Frank Romano's last two WhatTheyThink.com columns (Where have all the students gone? and Where have all the students gone? Part deux ) examines one the printing industry's largest problems: the lack of new talent coming into the industry to replace those going out:
The printing industry needs 60,000 new employees every year to replace those who leave the workforce, for whatever reason. Where do replacement workers (new hires) come from? About half come from other printing companies because it is far easier to hire someone who already has the required skills than expend the time and cost of training someone from scratch.
A main point in the Romano articles is that scholarships for students interested in printing are hard to find and in many cases inadequate to cover the rising costs of education. Romano suggests that a clearinghouse should be established that makes it easy to learn about industry education and scholarship opportunities.
A single website that summarizes all the scholarships available, with rules and forms. Call it “printingscholarships.org” and link it to everything, but make it so that everything the student needs is in one place. There would be a calendar showing application deadlines fro each scholarship and even information about the printing industry. The web address would be promoted to every high school counselor, teacher, and student. It would be cheap, effective, and reach students where they live -- online. I am certain that companies would step up to fund it and host it gratis. It can be done immediately. Let’s put politics aside and accomplish this one step.
Industry consultant Hal Hinderliter has taken up the cause and registered PrintingScholarships.org and is working on getting some initial information up. In an email to Hal, I suggested that a wiki-based site (like PrintWiki) would be perfect for this endeavor. A wiki site would enable the entire community to contribute information and doesn't place all the responsibly on one person or group to maintain the information.
Frank's first article drew a number of responses from many within the industry. What are your thoughts? What should we be doing as an industry to attract new talent? What do you do within your own company?
Update 7/23 Pete Rivard Principal Instructor for Digital Imaging at Dunwoody College of Technology in Minneapolis, MN provides his take on printing industry education and how he sells his program to potential students.
