Training Gap Faces U.S. Manufacturing

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http://news.yahoo.com/training-gap-faces-u-manufacturing-023656802.html

On Monday, I was at MIT for the second of four regional meetings that the White House asked Susan Hockfield, president of MIT, and Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris, to host in order to get feedback from business leaders, academics and State and Federal government officials on how best to improve the nation's manufacturing base.

Hockfield and Liveris run the steering committee for the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP) , which President Obama kicked off earlier this year.

Hockfield opened the meeting in the morning, with a Federal Government panel including the heads of the National Science Foundation, the Department of Commerce, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the Department of Energy.

The good news the AMP committee presented is the improvement over the past few years in manufacturing job growth.

But the more somber news, in the longer trend, shows the arrows pointing in the other direction. Ten years ago, according to the official conference briefing document, the U.S. "enjoyed a trade surplus in advanced technology manufactured goods. Today, that category accounts for an $81 billion annual trade deficit, meaning that we are buying back technologies that, in many cases, we invented."

Cookie Parker wrote:Lack of funds for higher education, rising costs, and jobs leaving this nation has really left us in a bad place and in a position of non-competition for international jobs.