Experts brainstorm ways to hook youth on manufacturing
Academic, business and political leaders brainstormed ways Wednesday to attract more young people into manufacturing, from improving education to tapping the awe-inducing capabilities of information technology.
“Manufacturing has a major image problem,” said Eric Spiegel, president and CEO of Siemens Corp., noting it ranks dead last in career pursuits for people ages 18 to 24.
A lack of skilled workers has resulted in more than 120,000 vacant manufacturing positions in Massachusetts, said Gov. Deval Patrick, one of several people to address a crowd of more than 200 at the Hanover Theater for the Performing Arts in Worcester during a morning conference sponsored by The Atlantic magazine.
And that figure is expected to grow by 100,000 over the next decade as more workers of the baby boom generation retire, added Tim Murray, president and CEO of the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce. Recruitment challenges will be exacerbated by the retirements of many people overseeing or conducting manufacturing training programs, said Tom Wesley, senior director of facilities, environmental health and safety, and real estate for Milford-based Waters Corp.
Advanced manufacturing, though, is on the upswing. The sector is growing 40 percent faster in Massachusetts than elsewhere in the country, Patrick said, and offers median annual salaries of $70,000, Murray said, higher than in either education or health care.
“Manufacturing is a good, solid, viable middle-class career,” Wesley said.
But educators encounter resistance when they try to pitch millennials – or their parents – on these jobs due to perceptions that manufacturing is dark, dirty and dangerous.
“There’s a certain amount of nostalgia that’s holding back manufacturing,” Patrick said.
Worcester Technical High School takes on those assumptions by sending letters to the parents of each of the school’s 400 freshmen detailing career options and salary information for precision manufacturing fields, said Shelia Harrity, the school’s principal. The school took this action after finding that parents would often rebuff efforts by their kids to sign up for manufacturing courses. The school used to send most of its graduates directly into the workforce, Harrity said, but nowadays, 87 percent of Worcester Tech graduates attend two- or four-year colleges.
Quinsigamond Community College also received support from the National Science Foundation to teach parents from across Greater Worcester about manufacturing, school president Gail Carberry said. QCC currently has 300 students enrolled in its engineering program and 100 in its manufacturing program, Carberry said, and hopes to double both those figures within five years.
Places such as Worcester Polytechnic Institute have tried to connect directly with prospective students by setting up a YouTube channel and posting one-minute videos extolling the virtues of manufacturing, said Tobjorn Bergstrom, operations manager at WPI’s manufacturing laboratories.
Software as an attraction
Improvements in technology have also made it easier to expose teens to manufacturing. Software simulations replicate the response functions of machines, providing instantaneous feedback at a much lower cost than actual equipment, said David Thomas, vice president of research and development at Framingham-based Bose Corp.
But obstacles remain.
The curriculum and equipment available at schools varies widely in fields such as machine tool technology, Wesley said, making it difficult for employers to determine what graduates know. Add to that the fact that some faculty members have been out of the industry for decades, causing them to lose touch with current challenges.
Training and shadowing opportunities are also more limited in remote parts of Central Massachusetts, Carberry said. QCC is hoping to partly address that by bringing an electronics curriculum and dual-enrollment programs out to Quabbin Regional High School in Barre, she said.
And employers question the effectiveness of existing training and education programs.
Some 70 percent of educational institutions think their graduates are ready for work, Spiegel said, but just 40 percent of employers agree. And two-thirds of students think they have the problem-solving skills needed to succeed in the workforce, he said, but less than half of companies concur.
“We’re not preparing nearly enough people,” Spiegel said.
Employers hope that will change by extending outreach efforts beyond technical high schools or community colleges. Thomas said educators need to make sure manufacturing is included in conversations about the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) rather than be classified as a trade.
He’d also like to see more efforts to get middle school students – particularly females – excited about manufacturing so that they opt for such courses when they have the opportunity.
“We’re losing the students very early,” Thomas said.
U.S. Rep. James McGovern, D-Worcester, said more hands-on activities – such as robotics or video game design competitions – are vital for hooking kids on manufacturing while they’re still impressionable.
“A third grader is not going to know what she might be when she grows up,” McGovern said, “but she might have some fantasies.”
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