U.S. Senators Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have introduced bipartisan legislation to help schools strengthen their engineering programs to meet the growing demands of 21st century manufacturing.
The bill would designate 25 universities as ‘Manufacturing Universities’ and provide incentives to better align educational offerings with the needs of modern manufacturers. The incentives would be used to revamp universities’ engineering programs to focus on manufacturing engineering and curricula specifically related to targeted industries.
“It’s critical that our schools and universities equip students for success in manufacturing and contribute to the research and development that drives advanced manufacturing,” said Senator Coons. “Although our economy has created over half a million manufacturing jobs over the last three years, hundreds of thousands remain unfilled because we don’t have enough trained workers. We need our engineers to fill the growing demand for manufacturing workers and accelerate manufacturing’s growth. This bipartisan bill would help us meet that challenge. By helping schools focus their engineering programs on advanced manufacturing skills, we can equip our next generation of engineers with the skills they need to thrive in the 21st century.”
From Manufacturing.net
