New York invests heavily in STEM education for long-term competitiveness in global economy

It was early 2009, and New York was in a terrifying economic free fall that threatened the very future of the city.

The stock market had lost over half its value in just 18 months, and the financial firms that powered the local economy were losing profits and workers like never before.

If the city were to reverse the devastating loss, it would do so only by shifting its focus away from Wall Street and to another industry.

But in the end, there was one idea that caught fire as New York’s clear best hope: STEM, or science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

RELATED: LEARN THE ESSENTIAL FACTS OF STEM

STEM is at the center of a nationwide push to transform education — from the primary grades to graduate school — away from the humanities and toward the sciences.

And city officials settled on a plan to try to position the city as a capital of the global digital economy by creating an educated, entrepreneurial workforce.

“When we talked to leaders in the private sector about diversifying the economy, we heard over and over that New York City did not have enough engineering talent,” Steel said.

Nearly four years later, New Yorkers are seeing the early results of that multibillion-dollar education gamble.

The city has created 22 new technical education high schools, with seven more coming next year. There are hundreds of new STEM programs in public schools across the city at all levels.

Construction is about to start on a $2 billion Cornell genius school graduate program that’s designed to churn out the next generation of tech entrepreneurs, and the City University of New York has rolled out dozens of new STEM programs since 2005.

“It’s about being competitive and helping to recruit and retain businesses in our city,” said CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein. “It’s a huge opportunity for us to say to companies all over the world: Come to New York City, and there will be enough people with the skills you need.”

The STEM movement — and the acronym — have been around since around the time of the last financial collapse, the burst of the Internet bubble in 2002. A director in the National Science Foundation coined the term to describe educational programs the federal agency was starting in school districts around the country.

“It was clear to us that the United States had to shift its educational focus to the sciences,” said Judith Ramaley, now a professor at Portland State University. “We were planting the seed of what’s happening in New York now.”

As Ramaley and her colleagues promoted STEM programs in individual schools in districts across the country — including New York City — the idea caught on. “Somewhere around 2008 it really exploded,” said Ramaley. “It seemed like every district in the country was starting to go after STEM.”

Leaders in education came to believe that in order to prepare students for the workforce, they needed to ramp up training in computers, engineering and the sciences.

“They were following the jobs,” said Ray Mellado, CEO of Great Minds in STEM, a national STEM advocacy group based in Los Angeles. “If we were going to be competitive in a global economy, we had to create a better workforce.”

U.S. Department of Commerce statistics show that STEM-related fields such as computer programming and health care are growing at nearly twice the rate of other fields. STEM fields are forecast to produce millions of jobs over the next decade — and those jobs pay about 25% better than other fields, according to the Commerce Department.

The shortage of workers with STEM skills is so acute that the U.S. House of Representatives passed the STEM Jobs Act last week to make a special allowance for 55,000 green cards for foreign-born workers who hold degrees in STEM fields.

City school officials say they want to be sure those opportunities are available to city kids, too, and made that a focus of their investment in schools. Since 2004, the city has opened nearly two dozen technical education high schools — with seven more planned for next year — and implemented STEM programs in hundreds of schools of all levels.

“STEM schools are about making sure our students are fully ready for the knowledge economy,” said schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott. “They prepare students for success in college and careers.”

The Bloomberg administration has also made a $100 million investment in another huge project to prepare the STEM workforce – Cornell NYC Tech, Cornell University’s soon-to-be-built Roosevelt Island campus that Mayor Bloomberg calls a “game-changer” for the city’s engineering and tech industries. The $2 billion, 2 million-square-foot campus will be the city’s first world-class university that’s exclusively dedicated to high tech. It is expected to open in 2017.

Economic officials believe the payoff will be huge: The school will generate $23 billion in economic activity, according to estimates. “As Mayor (Ed) Koch said, ‘New York City is where the future comes to audition,'” Mayor Bloomberg said. “We’ve always been home to big ideas and important innovations. If we want to compete in the global economy, we have to make sure it stays that way. Educating the tech leaders of tomorrow in our city — and keeping them here — will ensure that we can create the jobs of the future and build our economy for the long-term.”

bchapman@nydailynews.com