Education Gears Up for Onshore Semiconductor Manufacturing

2022 may well be remembered as the year the electronics industry started to reverse the long-standing trend of outsourcing manufacturing to offshore locations such as China. Concerns over geopolitical stability and foreign trade, coupled with recently approved government legislation that encourages and provides incentives for onshore manufacturing, have prompted more electronics manufacturers to announce the building or expansion of onshore manufacturing plants.

To meet the need for an educated and skilled workforce to operate these facilities, companies such as Intel say part of the investment they make will be providing training to workers for the many new jobs that will be created. In many cases, electronics companies will partner with local colleges to provide the specialized skills in process technologies, nanoelectronics microelectronics, and other disciplines related to high-end chip manufacturing.

Currently, there a few programs already in place to train students in semiconductor process and manufacturing technologies, mostly either on the community college level or through graduate certificate programs that enable a working engineer to get up to speed relatively quickly on semiconductor manufacturing. But more programs are coming.

The following gallery shows a sampling of some semiconductor manufacturing programs at the university level, which includes some recent initiatives that are expected to increase the pool of talent to man the new onshore plants coming onstream over the next decade.

Spencer Chin is a Senior Editor for Design News covering the electronics beat. He has many years of experience covering developments in components, semiconductors, subsystems, power, and other facets of electronics from both a business/supply-chain and technology perspective. He can be reached at [email protected].