Thursday, March 8, 2007
Industry Vocational Education
Patrick Henry provided feedback in the comments of my Industry Education post. He brought up some good points so I thought I would address some of them here.
Henry starts by providing anecdotal evidence that we are failing to meet the needs of printers:
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.'
I could see a stronger argument in the single color duplicator pressman becoming overwhelmed by all the fancy bells and whistles of the modern mass production offset press. But, basically what I read here is a lack of investment in employee development on the part of Henry's source.
Entry level skills such as single color press operation can be taught on the job. And since we are swapping anecdotes, I will provide two that have impacted my life.
I was fortunate enough to attend a high school that had an excellent printing program. Students had access to a plethora of prepress and press systems. Before I had my drivers license I learned basic operation of a A.B Dick 360.
My Grandmother worked in a church office and for many years her duties included printing the Sunday bulletin on a small single color offset press located in the back room. She did this with no formal printing education.
So if a distracted high school student and an old lady (sorry grandma) could learn to operate a printing press, anyone with any amount of mechanical aptitude could be trained on the job to run a press in a manufacturing environment.
Henry thinks we are avoiding to address the real problem by engaging in too high level of a debate:
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.
There are schools that offer the vocational education and training that can help individuals develop these skills sets. For example, the Wisconsin Technical College System offers graphic and printing technology programs on nine its campuses.1 Seven SUNY campuses have associate level graphic technology offerings, some with multiple programs.2 Graphic Comm Central's database includes 250 college and university graphic communication programs, and more than 280 high school programs.3
Henry thinks some are missing the point:
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.
To start, videos like this don't help. In Kroll's letter he called out a number of institutions of higher learning for not doing their part. As I've said, I 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 in the Industry Education post, a number of universities are providing access to equipment and university resources for specialized skill development.4
The core of the problem is that communities are abandoning vocational education and training at the high school level because there is a sense that there is no future in manufacturing. We live in a time were the offshoring outsourcing of manufacturing is effecting all industry sectors, including print production.5, 6, 7
A lack of community support is not only affecting printing tech-ed programs. A family member that teaches construction and manufacturing technology in Minneapolis struggles to get parents to understand the importance of these classes. Not only for the students that will enter the workforce right of high school, but also those that go on to study engineering.
The dropping enrollment in vocational programs, you can see why there is a lack of equipment-savvy operational talent. Couple this with an industry that is finally starting to embrace process integrated automation; systems that remove some of the skills required to manufacture products. This lowers the demand for employees with specialized skills.
I'm not disagreeing with anyone that there is a problem with the current state of industry education. While university programs and vocational school programs serve the same industry, they have separate roles and responsibilities.
1. Northcentral, Moraine Park, Gateway, Fox Valley, Lakeshore, Madison Area, Milwaukee Area, Northeast Wisconsin, Waukesha County.
2. Erie Community College (South), Finger Lakes Community College, Fulton-Montgomery Community College, Jamestown Community College, Mohawk Valley Community College, Onondaga Community College, Ulster County Community College.
3. http://teched.vt.edu/gcc/HTML/CollegesUnivsSchools.html
4. The RIT Printing Applications Laboratory and RIT Industry Education Programs, CalPoly's Graphic Communication Institute, Clemson's Industry Training Connection.
5. Dewitz, A. Analysis of Book Manufacturing for the US Market
6. Webb, J. A Critical Look at Offshore Printing
7. Chow, Y,W. A Study of offshore printing between the United States and China
Posted in: Education | Printing Industry
