WDET News
- Report: More Engineers Needed
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Aug 28, 2008General
A local college dean says Michigan is trailing the rest of the country… as the nation sees a dip in the number of new college graduated engineers.
The Dean of the Engineering School at the University of Detroit-Mercy Leo Hanifin says over the last seven-years Michigan is down 22% in the number of new engineers it adds to the workforce. Meanwhile, the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics states by 2016 U.S. industry could be short 160,000 engineers… and that doesn’t include the number of baby boomer aged engineers hitting retirement age. Hanifin says if nothing is done… the shortage will be detrimental to the American economy and innovation.
“There’s fewer foreign students coming to this country and fewer of the graduates staying in this country after they graduate… there’s all kinds of challenges that we’ll face. There’ll be a demographic downswing in the number of college age students. So, we’ve got to do a better job of recruiting young people into engineering or we’ll be in a dire situation in our economy.”
Hanifin says he understands students in Michigan have moved away from that technical career because of the downturn in the auto industry. But, Hanifin says there are opportunities for engineers in Michigan. He says 100% of his engineering graduates at U of D-Mercy last year had a job on graduation day.
Hanifin appeared on WDET’s “Detroit Today”.