Presentation by Michal Zemlicka (Charles University Prague; Faculty of Mathematics and Physics; Department of Software Engineering) at the 1st World Summit of the Open Knowledge Society, Athens, 24-26 September 2008. Track: Social & Humanistic Computing for the Knowledge Society: Emerging Technologies and Systems for the Society and Humanity.
Problem: STEM disciplines are very unpopular. Scientists and engineers are usually presented as crazy. Learning STEM is quite hard and requires hard work (and some minimal talent). STEM are taught less than before. Educated and well prepared teachers are required and they are expensive. Labs are expensive. People able to teach STEM can succeed also in other profession (we are lacking STEM specialists).
Approach to change the public opinion: The authors propose to create a system showing how successful alumnies of different school have become. They want to show that the knowledge of mathematicians is an advantage for being employed and having big income (tax statements).
Limits: All technical issues seem to have solved (architecture, certification, encryption, privacy). The main problem is that the use of the existing data is prohibited by law. There will be a powerful lobby of poor schools against such a system.
The authors want to prove the quality of an educational system by using the average success of alumnies. In the discussion it was criticized that “employment” is a rather poor parameter for a complex system such as education and that a more sophisticated approach needs to be taken.