Science and Technology Studies Prove Intriguing Alternative to Traditional Science Degree

摘要

Graduate high school, finish college, get a job. This was, for many years, the formula for many young adults across America. Education ended when a bachelor's degree was awarded, and enrolling in graduate studies was only something that future doctors and professors did. Today, however, enrollment numbers for graduate programs across all 50 states are peaking. The National Opinion Research Center reports that nearly 40,000 students received doctorate degrees in 2003 alone, in fields ranging from the fine arts to the humanities to the natural sciences. There are the usual choices of law for those who want to be lawyers, medicine for those who want to be doctors, and philosophy for those who want to be ... well ... philosophy professors. But a unique program has been emerging over the last 15 years in undergraduate and graduate programs alike, called science and technology studies or STS for short. (Other pseudonyms like science and technology in society exist throughout the curriculum as well.) Its purpose is to explore the ways in which the sciences and the humanities interact and affect one another. Today, less than ten universities across the country boast graduate programs in STS, but professors who teach at those schools say the value of the field cannot be measured in the number of institutions where it is offered.