December 31, 2024 • 49 mins
As 2024 comes to a close, it’s time for our annual predictions episode!
What trends will shape technical education, industry, and workforce development in the year to come?
This week, Matt dives into the most pressing topics for 2025: from AI in education, to economic and workforce trends, to new technologies to keep an eye on. With 13 predictions grounded in data, this episode will get you ready for the year to come.
Listen to learn:
- Why applied AI is set to dominate STEM education in 2025
- The surprising ways EV training and infrastructure will evolve
- What manufacturing contraction could mean for technical colleges and workforce development
- Why skilled trades might thrive even in a shifting economy
- How flexible degree programs are reshaping higher education
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:00):
Music.
Matt Kirchner (00:08):
Well, it is the end of the year 2024 is almost
behind us, and it is hard for meto believe that we are heading
into another great andincredible year in technical
education, we've had so much funthis year on The TechEd Podcast,
so many guests who have taughtus so many interesting things,
made so many predictionsthemselves about the future. And
(00:32):
this episode is reflecting alittle bit on everything we've
learned, and as we do everysingle year here at The TechEd
Podcast, thinking about what isgoing to happen in the world of
STEM and technical education inthe year to come? Yes, it is our
2025 predictions episode,something we do every year here
at The TechEd Podcast. We startby reflecting a little bit on
(00:54):
the prior year, talking aboutthe predictions we made a year
ago and how we did and then wedive into what is going to
happen in 2025 so what does thefuture hold for technical
education? We will get into thatin just a moment. But before we
do How did we do on ourpredictions in 2024 we actually
had eight predictions altogetherthat we made for you a year ago,
(01:16):
and I am going to review everysingle one of them. If you
listen to this episode beforeyou know, we score every single
prediction on a scale of one tofive. So one means it was a
total miss. Five means, oh, mygoodness, we nailed it. And of
course, the numbers in betweentell us about how close we were
on each individual prediction.
So let's go with our 2024predictions, the predictions we
made a year ago. Again, therewere eight of them. The first
(01:39):
one was that curriculum, elearning and hands on training
in the world of electricvehicles was going to be a key
topic in the year 2024Well, we gave ourselves four
stars on this one, I can tellyou, certainly living here in
the Midwest, spending a lot oftime, particularly in the state
of Michigan, where EV is anincredibly hot topic, it was the
talk of the entire state ofMichigan and the Midwest, and
(02:03):
really all over the UnitedStates. When we talked a year
ago, we had just finished up atechnical work group meeting in
Detroit, Michigan talking aboutcertifications in EV
manufacturing. Tremendousexcitement there and from there,
this topic has flourished. Many,many schools, many, many
technical colleges, many, manycommunity colleges and our K 12
districts looking at how weimplement EV learning into
(02:25):
technical education. We're goingto talk more about EV a little
later when we get to ourpredictions for next year. But
for now, we're giving ourselvesfour stars on this one. There
were a lot of moving pieces,especially politically at the
national level, that had, Ithink, an impact on investment
in the way that people werethinking about EV, that's all
behind us. We have a clear pathto the future. Four stars on
(02:47):
that particular prediction. Wealso talked about the fact that
we were at the dawn of majordisruption in higher education,
that we're just at the beginningof this huge sea change in
higher education. We talked lastyear about the enrollment clip,
the fact that demographics don'tnecessarily favor higher
education, especially our fouryear universities, and that they
(03:10):
need to innovate again. We'regoing to talk more about that as
we get into predictions for nextyear. But absolutely, I spent
time at the Alliance forinnovation and transformation in
higher education. In Phoenix,Arizona, was actually a keynote
speaker on one day at thatparticular conference. And I
will tell you that the world isalive with innovation and higher
(03:30):
education. More great things tocome. Four stars on that
prediction. Number Three fromlast year, by the end of 2024 at
least 1/3 of school districts,50% of technical colleges, and
50% colleges and 50% ofengineering programs will have
concrete plans to implement AIcurriculum. Four stars here as
well. That's a little bitanecdotal. There's not a lot of
necessarily third party data tobe able to support this. But I
(03:53):
can tell you, as someone whotravels all over the United
States meeting with K 12educators, Community Technical
College leaders and universitychancellors, provosts, deans and
so on. Everybody is talkingabout and has plans to implement
some version of artificialintelligence learning into their
curriculum. Absolutely a rockstar hit on that particular
(04:15):
prediction. Four stars for thatone. So far so good. Four stars
on all three of our first threepredictions, our fourth one,
almost halfway through lastyear's predictions, more than
50% of educators, includingteachers, instructors, deans and
staff, will be actively usingartificial intelligence in their
day to day jobs. I saw aninteresting study from CNBC.
