Giving Compass' Take:

• JS Chen argues that tech companies are going into education to create a highly-skilled STEM workforce that will bring down salaries for workers. 

• STEM education is generally promoted as a pathway to higher paying jobs, will decreasing scarcity reduce the pay of these careers? Can funders work to keep wages up while increasing the talent field? 

• Learn about education technology's machine learning problem. 

Apple, Google, and Microsoft are the champions of teaching tech in schools. For many, they are saving education. Apple cuts prices on their hardware for dot-edu email owners to make their products available to students. Google competes by selling cheap Chromebooks and provides a suite of education services to improve teamwork and collaboration. Microsoft has countless programs to empower classrooms with new technologies, such as teaching with Hololens.

These companies have catchy slogans for their programs like “expanding learning for everyone” and “empower every student on the planet to achieve more.” But we shouldn’t be fooled. These companies position themselves as good corporate citizens by empowering students with tech skills and accelerating STEM education; their motives, however, aren’t pure.

While it may seem like these companies are competing in the education market simply to broaden their consumer base and give back a little, their collective strategy is much more concerning. Tech oligarchs are pushing skills like coding in education to train their own future labor force — and pay them low wages.

It makes sense that these companies are playing the long game on skills and wages. Labor is among their most expensive costs, with tech worker salaries running to the low six figures at Facebook and Google. But with few workers possessing the skills to do these jobs, a competitive salary is the only way that tech companies can compete for talent today.

There is no reason tech workers should expect disproportionately high salaries to be permanent, however.

Read the full article about tech companies by JS Chen at Jacobin.