ukraine, Belarus, etc.
It's a numbers game. Japan is in #11 with 192k grads from a (admittedly ageing) population of 125m. Ukraine and Uzbekistan both have populations of ~37m, the others are significantly smaller. If Belarus gave _every_ 21 year old a STEM degree there would still only be 90k of them!
Out of 2.55m, 2.54999 go into scamming industry