White Collars Over White Coats: Breaking Down the STEM-to-Corporate Pipeline

“Okay, woman in STEM!” a friend of a friend exclaims when I tell them I’m majoring in biology. “I kinda wish I’d done that instead of this useless English degree. I could be making six figures straight out of undergrad.” 

“Well, I’m going to med school, so I won’t be rich for at least another decade,” I joke, but something within me bristles at the implication that money is my primary reason for becoming a doctor, or even for majoring in a STEM field.

Most of my fellow pre-health students are committed to serving our communities, with financial stability as a long-term secondary goal. However, I do know people who initially planned to endure a few years of cognitive dissonance working in the pharmaceutical industry post-graduation before pivoting to a career that better aligned with their interests and morals. And I have watched these people slowly lose their compunctions and abandon their aspirations of a fulfilling, socially impactful career. 

I am not one to dismiss every pharmaceutical company as part of the evil and monolithic Big Pharma. But I must question the ethics of charging exorbitant prices for necessary medications and churning out new drugs to push on vulnerable consumers in a constant carousel of advertisements, often including paid endorsements from doctors. Alongside their morally dubious business practices, these large corporations ultimately treat their employees as replaceable. Despite their initial enthusiasm in recruiting freshly graduated workers, the companies invest little effort into retaining them once they are hired. The promise of high pay and a stable career pushes workers to either claw their way up the ladder into management and executive positions or simply slip out of the pipeline into another notoriously lucrative industry like finance. 

Wikimedia, 2018. Creative Commons License.

In his book “Wasted Education: How We Fail Our Graduates in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math,” John Skrentny explores the pressures that drive STEM students into careers outside their original fields. He states that at least 45% of American STEM graduates go into a non-STEM job after graduation, and a further 20% go to graduate school for a non-STEM subject. A U.S. Census Bureau report from 2019 corroborates this, reporting that 72% of STEM graduates work non-STEM jobs, but this statistic comes with a few caveats. First, healthcare professions are classified as non-STEM jobs, and excluding them brings that figure down to 58%. Second, economics is considered a STEM major in their analysis, but economics majors typically pursue jobs in business or finance.

Nevertheless, it is clear that a large proportion of STEM majors abandon STEM after graduating, and this implies two major trends: that people are choosing their undergraduate degrees due to external pressure instead of personal conviction, and that students are eschewing healthcare professions and academia in favor of higher-paying jobs. 

Faced with a cost-of-living crisis, a competitive job market, and crushing student loan debt, young adults are under extreme pressure to put their career above all else; for many, it is a matter of survival. Obtaining a STEM degree does tend to increase earning potential, even in non-STEM sectors. Hence, the popular conception of STEM degrees as a ticket to a steady six-figure job rather than a stepping stone to a career that would directly benefit the greater good. 

Disillusionment with academia is another significant factor driving STEM graduates into industry jobs. A study by Dr. Ebony McGee at Vanderbilt University found that 20% of STEM PhDs were unwilling to pursue faculty roles, citing the pervasive “publish or perish” culture. The constant push to secure funding, publish frequently, and inflate results leaves little room for teaching or mentoring, activities that, while valuable, can hurt chances at tenure or lead to being outpaced by more prolific peers.

Even without explicit discrimination or hostility, academia can be incredibly insular and exclusionary. Dr. McGee refers to its unspoken norms as a “hidden curriculum” that serves to maintain the cultural status quo, shaping everything from dress code to ideology and politics. Professors with marginalized identities face implicit bias, especially in the secretive tenure-track process, which tends to reinforce existing hegemonies. While some departments make surface-level diversity efforts, the environment often remains hostile, driving away the very people they claim to include. This discourages marginalized students from pursuing careers in academia, a field that can be just as ideologically and creatively stifling as industry. 

American universities must take a holistic approach to supporting STEM students and keeping them motivated, financially secure, and morally congruent. This includes addressing socioeconomic inequalities, combating implicit bias, and broadening awareness of career paths beyond industry. Smith College exemplifies this with extensive and accessible advising and financial support for graduate school preparation.

Beyond supporting STEM students in choosing professions that serve the common good, society as a whole must stop pressuring people into STEM who aren’t interested and invest more resources into making humanities careers financially viable. Funding for STEM research is important, but it will be wasted if the students using it are apathetic about their research and aren’t concerned with the precision of their lab techniques or the validity of their results. As artificial intelligence becomes more entrenched and integrated into every aspect of our lives, my hope is that more quantitative professions, such as accounting and finance, can be turned over to computers, freeing people to focus on the things that make us human. 

By Louisa Miller-Out

References:

Brasher, J. (2019, June 18). Why are STEM students abandoning academic career paths? Vanderbilt University. https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2019/06/18/why-are-stem-students-abandoning-academic-career-paths/ 

Cheeseman Day, J., & Martinez, A. (2021, June 2). Does Majoring in STEM Lead to a STEM Job After Graduation? The United States Census Bureau. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/06/does-majoring-in-stem-lead-to-stem-job-after-graduation.html 

Education, J. G. for T. H. (n.d.). New Study Challenges Conventional Wisdom on Shortage of STEM Graduates. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/global/2024/02/09/few-stem-graduates-pursue-jobs-or-careers-related-fields 

Leverton, S. (2025, January 21). No, we are not producing too many STEM graduates. Economic Innovation Group. https://eig.org/stem-graduates/ 

Rawat, S., & Meena, S. (2014). Publish or perish: Where are we heading? Journal of Research in Medical Sciences : The Official Journal of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, 19(2), 87. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3999612/ 

Skrentny, J. D. (2023). Wasted Education. University of Chicago Press.

Wright, I. (1926). Readings in Money, Credit and Banking Principles. https://www.informingscience.org/Publications/4250