Colleges Struggle to Make Manufacturing Training Hot Again
In The News Piece in The Hechinger Report
Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report
Aug. 27, 2025
Shalin Jyotishi is cited in a piece for The Hechinger Report covering the challenges colleges face in scaling manufacturing training for today’s high‑tech job market.
ELYRIA, Ohio — Nolan Norman had no idea what microelectronic manufacturing entailed when his adviser at Midview High suggested he take the school’s new class on it last year.
Yet once he started fusing metal to circuit boards, he says he was hooked. “When I was little, I thought that wizards made these things,” the 18-year-old joked of the electronics he’s now able to assemble. Despite long “hating” the idea of college, he was motivated to enroll in the microelectronic manufacturing bachelor’s degree program at nearby Lorain County Community College this fall. He’s spent the summer working in a job in the field that gives him both college credit and pays $18 an hour. Said Norman: “Now I’m seeing the path to get to be one of these wizards.”
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