Why Universities are Important to Rebuilding US Manufacturing

23.03.2017

The university system needs to engineer a solution to the manufacturing skills gap or risk dropping out of the global economy.

The fact that more and more manufacturers are returning manufacturing to the U. S. or keeping manufacturing here instead of moving to Mexico or Asia is good news, but on February 23, 2017, President Trump met with two dozen manufacturing CEOs at the White House. 

While they "declared their collective commitment to restoring factory jobs lost to foreign competition," some of the CEOs "suggested that there were still plenty of openings for U.S. factory jobs but too few qualified people to fill them. They urged the White House to support vocational training for the high-tech skills that today's manufacturers increasingly require…The jobs are there, but the skills are not," one executive said during meetings with White House officials that preceded a session with the president."

"We were challenged by the president to ... come up with a program to make sure the American worker is trained for the manufacturing jobs of tomorrow," Reed Cordish, a

White House official, said after Thursday's meetings."

Training today's workers in the skills they will need for the jobs of the future in manufacturing is important, but we also need to educate the next generation of manufacturing workers. We need more engineers to rebuild American manufacturing, and universities play a key role in providing this education.

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Dr. David B. Williams, executive dean of the Professional Colleges and dean of The College of Engineering at The Ohio State University, located in Columbus, Ohio, to discuss the role universities are playing in rebuilding manufacturing and educating the next generation of manufacturing workers.