Why STEM Education Needs to Reach Students Long Before They Think About Careers

June 25, 2026

If you spend enough time with young people, you start to notice something. They are excited to learn about the world. But the way they learn is different. My grandchildren are very comfortable with using technology, however, as a grandparent, I have seen it firsthand. They are accustomed to learning in shorter bursts, through games, videos and social media, formats that center interaction and exploration rather than passive instruction.

Their interest is shaped not just by what they learn, but how they experience it. That matters more now than it did just a decade ago.

Emerging technologies are moving from theory to application at a rate that is much faster than in previous generations. Today’s kindergarteners will never know a world in which artificial intelligence wasn’t broadly available to everyone. Even once esoteric ideas like quantum computing aren’t abstract concepts with far off implications for this cohort. If we wait until college or even high school to introduce students to these ideas, we are already behind.

The challenge is not a lack of interest. Research shows that fascination with STEM peaks between the ages of 11 and 15. And yet, there is a notable absence of engineering-related content for this age group.

At the same time, the vast majority of jobs, nearly 80% will require STEM skills in the next decade.

Closing that gap requires follow-through. Young people are highly adaptable, but we need to rethink how we teach if we want to reach them effectively.

This is where organizations like IEEE have a responsibility and an opportunity.

We are in a unique position as a global community of technologists, engineers, and educators. We have the expertise, but more importantly, we have the ability to connect that expertise across disciplines and across generations.

The IEEE Future Tech Explorers Challenge launched earlier this year with the goal to find new ways to teach these concepts. This challenge was designed to tap the collective ingenuity of the entire IEEE community and the rules were carefully designed so that participants were not locked into a single way of learning or a single solution to the problem.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach. One of the big lessons of my time working in disaster response through IEEE MOVE is that every disaster is different, and the local needs of every place impacted by a storm is different.

I think that lesson applies to the future of education too. What works for one student or in one classroom may not work for another. The power of IEEE’s community isn’t that it can produce a single right answer, but that it can produce many approaches, suitable for different learning styles, cultures, and contexts.

If we want the next generation to be ready for what comes next, we need to meet them where they are — earlier, more creatively, and with a willingness to rethink how we teach. The interest is already there. Our job is to make sure the opportunity is there as well.