In a very creepy nod to Soviet-style central economic planning, the Senate Education/Higher Education Committee said “da” to SB 1198 today. Initiated by the JOBS Commission, the bill states that the “Education Cabinet” will “set as a priority an increase in the number of students earning post-secondary credentials in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.”
The Ed Cabinet will “determine measurements for assessing the number of available jobs” in the STEM fields,and then “identify federal, State, and local funds that may be used to set this priority.” It will also “monitor progress” in the cooperation between K-12 and higher education to produce more STEM graduates.
Are we going to have commissions and cabinets (What, no “panels?”) determining how many degrees are granted in the STEM fields? If this silly thing actually becomes a law, how long will it be before we are overproducing biologists and underproducing chemists because it is easier to meet the quota of graduates in the natural sciences that way? Kinda the way Soviet factories would only produce children’s shoes because they were cheaper to produce and meet quotas for than adult shoes–resulting in adult shoe shortages. And if schools fall short of what the Cabinet wants, will they simply stop failing anybody in STEM subjects?
On the other hand, maybe it’s about time we had really smart commissars rationally deciding how many people we need in each job category instead of dealing with that all that messy wage-price, labor supply-demand nonsense. Das Ve Danya, Komrade!
