Biotech Now Being Taught In High Schools
from the with-an-emphasis-on-real dept
There's definitely been a lot of talk lately about how biotech is the industry that's got the most promise to be "the next big thing." Whether you agree with that or not, it seems that some high schools want to prepare the next generation of students for biotech jobs, so they're actually offering biotech as a high school class. What may be most interesting here is the connection between the schools and actual biotech companies. This isn't just about learning about biotech, it's about interacting with companies in the space and understanding the business side of biotech, rather than just the technology (er... and biology). The hope, obviously, is to help make sure the next great biotech breakthroughs come from American companies -- and the best way to do that, supporters of these programs believe -- is to get high school kids thinking about and excited about biotech opportunities. Still, while it's surprising that there isn't more pushback (at least the article doesn't note any) about corporations reaching directly into high school classrooms, it seems like a reasonable thing to do in such an emerging area. A standard curriculum won't be all that useful in a rapidly changing arena -- and connecting with companies who are on the bleeding edge is likely to be a lot more educational in the long run anyway.
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Filed Under: biotech, high school
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Good
While I'm not a fan of corporations reaching into the education system (although this is nothing new), at least someone is modernizing the antiquated curriculum.
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What's the point?
To contribute to a biotech company in a meaningful way, an employee should have a PhD or two. Even then, it is a high-risk, very volatile environment, where well over 99% of biotech companies will disappear after a year or two when they run out of funding. For the foreseeable future, biotech will remain a fringe industry that "holds promise", like maglev trains or fusion power.
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All I know
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Why not?
I know I would have much rather feed rats, fill charts and dip into the math and biology than work at McDonalds during college.
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Most HS Students who know they are going into college are either considering Professional Schools or MBA's. There is a huge field out there for students with PhD's and masters, telling and getting these HS students excited about these opportunities are key.
IMO, most pure researchers enter college with plans on Medicine, and SOMETIMES get sidetracked into research, and they prosper. Students going into college with the mentality of "I want to get my PhD in biochem and work for a Biotech company" will have a huge advantage over other people. ATM, +75% of science grad students in American Universities are foreigners and many are likely to take their education back to there home countries.
We need more good American Science students.
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Re:
Do we? What if I said that we have way too many American science students, in fact? These students come out of school expecting to get jobs in biotech, but they are nowhere to be found. For the past 50 years, the government has been blasting propaganda about "shortages" of scientists and engineers, but we consistenly produce way too many of them. The frustrated science and engineering graduates end up becoming accountants, database administrators, or schoolteachers who spend the rest of their lives demonstrating that water boils at 100C.
People who want scientific careers can make safer bets in the health sciences. Unless you are an absolute genius, I would stay away from traditional science/engineering degrees. I say this as a medical researcher who used to be a software engineer for 8 years; it was clear that an IT career is unsatisfying in the long run.
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I believe we do. Im not gonna cite sources here, but within the last 20 years, the US has seen a dramatic drop in the number of publications in Scientific Journals, with an increase from all other countries (used to be that the US produced more manuscripts then all other countries combined).
I believe that this loss in scientific superiority can only have negative effect on the country as a whole (great for the rest of the world however). What can i say, im a homeocentric kinda guy
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Re: What's the point?
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Sounds like propaganda to me
While Biotech seems like the magic pill for most of the sheeple, reasonable people with even a little grasp of the scientific process understand that it's not that simple. There's a reason most students complain about organic chemistry.
The simple fact that no one in this country has any effective means of determining whether or not they are consuming "biotech" should illustrate how the "biotech" stories have a significant spin applied to them.
So to me this program appears to be a pre-spin endeavor. If they were really concerned about "preparing" students how about addressing lack of basic math skills and perish the thought understanding of the basic scientific processes.
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