Space. Is it the ‘final frontier’? ‘Final frontier’ means there’s nowhere else to explore, and with so much left in this universe to discover it’s wrong to think that man should stop once we’ve settled space. With last week’s news of Paul Allen’s decision to join the ranks of entrepreneurs investing in the future of space exploration, thinking of space as the final frontier should be something left to the movies of the past. The problem is, with the current state of education there is a possibility that the real exploration of space might not happen. There is already a demand for scientists and engineers in many fields that’s so great it can’t be filled by the number of professionals who are available now. A quick search of the NASA webpage even shows that they are in need of IT specialists, accountants, writers, and many other positions both technical and otherwise. How did this happen? Simple. Science has grown in leaps and bounds in as few as the past 10 years and has outgrown the educational system. There is no easy solution, but there are steps that we must take if we want to bridge the gap between the number of students we produce who are ready to start working in the STEM fields and the amount of students we will need to have to be able to continue the exponential growth we have been experiencing in those fields:
1. Increase access to technology – We can’t expect students to join the workforce if they are not ready to work with current technology.
2. Provide alternatives to standard education – If a student can’t learn the concepts sitting in a 42-minute class there must be some other way to educate them.
3. Foster creativity – We are responsible for instilling in these future scientists the desire to discover and develop new technologies in the STEM fields. No discovery was ever made by someone who was satisfied with the status quo.
The private sector will be on the moon within the next 2 years, but to able to explore further we will need to develop new technologies. Within the next 15 years we will need to develop systems of production and manufacturing with off world capabilities. The work to this end has been started, but to finish it we are going to need a new generation of pioneers and thinkers. To be able to have a future without a ‘final frontier’ and to keep expanding how far we can explore, we need to start preparing the students of today to be the explorers of tomorrow.
