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Volume 5, Issue 10
November 22, 2010
Best Majors for Big Paycheck
By Tony Dokoupil and Michael Cruz
From Newsweek Education
For Benjamin Braddock—Dustin Hoffman's character in the peerless post college flick The Graduate—a career could wait. After tossing his cap at
the University of California, Benjamin returned to
his parents' house in Pasadena and spent the
summer lounging by the pool. Few June 2010 graduates have the luxury of such carefree days, as
they confront student loans and a job market still clogged with unemployed 2009 graduates. The
number of openings for new B.A.s shrank by an estimated 22 percent last year, according to the
National Association of Colleges, and with only slight improvement this year, unemployment for
degree-holding early-20-somethings has remained above 7 percent. That means many new grads
may find themselves poolside after all—only it won't be out of choice.
Some caveats: the figures are self-reported and limited to people with a B.A. only (which means
lawyers, doctors, and anyone with an advanced degree are not included). More important, salary
reflects career choice as much as the financial merits of a particular major.
See What the Majors Are...
Science Humor
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At the Scientist Party...
Bohr ate too much and got
atomic ache.
Inside this issue:
Everyone gravitated toward
Newton, but he just kept moving
around at a constant velocity and
showed no reaction.
College Kid to
Millionaire
Einstein thought it was a relatively good time.
Eight Jobs That Are
Still Sexist
A Few Famous
Women of Science
-24
At a resolution of 10 meters, isolated clumps of strange
matter pop briefly out of the quantum foam to debate the
possible existence of particle physicists.
(from “Strange Matters,“
http://www.lab-initio.com/subjects_sciences.html)
Cauchy, being the only mathematician there, still managed to integrate well with everyone.
Edison lit the party up.
Page 2
College Kid to Millionaire
From Newsweek Education
For most students, college is a time to
make new friends, and possibly, if one is
feeling industrious, a really killer beer
bong. But for some enterprising college
kids, their time at school was when they
started making their millions. Mark
Zuckerberg, shown here, started
Facebook from his Harvard dorm room
(though the provenance of the idea is
hotly debated). Now, the social networking site is the most visited Web site
in the U.S., and Forbes pegs Zuckerberg's worth at around $4 billion.
Eight Jobs That Are Still Sexist
From Newsweek Education
Read more...
A Few Famous Women of Science
Rachel Carson was basically an important
environmentalist who made the society aware
of the effects of DDT on crops and water systems. In effect, she was named to the Ecology
Hall of Fame and to the Top Twenty Most Influential Scientists and Thinkers for the Twentieth Century. Her books are still read worldwide. Major works: Effects of DDT on crops
and water systems
There was a small victory for women in tech earlier this year,
when Mattel announced that long-time career model Barbie
would have a new calling as a computer scientist. But as The
New York Times pointed out, a doll is still a doll, and women in
the world of tech aren't faring as well as we might have hoped.
Female college students may now earn 56 percent of the degrees in science and engineering, but once those ambitious
young women hit the workforce, many of the promising statistics slowly begin to reverse themselves. As The Times notes, 56
percent of women with technical jobs leave work midway
through their careers, double the turnover rate for men. Of
those women, 20 percent leave the workforce entirely, while
31 percent take nontechnical jobs, suggesting that it's not just
child rearing that's behind the switch. It could even be something more retro: as a recent Center for Work-Life Policy
study revealed, 63 percent of women who leave jobs in tech
and engineering say they've experienced workplace harassment,
and more than 50 percent say they felt they needed to "act like
a man" in order to succeed.
See more...
Gertrude B. Elien was an American scientist,
who lived from 1918 to 1999. She is well
known for her contributions in cancer research. Ellien is accredited for discovering
many anti-cancer drugs. For her efforts, she
was even awarded a Nobel Prize. Major
works: Discovery of anti-cancer drugs
Maria Mayer was a German physicist. She is
known for determining the shell structure of
the atom and the shell configuration, wherein
the electrons are positioned. It is her model
that is used by most of the teachers within the
classroom, to explain the composition of the
atom. To the surprise of many, Mayer also
assisted on the atomic bomb project and was
awarded a Nobel Prize for her contribution in
the separation of the isotopes of uranium. Major works: Determining the shell structure of
the atom and the shell configuration