Detroit, Michigan, will never be Silicon Valley, but Mark Reuss, GM product chief, believes the city can match it with the right steps.
Reuss guest blogged for Crain’s Detroit Business and declared leaders need to do more to bring engineers to the area for tomorrow’s jobs. He noted previous estimated that predict a shortage of engineers in the field around 2020. By then, the United States will be short about 500,000 engineers, and he cited additional research claiming 80 percent of future jobs will be related to science, technology, engineering and math.
The GM executive called on leaders, teachers and even parents to introduce children to STEM fields at a younger age. Hopefully, by making STEM curriculums more widely available, children will be ready to pursue such a career for higher education.
And Reuss said it needs to start now to begin reversing an engineering gap the U.S. faces with the world. GM has already begun working with initiatives to spread education in the classroom from earlier ages and also worked to reach out to more girls who may never consider engineering or technology.
Comments
More engineers and tradesmen. Exactly what our President has been saying. No more worthless degrees.
You are 1000% right and it begs the question, why do we allow scholarships and financing/loans for useless degrees?
No arguement about needing engineers and tradesmen.
But – useless degrees – how would we define those?
The ‘arts & cultural’ sector (I just read this) is a bigger contributor ($763b) to the US economy than agriculture, transportation or warehousing.
The big drivers are broadcasting, film, and music, but the US runs a $20b+ trade surplus. Employs lots of people.
I’m far from an artiste, and not really advocating – but interesting that a sector that would seem dismissible is a bigger financial force than you’d expect …
I would be extremely careful with your figurers.
I would surmise that the numbers you quote are derived from a very small number of entertainers, authors and artists who make huge money leaving the majority in their profession extremely poor and income challenged.
Whereas, Engineering/Technical/Medical/trades provides more even compensation compared to the group that you advocate above, lifting a lot more people to family supporting jobs.
US, Canada, and UK all have become service economies.
The world loves English-speaking culture: TV, moves, books, art, music. CBS expected to earn over 1 billion off Hawaii 5-O and Fox did the same with Glee. These are just two JUNK TV examples.
We are the bankers and insurers and lawyers of the world, too. NYC’s high rents are fed off this combo of Wall Street and entertainment just like America’s high standard of living is fed by the same elements.
I remember when the City still had factories but automation is killing those jobs across America. The welder is quickly being replaced robotic arms with AI precision.
Learning a trade is great but this doesn’t mean that a future plummer shouldn’t be learning what you call useless stuff like history or philosophy.
America is getting pathetic with people not thinking but just voting for the person a favorite talk host tells them to. Worse, we got people so uninformed that they don’t bother voting and stay home. When a country feels instead of thinks democracy dies.
Yep, I agree. I took the numbers with a grain of salt.
(For instance, they didn’t say which industries do even better).
There’s plenty of inequity in the arts, no question. But as an aggregate figure, i found it surprising.
At lease those with degrees in philosophy know why they don’t make any money.
You sound like a cheesy AM radio talk show host. At least the Philosophy major knows how to spell.
Whey? I think you meant when.
The purpose of education isn’t future earning potential. It’s about becoming a well-rounded citizen who can think critically and be self-aware.
Education isn’t Trump University where greed is good. We all hope what we’re hood at or inspired by makes money but college isn’t a get rich quick scam.
GM giving up Opel and possibly Korea may equal poorly engineered product. This gets really scary as GM gets ready to compete against VW with modular kits.
PS: Philosophy and Liberal Arts majors do a lot of good for our society. If it weren’t for Plato, Kant, Smith and Marx there would be no civilization for engineers, you or me.
Good at, not hood at.
I don’t think anyone is saying a philosophy degree is outright useless, as any civilization will always have need for philosophers and language majors to shore up its foundations.
The problem is that there are far too many people with philosophy and language majors than there is academic demand for, and that these people should reevaluate their formal education and consider a different way serve their civilization.
Agreed! Your reasonable insight is always good for this blog.
Granddaddy, I think we overly pressure people into college. It’s become a status/class divide in America.
So many US jobs did not demand degrees 30 years ago. Peter Jennings never went. That is unthinkable today.
Only a small sliver of the population is gifted enough to do anything with philosophy or other Liberal Arts disciplines like phycology, sociology, gender studies.
Our problem is too many students without a good reason for college enrollment so they choose something interesting yet useless without grad school or more. I think that it’s good that they learn how to look at the world more critically but this shouldn’t come at the expense of solid job prospects or a $55,000 tuition bill.
College is so much cheaper in Europe for three big reasons: Universities aren’t undergoing constant
expansion, students who can pass the entrence exam get a free ride and trade schools are a competitive alternative.
I just hate the political snark that accompanies any convo on higher ed. It’s not helpful and after hearing personalities like Dennis Prager I’m convinced that they really want a dumb and distracted population.
It’s nice that they can think but what can they do?
There is a difference between thinking and doing, i.e. taking action to make life better.
The really good people do both.
Yes, really good people do do both.
Firstly, most people’s work has nothing to do with the degree that they earned.
