Lawmakers: Manufacturing Universities Will Help Boost U.S. Competitiveness

Sen. Christopher Coons (D-Del.) says when he visited Dogfish Brewery's bottling plant in his state last year, he was struck by the quiet and clean environment where eight members of a 24-person team worked a shift that required the ability to program computers, troubleshoot issues and monitor quality control. This is not the setting some of today's parents might envision, however, when they think of a manufacturer.

They may recall the Shotz Brewery bottling factory from "Laverne & Shirley," the television show that debuted more than 30 years ago, and which Coons describes as noisy with hundreds of people performing menial and manual tasks, happiest when they could clock out for the day.

As the father of three teenagers, Coons says he is well-aware of parents' conversations about their children's college decisions, tuition costs and professional paths. If parents have not visited a modern manufacturing plant and instead remember stories from a previous generation, they might view the sector negatively, and after sacrificing to send their children to college, they are concerned that it lacks promising employment options, he says.

These parents "have an impression of manufacturing as dangerous, dirty and, frankly, not on the up. They view manufacturing as not having a positive future in our country," he says. "They have an outdated view of manufacturing."

In addition, if engineers share these perspectives, and believe the field, "doesn't have a bright future, they're not going into careers in manufacturing, even though it's incredibly satisfying and rewarding and interesting," Coons says.

Members of the National Association of Manufacturers and those at the Commerce Department who work on attracting qualified applicants to open manufacturing positions "will agree that an outdated image of manufacturing is one of the major recruitment challenges they have in getting talented folks to be willing to go into it as a field," Coons says.

"The way we're going to continue to grow and meet our manufacturing sector needs is by bringing the best and brightest engineers into solving our problems." Changing the perception of manufacturing among guidance counselors, professors and parents is part of his agenda, he adds.

This spring, Coons and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) re-launched the Manufacturing Jobs for America campaign, which aims to build bipartisan support around legislation that helps U.S. manufacturing expand and create jobs. During last year's session of Congress, eight of 36 introduced pieces of legislation related to the campaign's goals were passed into law and focused on angles such as boosting American competitiveness and promoting job training and community college programs.

As part of this campaign, the Manufacturing Universities Act of 2015 was introduced, co-sponsored by Coons, Baldwin and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.). Identical legislation was introduced in the House of Representatives by Reps. Elizabeth Esty (D-Conn.), Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.) and Mike Thompson (D-Calif.), with bipartisan support among seven additional co-sponsors.

The bill would establish a program within the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to designate 25 schools as manufacturing universities. These schools, which would apply for this designation, would receive $5 million annually for four years to achieve specified, targeted objectives, including focusing engineering programs on manufacturing, creating university-industry manufacturing partnerships and increasing training opportunities, such as through for-credit internships and cooperative education. Promoting manufacturing entrepreneurship and local and regional economic growth would be other goals. The director of NIST would run the program in coordination with other individuals such as the secretaries of Defense and Energy and the director of the National Science Foundation.