Weekly Update

_{Electrical apprentices for Ford Motor Co. work on a circuitry lesson in professor Brian Iselin's practical applications of fluid power course at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report}

Colleges struggle to make manufacturing training hot again 

Nolan Norman had no idea what microelectronic manufacturing entailed when his adviser at Midview High suggested he take the school’s new class on it last year.

Yet once he started fusing metal to circuit boards, he says he was hooked. “When I was little, I thought that wizards made these things,” the 18-year-old joked of the electronics he’s now able to assemble. Despite long “hating” the idea of college, he was motivated to enroll in the microelectronic manufacturing bachelor’s degree program at nearby Lorain County Community College this fall. He’s spent the summer working in a job in the field that gives him both college credit and pays $18 an hour. Said Norman: “Now I’m seeing the path to get to be one of these wizards.”

Norman’s path wasn’t accidental: Two years ago, Lorain County Community College partnered with Midview High to create the course, one of several ways the college is trying to recruit and train more young people for jobs in manufacturing.

Nationally, more than 400,000 manufacturing jobs are going unfilled, many of them in advanced manufacturing, which requires the sort of high-tech skills and postsecondary credentials that Norman is working toward. President Donald Trump is leveraging tariffs in part, he has said, to grow manufacturing jobs in the United States, including those that involve machinery or robotics and training after high school.

Yet as it is, colleges have struggled to add and revise their training based on employer input and prepare students for tomorrow’s jobs, not just today’s. 

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A largely invisible role of international students: Fueling the innovation economy

Saisri Akondi had already started a company in her native India when she came to Carnegie Mellon University to get a master’s degree in biomedical engineering, business and design.

Before she graduated, she had co-founded another: D.Sole, for which Akondi, who is 28, used the skills she’d learned to create a high-tech insole that can help detect foot complications from diabetes, which results in 6.8 million amputations a year.

D.Sole is among technology companies in Pittsburgh that collectively employ a quarter of the local workforce at wages much higher than those in the city’s traditional steel and other metals industries. That’s according to the business development nonprofit the Pittsburgh Technology Council, which says these companies pay out an annual $27.5 billion in salaries alone.

A “significant portion” of Pittsburgh’s transformation into a tech hub has been driven by international students like Akondi, said Sean Luther, head of InnovatePGH, a coalition of civic groups and government agencies promoting innovation businesses.

State preschool program helps kids catch up — but many are missing out 

At least 10,000 more children in New Jersey’s poorest school districts are eligible for a landmark program offering free, high quality pre-K, but haven’t enrolled.

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