Are young people staying away from tech careers because young people are foolish and shallow, concerned only with big bucks and glamour? Or are there smarter reasons? The answer to that question will determine how best to attract young Americans into tech careers in the future.The issue came up during a panel discussion at this week's InformationWeek 500 conference. On one side of the issue, two men from very different backgrounds: The all-American Jim Goodnight, CEO and founder of SAS, as well as Suraj Prakash, VP of global delivery for Wipro. As described in my colleague Nick Hoover's article, they argue that kids aren't going into careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) because STEM isn't perceived as sexy.

Prakash described his family's experience, after immigrating with teen-age children five years ago from India to America:

Here, his son got the idea that IT was for "nerds" and that the cool job was investment banking. His daughter is in a "laptop school" and still the kids there don't want to get into IT. "We need to focus on creating that excitement around STEM education," he said.

The shortage of American kids willing to go into STEM creates a national innovation deficit, and, if Prakash and Goodnight are right, the answer is marketing: Make STEM careers sexy, make it appealing to kids.

But Ron Hira, associate professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology, said kids aren't avoiding STEM because they're dumb. They're avoiding STEM because they're wise.

[Hira said] it was foolhardy to think that by making IT a sexier career choice, the IT workforce would be more innovative and kids would want to go into IT. "Students are acting rationally," he said. "They go where the opportunities are. The argument that we can make it more sexy and that we need an LA-Engineered TV show -- there's some merit in that, but I don't think that's going to solve the problem."

Kids see the adults around them who go into STEM facing layoffs and getting their jobs outsourced to India and China. So the kids then decide that they're better off doing something else for a living, something that'll provide them a bit more job security.

I think Hira is right. We don't need glamor to get American young people to take up STEM careers. We don't need a big-budget LA Law-style TV show. We need to provide them with rational economic incentives--not just big bucks for a few during the occasional tech boom, but a long-term path to economic security from young adulthood into retirement.

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