What's the Answer to Filling Future High-tech Jobs?

The trick for manufacturing managers is to start treating their highly trained workers as a precious resource to be cultivated and mined and not a consumable commodity that can be tossed out in the next product generation. Once China and India learn this important concept, the last of the West's technological advantage will evaporate.

yes, but the question was really about 'how to stimulate' I thought, and while you are correct in everything you say, there is no doubt in my mind that any restriction in the flow (such as credentials as a form of filtering) will effectively limit that flow. We need flow first. That comes from a difference of potential. After we have created flow, (primed the pump, and got it pumping) we can filter and regulate.

my 2^¢

chris - I think this is a chicken-egg proposition. Right now the market is looking for "chickens" in other countries because the supply in the USA isn't all that attractive. I think we all agree (at least in this forum) that we in the USA need to work on the "atractive" part. An element of that is technical education. A subset of that element is making it easier for the prospective employer to understand what the prospective employee has to offer. This is a "pull" factor. Providing the education resources is primarily a "push" factor in the present USA employment scheme. It wasn't always this way.

In a previous posting I kicked around the push vs. pull thing. Either way can get an object moving. So can both acting together. The currently interesting aspect of push vs. pull in vocational education is that pushing is usually on the financial shoulders of taxpayers and students. The pull stuff is ultimately paid for by employers and their customers. To me a good credentialling scheme gives the employers a very nice anchor to attach their pulling rope.

Ed Weldon

Hi Ed,

I really agree that there needs to be some way for employers to know what they are getting. When I went to electronics college, the primary instructor was also one of the guys who put together several programs, and had gone out to industry, and consulted with a great many companies as to their current needs. (He was also a business man, prior)

What this gave the program was a great deal of traction with industry, and the placement rate for students was 100%. In fact, most students had job offers even before they were completing their (mandatory) practicum job placements. (1 month)

So I agree with you that this (industry/school interaction) works. I think that employers ought to have significant input to technical course design, and be willing to offer temporary placement positions, for exposing the students to reality. In addition, factory tours are always a good idea for 'reality orienting'

I haven't heard of push vs. pull before. I'll give that some thought.

thanks,

Chris

Chris-- Your point about businesses going out to the educators and working with them is indeed the primary step. That used to be much more common when I was a kid. Somehow that has gotten lost.

I may be the first one to apply the "push-pull" idea to vocational education. But the terminology has had wide application in recent years to commercial supply chain management as an expansion of the original idea of Just-in-Time (JIT) materials delivery. I don't want to sound like any authority on JIT. When the idea surfaced a generation ago I was one of the naysayers who simplistically referred to it as "Jumbo Inventory Transfer". Now looking back I see it as a decent idea.

I see at least one common thread in the application of the "pull" approach to both areas of industrial management. It motivates both the supplier and the commercial customer to get more involved together and build long term relationships. Today in the world of staffing businesses are still operating the way they did 20 years ago with materials purchase. Back then the approach was to go out with RFQ's (request for quotation) once you decided you needed some material item to support your production. Then a vendor came back with a quote for "X" number at "Y" price and you picked the cheapest.

Companies mostly do that today with staffing. I say mostly because there have always been a few that planned further in advance to the point of substantial support for preferred educational institutions or programs. 60 years ago that practice was far more common than it is today. But changes in the way multinational business is done, the roles of corporate strategic planning and the nature of public corporation ownership (to name just 3 of the factors; there are others) have had their effect.

The beauty of planning ahead for company resource needs (markets, materials, labor, capital, real estate and, yes, political influence) is that it smoothes out the shocks that otherwise produce profit reducing inefficiencies. I believe that this line of thinking will become more important as we enter an era of diminishing resources and slower growth. Hopefully this line of thinking will stimulate changes in our education systems and attract more attention to "labor resource management" from our business world.

Ed Weldon

Credentialism is a poor idea, in my opinion.

The days of the western manufacturing (large # of low paid workers) pathway to the middle class are essentially gone. Unless western industry, education & government attack this problem from the same side of the fence, we will loose the economic race to Asia and other developing countries who "get it". None of the 3 individually can do this alone. Industry could, but the incentives to outsource (or better, dis-incentives to invest in western workers) is too great.

I think 80% of the million jobs that will be created in the next decade in high tech will be filled by computers and robots. 20% will be the people to keep them operational.

Not complaining.................just thinking out loud.

We need more than credentials. We need an environment where the credentials, once attained, can be demonstrated and even to be conceived in the first place.