To go into a subject, with no foundation, no motivation and no interest. How is this a set up for success?

I mean, sure, people can go into any subject, but... if they're to succeed?

> The notion of substantial motivation or hobby to go into STEM is absolutely ridiculous.

Pretty much all the ones I know that are good at it love it. Just like musicians and athletes.

Sure, there are those in it for the money. They're usually the tweeners.

> Nowadays college students are much more practical.

I'm not so sure about that. There's a large number of math avoiders in college, and when they graduate discover their degree is worth a minimum wage job.

That's because those don't pay you money. I know plenty of excellent engineers who couldn't care less about computer science.

I'm an engineer, and I'm not much into the academic side of computer science. But I enjoy engineering very much.

Okay but the difference is that being a mediocre athlete or musician means that you're unemployed, whereas you can be a totally mediocre programmer and make well into the 6 figures. My friends who are professional musicians know far more about their craft than even the most motivated engineers I've worked with, and they make less money than the worst paid engineers I've met. I've casually played guitar for almost 20 years and been programming less than half that time ane I can't even think about going pro without a massive dedicated effort.

As a STEM student who actually did a STEM job (basic science research) you have to love it to make a career out of it.

The pay isn’t fantastic and your career is basically doing the same thing (with more skill over time) for 30 years. With most of your work a failure.

Even people who liked it often bailed.

Programming is a bit different. You can make a lot of money, have varied jobs and just grin and bear it for the money.

Have to agree the lower salary means you have to love it to spend years doing it. I moved to CS because of that mainly.

> The notion of substantial motivation or hobby to go into STEM is absolutely ridiculous.

You clearly don't have much exposure to the stem bubble. Overwhelming majority are passionate geeks.

Ha ha ha. I have a CS PhD and am friends with grad students in many other STEM fields. There are just as many who are "passionate", or whatever geeky losers who waste their life obsessing over minutiae want to be called, as there are people who are working on their degree for the sake of practicality. I would say the latter are in fact generally more successful.

> losers who waste their life obsessing over minutiae want to be called

Enjoying your work is not the same thing as obsessing over irrelevant minutia.