Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Industry Education
Patrick Henry authored a piece over at the PrintCEO blog reacting to Larry Kroll's open letter in the 2007 PIA/GATF Forecast: Technology, Trends, Tactics regarding the state of vocational education in the printing industry.
Kroll's letter and Henry's article are providing some good fodder for discussion on and offline. I'm have provided a PDF of Kroll's open letter so everyone has access to read it, and the opportunity to join this important discussion.
Side note. I wonder why Kroll decided to publish an open letter in a closed publication? A publication like WhatTheyThink could have made it truly open.
Industry education is a timely and important topic to discuss as we transition from a craft-based ink-on-paper industry to an industry that provides cross-media graphic communication products and services. Here are some of my thoughts on Kroll's letter after 7 years of institutional graphic communications education.
In his essay, Kroll wants to know why educational institutions are inclusive, and not taking full advantage of equipment donations:
On the university side, there are many institutions of higher learning such as Ferris State, Clemson University, Arizona State University, RIT, Cal Poly, Ryerson, NYU, CUNY and others that offer a variety of fine graphic arts curricula. Unfortunately, many schools restrict access to these programs to their degree candidates, closing off another avenue of opportunity for learning to everyone else.
Faced with declining enrollment in their graphic arts programs, universities should open training classes, evening workshops, and other opportunities to non-degree candidates. They should strongly consider making the millions of dollars in equipment that has been donated by Heidelberg and others available to everybody in the industry and not just degree candidates at that university.
The overall tone of Kroll's letter is that the industry is not doing enough to support vocational programs that will educate the next generation of equipment operators. This could be true, but he goes on to point out that universities are failing to teach these skills or provide the facilities to do so.
The reality is, when a company donates a piece of equipment to an institution it comes with a bunch of hidden costs such as facilities, human resources, consumables. These costs can be a burden on a program budget and school administrators are always on the look out for opportunities that will provide dollars. This is usually accomplished through increased enrollment or through industry outreach via seminars and conferences.
The RIT School of Print Media has tried to take full advantage of equipment donations by offering research and educational opportunities to the industry through the Printing Applications Laboratory and the RIT Industry Education Programs. CalPoy's Graphic Communication department offers similar programs through their Graphic Communication Institute. I believe Clemson also has an industry outreach program.
The most important point is that this is simply not the role of a university. It is not the responsibility of the graphic communication programs at Ferris State, Clemson, ASU, RIT, CalPoly, Ryerson, NYU, Stout, et al to teach vocational skills. These institutions need to prepare students to be strategic decisions makers and provide them with a framework of knowledge that enables them to be life long learners.
As Dr. Joe noted in his response:
Fragmented industries are fragmented for a reason: customer needs and requirements are diverse, and there are numerous tools and ideas to satisfy them. Therefore one needs to concentrate on the basics that will lead them to the future: clear thinking, analytical workers, who have insightful capabilities with technology. This also means that it is harder for schools to create a program that is focused on a particular tool or a particular skillset.
I did not pursue a degree in the graphic communication programs at UW-Stout or RIT to learn how to run a press or some piece of production equipment. These skills can be picked up on the job, and I did just that the year I worked before enrolling at Stout.
The classes I took outside of the graphic communication program at Stout provided me with skills I still use everyday. I learned how to use MS Excel in the two Physics courses I was required to take. I don't remember much about the physics coursework, but I now have a great command of spreadsheets and use them for a variety of data management tasks. The 3 Computer Science courses I took to scratch an itch have provided me with another perspective on how to address industry problems.
Most of Henry's comments rehash Kroll's letter and I think Dr. Joe did an excellent job of addressing Henry's main points on the PrintCEO blog. The only thing I have to add addresses Henry's comments on the lack of unified cooperation at the industry association level:
If there's a CIP4 organization for JDF workflow, why can’t there be a similar cooperation for the larger goal of graphic arts education? Previous initiatives tell us that it's not for lack of commitment, imagination, or financial support. As Kroll says, the time has come for a truly unified effort. He concludes his open letter with a call for a “graphic arts education summit” at Graph Expo 2007
There is: The International Graphic Arts Education Association (IGAEA). Their next meeting will be held this summer at RIT. Attendees will explore Collaboration, and it is the future of education.
The real question Kroll should be asking is how do we educate the next generation of graphic communications professionals to manage, as Dr. Joe puts it, information chaos. And not how can we best utilize the equipment being donated to schools.
The printing and graphic communications industry is in the business of information distribution. We should not let one distribution method blind us.
Posted in: Education | Printing Industry
3 Comments
Your post and its analysis quite on target. Good job!
Comment by Joe Webb - Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 11:00 AM
Just this morning I was speaking with the owner of a small printing business on Long Island who told me something that owners of printing businesses of all sizes have been saying for years: that the single biggest problem they're facing is finding qualified help.
My source, an RIT graduate who has managed his family's printing business since 1980, bemoaned the disappearance of the schools and training programs that used to teach people to operate the kinds of small-format equipment on which businesses like his depend. He said that although most of the applicants he sees have plenty of experience on 40", multicolor equipment, that kind of background isn't necessarily helpful in an environment where older, one- and two-unit presses are doing the bulk of the work. "I have to tell them, 'Look, there's no digital control console on this thing. You have to know how to be a printer.'"
It's all well and good to talk about learning to manage information chaos. And Printmode certainly is free to argue that teaching equipment skills isn't the proper role for graphic communications programs at universities when these skills can be "picked up" elsewhere. But while we engage in abstract debates about chaos, fragmentation, and so on, printers everywhere--and not just small ones--are wondering where the equipment-savvy, operational talent is supposed to be coming from if not from the schools, association training programs, etc. that they thought were there to help them in this regard.
This is the skills gap that Kroll is talking about in his open letter. His point--that the industry has failed to come up with a unified strategy for recruiting and training the non-executive people it needs to get its printing done--is the one that some readers of his letter seem to be missing. The production skills gap is real, and it's as distressing to printers as it ever was. The industry's education-promoting organizations owe printers a more coherent answer than they've been offering them.
Comment by Patrick Henry - Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 04:30 PM
I'm not disagreeing that the printing industry is suffering from a lack of skilled labor or that there is a lack of outlets to provide training. I do think it is unfair to place this responsibility on universities. It is not their role to provide vocational education and they should not be expected to. However, as I've pointed out, a number of institutions are providing access to equipment and university resources for specialized skill development.
The sad reality is that communities are abandoning vocational education and training at the high school level because there is a sense that coming generations will not have a future in manufacturing.
I was fortunate enough to attend a high school that had an excellent printing program and offered to paths to follow after high school: enroll in one of the numerous vocational printing programs offered by the Wisconsin Technical College System (or at the Dunwoody Institute on the other side of the border) or enroll in the Graphic Communications Management program at UW-Stout.
Comment by Adam - Wednesday, March 7, 2007 at 05:08 PM