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Future earnings are an important consideration to choose an undergraduate major. STEM fields dominate the rankings for highest median base salary after graduation, but there are financial differences even between STEM subjects. Engineering disciplines take four of the top five spots.
Engineering focuses on the application of scientific knowledge to develop new technologies, products, and industries. Many engineering students find lucrative positions at tech firms like Tesla, Google, or Apple. Science majors like biology, chemistry, and physics tend to focus more on discovery of the natural world, emphasizing research. Compared to engineering students, more science majors choose to pursue an academic or research career, generally with a lower financial payoff.
Graduates of any STEM discipline are well-suited for careers in research, technology, and beyond. However, many university programs are structured in ways that push students towards certain post-graduation outcomes. Camilo Sanchez, a Harvard graduate, switched his undergraduate concentration from Mechanical Engineering to Physics because of the engineering program’s structure. “Mechanical engineering … forced you into a four year program [where] you can pretty much only take your requirements,” he said. Not only are students confined in course selection, but the program discourages exploration outside the classroom as well. “[K]ids were very overwhelmed by the compressed timeline, [so] they didn’t really spend a lot of time building things on their own.” The incentives for exploration were also lacking: “There’s no way to get accreditation or academic validation for individual creative work.”
That balance shifted after Sanchez switched to studying Physics. “You could really explore what you wanted to do… so I could take courses in quantum optics, quantum mechanics, quantum materials, or whatever,” he shared. Instead of defining what students learn, it defined how they learned. He describes it as “a systematic way to approach the world.”
In Sanchez’s experience, the physics program also embraced curiosity outside of the classroom. “I wanted the experience to do research and the program facilitated that,” he said. Since graduating from Harvard, Sanchez has begun pursuing a PhD in Physics at the University of Toronto to continue his research.
With the current structure of university programs, curious and innovative students are constrained. Natural world-oriented students may choose engineering over science for job security. Those prioritizing research and discovery may gravitate towards the sciences, leaving engineering disciplines short of the creative energy they need to innovate.
The system does not need to be this way. We can replace the structures which confine and limit students with a framework for rewarding curiosity, creativity, and discovery. Those changes would go beyond more flexible curriculum designs. “It would be nice if there was some sort of academic recognition, or financial recognition, of design work,” Sanchez suggested.
Jinso increases access to research and properly rewards discovery. It connects curious high school students anywhere to a network of scholars for research mentorship. Jinso researchers build reputations based on the quality of their work, and they can be noticed by both the academic community and employers. The system creates the proper incentives that are needed in academia.
GitHub is a popular platform used by computer scientists to manage their collaborative projects, but a similar program does not exist for academic work. There is no standard platform to create work, connect with others, and share work in one place. Most platforms only fall into one or two of these categories.The Jinso collaboration tool is a better way for groups to work on projects. By bringing the entire academic collaboration process onto one tool, it simplifies workflows and communication.The first steps for using the Jinso platform are:
Once a user builds a network, they can create new Groups that consist of their network members. By default, the creator of a group is the admin. The most common Group is a research group, but the platform can manage several other types of academic projects. Platform users can create study groups for sharing course materials or groups of club members for extracurricular work.The admin of the Group has the ability to add new members at any time.
Admins are also responsible for creating Projects within Groups.
A Project for a research group is usually a research paper, but Projects can also be other forms of documents that could benefit from discussion and revisions. Examples include study guides, business plans, articles, and essays. Each Group can have an unlimited number of Projects within it, and all Projects within a Group are shared among the same members.
Once a user builds a network, they can create new Groups that consist of their network members. By default, the creator of a group is the admin. The most common Group is a research group, but the platform can manage several other types of academic projects.
Platform users can create study groups for sharing course materials or groups of club members for extracurricular work.The admin of the Group has the ability to add new members at any time. Admins are also responsible for creating Projects within Groups.
A Project for a research group is usually a research paper, but Projects can also be other forms of documents that could benefit from discussion and revisions. Examples include study guides, business plans, articles, and essays. Each Group can have an unlimited number of Projects within it, and all Projects within a Group are shared among the same members.
When a new Project is created, an initial revision must be shared. This can either be plain text or a PDF.
The Project will be immediately visible to all Group members with the first revision shown. Group members can comment on the revision with questions or feedback, and others can reply to comments.When another revision of the paper has been completed, the Group admin can add a new revision to the same Project.
The revision will become visible above the prior revision, and it will have a new comment box associated with it. Projects make it simple to keep track of a paper’s entire revision history and discussions at each stage.
For each revision, Group admins can also create subtasks. Arrows allow Group members to view all of the different subtasks and comment on them individually. Subtasks allow a paper to be analyzed in unique components. For example, a research paper can have a unique subtask for each of its sections, and collaborators can discuss them all separately in the comment boxes. Jinso is a quicker way to collaborate on long-term projects. It makes it easier to connect, share, and manage the development of ideas and papers. You can create a Jinso account and start using the platform today for your research and academic needs at jinso.io.
Future earnings are an important consideration to choose an undergraduate major. STEM fields dominate the rankings for highest median base salary after graduation, but there are financial differences even between STEM subjects. Engineering disciplines take four of the top five spots.
Engineering focuses on the application of scientific knowledge to develop new technologies, products, and industries. Many engineering students find lucrative positions at tech firms like Tesla, Google, or Apple. Science majors like biology, chemistry, and physics tend to focus more on discovery of the natural world, emphasizing research. Compared to engineering students, more science majors choose to pursue an academic or research career, generally with a lower financial payoff.
Graduates of any STEM discipline are well-suited for careers in research, technology, and beyond. However, many university programs are structured in ways that push students towards certain post-graduation outcomes. Camilo Sanchez, a Harvard graduate, switched his undergraduate concentration from Mechanical Engineering to Physics because of the engineering program’s structure. “Mechanical engineering … forced you into a four year program [where] you can pretty much only take your requirements,” he said. Not only are students confined in course selection, but the program discourages exploration outside the classroom as well. “[K]ids were very overwhelmed by the compressed timeline, [so] they didn’t really spend a lot of time building things on their own.” The incentives for exploration were also lacking: “There’s no way to get accreditation or academic validation for individual creative work.”
That balance shifted after Sanchez switched to studying Physics. “You could really explore what you wanted to do… so I could take courses in quantum optics, quantum mechanics, quantum materials, or whatever,” he shared. Instead of defining what students learn, it defined how they learned. He describes it as “a systematic way to approach the world.”
In Sanchez’s experience, the physics program also embraced curiosity outside of the classroom. “I wanted the experience to do research and the program facilitated that,” he said. Since graduating from Harvard, Sanchez has begun pursuing a PhD in Physics at the University of Toronto to continue his research.
With the current structure of university programs, curious and innovative students are constrained. Natural world-oriented students may choose engineering over science for job security. Those prioritizing research and discovery may gravitate towards the sciences, leaving engineering disciplines short of the creative energy they need to innovate.
The system does not need to be this way. We can replace the structures which confine and limit students with a framework for rewarding curiosity, creativity, and discovery. Those changes would go beyond more flexible curriculum designs. “It would be nice if there was some sort of academic recognition, or financial recognition, of design work,” Sanchez suggested.
Jinso increases access to research and properly rewards discovery. It connects curious high school students anywhere to a network of scholars for research mentorship. Jinso researchers build reputations based on the quality of their work, and they can be noticed by both the academic community and employers. The system creates the proper incentives that are needed in academia.