Truth be told half the jobs out there didn’t require a degree until the 1980s when college itself became an industry. Never in history were this many people pushed through the university system.
We can’t make out own tv’s but are great at pumping out degrees.
Actually if I recall it was an old Steven Wright Joke.
You sound like just another sad and angry far left individual who wants what others earned.
Enough with the Hannity-flavored Kool Aid. You sound like a wannabe Faux News slime time personality.
I make more than enough of my own money. I do, however, support Left programs designed to make sure everyone gets the good start that I did, though considering our nation’s great yet squandered wealth.
None of this effects you though, Scott. You need to earn over $10,000 a year to get taxed and they can’t touch your Social Security.
“At lease those with degrees in philosophy know whey they don’t make any money.”
Unless they teach it, which is the sweet gig that everyone with a philosophy degree wants. Otherwise, it’s just padding in someone resume.
They are the reasons so many universities are over priced and many want the goverment to pay for them to go on out tax money.
I’ve found that American universities have disproportionately higher tuition costs, and that might have something to do with the federal and state tax breaks they may qualify for. Comparatively, it’s cheaper here, and it’s even cheaper in the nations that pay for it as they reason that the collected tax money and measured contribution to their national GDP over the students working life will easily pay for the initial tuition costs.
How about social work, communications, or black studies? More future victims.
Certainly near the top of the “useless degree distribution list”.
I would add law degrees, they deal in minutia.
trump sure knows a lot about worthless degrees. how much did he settle for that trump university scam? $25 million or so. funny, people still falling for the ultimate con man.
don’t forget there is a huuuuge bigly future digging for coal. more trump nonsense.
Even in the auto industry the dealer tech are in great shortages.
The greatest issue with the work force today is just one getting people that can pass a background check and drug test. Then try to get them to show up everyday.
So many people lose their job because they call off so much and never show up both whiter collar and blue collar.
Yes, and I am at a big construction site now, high paying union jobs with good benefits and we cannot get enough people, IBEW is even letting retiree’s come out of retirement and work 600hrs/year to cover the need.
My father in-law was a welder and made six figures and got called back several times because they could not get someone to fill his job skill wise.
So many today do not want to do the job unless it is on a computer and even then they want to stay home and play video games.
Most people show up to work.
As for background checks, they don’t make much sense to me: For example, how is a person with poor credit ever supposed to get square if no one is willing to hire them?
We don’t discriminate where I work but it seems as if some people get forever doomed by a past mistake. I’ll take it a step further and say, unless someone is dealing with heavy machinery, that drug tests are ridiculous.
Virtually every young lawyer I know plays with certain drugs yet we hold especially blue collar workers to a higher standard.
Driving a car is heavy machinery
Yeah, and driving under the influence is a crime, too.
You must live in Berkley or never never land.
We have let many people go for not showing up and burning through weeks of vacation, verbal warnings, written warnings then suspensions before the lose their job. #1 reason.
As for background checks it is not a credit check but for things like theft and the like. Since they are handling your personal information and you credit card numbers it is our responsibility to protect you. Same if you have a child molester do you want them at a pre school with your kids?
Poor credit is the least of the problems out there.
When a employee comes to work under the influence that is unacceptable. Be it on machinery or not.
I had one co worker who now has a fused ankle because another worker that smoking pot before his shift was a good idea. She was run over by this employee and suffered near 20 surgeries to save her foot. She still may lose it.
Salesman on coke or meth? That is a good idea. First it is a dis service to the customer but also added cost for lost sales wrong orders etc. added return shipping cost and added insurance cost to all of us do to their added health issues.
It matters little what walk of life you are from working impaired is wrong, unhealthy and an added cost/burden to society.
Middle town Ohio is nearly broke from the Heroin deaths there.
Using drugs is one of the most selfish acts of society if not used for real heath issues. Families suffer, children suffer people die.
No, I wasn’t lucky enough to attend Berkley. I’m as jealous of those people as you. I had to settle for Bard College instead.
Alcohol does far more damage than illegal drugs yet companies rarely test for it. It does much more harm than pot and contributes to far more lost productivity due to its easy and low cost availability.
Furthermore, once someone has repaid their debt to society via jail or prison a criminal background check only equals perpetual joblessness and greatly increases the probability of repeated criminal offence. Your kind of discrimination is a big reason why we have an underground criminal economy.
Also, its ridiculous because those with money hire good lawyers to plea down charges meaning background checks are highly misleading and often discriminatory. I’ve seen friends plea from DWI down to reckless driving. White collar crime, with the right council, often gets knocked down to a fine with the record sealed.
As for unhealthiness, they are already not hiring smokers but what’s to stop companies from rejecting unhealthy overweight people? They are far less productive than smokers
I think it’s often the case that some people, folks like you, just enjoy power and control and the excuse to snark at your fellow workers. You try to establish dominance with words on here and are probably the same at your fast food job or whatever it is you do.
Major in engineering, with a minor in Chinese; probably a future in that.
This is true.
When dealing with China I have found when you want to do business they speak perfect English.
When they mess up an order no one speaks English.
That is why we have Chinese speaking staff in plants to oversee things are done properly. They are well paid.