What percentage of these degree holders actually have skills employers are looking for?
They probably have little to no skills.
My son, who is now in engineering school at Virginia Tech, was going to enter the STEM program that was just starting up at the time he was to enter high school. The teachers had a two week summer program to start the young children off and give them a flavor of what was to come so I dropped him off at the local high school and picked him up mid afternoon.
He was very upset as he said they spent most of the day surfing the Internet on the subject of rockets and then they made a couple of rolled up paper rockets.
An entire summer day wasted on nothing so I found out the list of teachers who would be doing the teaching for STEM and found none of them had the qualifications to teach any hard science or mathematics. On top of that many of the children enrolled had lousy GPAs and were not the children we thought would be attending a program developed for the express purpose of advancing children into science and engineering careers.
That first day was his last for the STEM program and he took all the real hard classes by himself.
The STEM program is nothing more than another waste of our hard earned money and a feel good for both low-level students and low-level teachers.
Agreed. “STEM” is a mighty broad designation and many undergraduate degrees don’t count for much, while many employers are looking for experienced hires.