A pretty good summary of the situation, I think, including the point that making more students scientifically literate is not the same as churning out more science majors.
Also, this:
Clearly, powerful forces must be at work to perpetuate the cycle. One is obvious: the bottom line. Companies would rather not pay STEM professionals high salaries with lavish benefits, offer them training on the job, or guarantee them decades of stable employment. So having an oversupply of workers, whether domestically educated or imported, is to their benefit. It gives employers a larger pool from which they can pick the “best and the brightest,” and it helps keep wages in check.
If a levied penalty is less than profit in hand, it’s not a deterrent – it’s a business plan. Management exists to kill the future, for the only trusted employee is one whose sole marketable asset is loyalty. Flashy mediocrity holds a vast audience diligently converting glitter into a tyranny of immersive falsehoods.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.2837
Promotion within hierarchical management is quantitatively worse than random choice.
Rome, 200 AD: astoundingly bankrupt, militarily exhausted, utterly corrupt, then add State-imposed religion (management, diversity). Why should STEM be held in any esteem whatsoever? All our assets belong to charity, to the deserving. Strength Through Sacrifice. (Where the Buffalo Roam, Richard Nixon commenting upon “the doomed.”)