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Originally Posted by Playlife  As far as I know, there's a significant shortage of school teachers. And firefighters. They might be jobs that don't require as much training as a NASA physicist, but I would think they are more needed. Without those, there would likely be no NASA, or other big things. |
There are predictions of an upcoming shortage of teachers, because of the baby boomers coming up to retirement. And this shortage is partly a function of there being a huge oversupply of teachers for so many years, when not as many people chose to pursue this profession. Nowadays, there's much more of a guarantee to be able to get a job as a teacher, so I expect many more people will go into the field once again. It's not like nursing, where we do face an ongoing and critical shortage.
Firefighters, I don't know. That's a whole different scenario. Dangerous, and lousy work hours.
But as far as NASA, once again, it's easier for someone to become a grade school teacher than to become an astrophysicst or engineer. No matter how valuable primary school teachers are, it's still a lower-level scale of skill compared to engineering.