This was earlier this year, allthe way back in June, and
(04:38):
believe it or not by the middleof this year, by the middle of
2024 it said 46% of teachers and48% of students saying they were
using chat GPT, at least as justone example, at least every
single week. So if we were bythe middle of this year at 46%
of teachers using those types ofplatforms. A generative AI, in
(04:59):
this case, chatgpt. No doubt wehit more than 50% in the second
half of the year. We gaveourselves five full stars on
that prediction, all right.
Prediction number five lastyear, forward thinking
educational institutions willmake major changes in how
students experience learning inthe age of artificial
(05:21):
intelligence. Now here, here wasthe thinking last year, is that
we're going to be using AI moreand more in the classroom. We're
going to have more personalizedlearning programs. We're going
to be matching curriculum withwhere a student is in their
predict particular educationalpathway. We only gave ourselves
three stars on this. There's alot of talk around those types
of advancements, I've got totell you that everybody is
(05:42):
thinking about them. Everybodyis finding new ways to implement
them. I had a conversationearlier this week about a school
district that's utilizing KhanAcademy and providing
personalized learning plans toevery single student. So I would
say, I would say I was almosttempted to say four or five
stars when we say forwardthinking educate educational
institutions would be makingmajor changes in how students
(06:06):
experience their learning. Iguess it really depends on how
we define forward thinking. Someof them, way out in front, have
already done this many morethinking about it. Three stars
on that particular prediction.
All right. Number six. NumberSix related to precision
agriculture, as our audienceknows we are totally changing
the way that we prepare thesoil, the way that we see, the
way that we irrigate, the waythat we fertilize, the way that
(06:27):
we harvest, the way that wemanage livestock, all of these
things in the world ofagriculture. And so we predicted
that edge to cloud, edge tocloud technology and precision
agriculture was going to driveall kinds of learning platforms,
like several that I saw a yearago when I was at a CTE. Well,
we gave ourselves four stars. Iwill tell you that we're really,
(06:49):
really interested in what istaking place in terms of
teaching autonomous farming, interms of teaching how we take
various attachments, cedars,irrigators and so on, using GPS,
using telemetry, and teachingautonomous farming. So I would
tell you, and if you were at a ct this year, of course, an A C T
being the Association for careerand technical education, they're
(07:13):
showing San Antonio, you knowthat we are seeing some really
cool advancements in how we'rebringing precision egg into the
classroom. Four stars on thatPrediction number seven, we're
only two away from being donewith our list of 2024.
Predictions is that we will seeway more formalization in the
way that industrial employersare delivering learning to their
(07:37):
employees. And the truth of thematter is, we gave ourselves
three stars here. I think we'restarting to see more and more of
that, but it really depends onhow the industrial employer is
looking at industrial training.
So I saw a study recently thatwas actually performed by one of
our internal teams. And here'swhat it found. It found that for
(07:59):
those companies that had anindividual or a team of people
responsible specifically fortraining, in other words, that
was their key responsibility.
For those companies, 92% of themwere utilizing formalized
training systems to train theiremployees, right? And then, when
we looked at the companies thatmaybe had a person that had a
lot of hats to wear, they wereresponsible for a lot of
(08:20):
different things. In thoseparticular cases, only 5.4% of
those companies had implementeda formalized training program.
There's a lesson there forindustrial employers, and that
is, if you want to be seriousabout training, if you want to
be serious about closing the gapin skilled talent in your
company, you have to havesomebody dedicated to that
effort. If it's somebody'safterthought, if it's just
(08:42):
another responsibility thatsomebody has on the list,
probably not likely to be verysuccessful in that particular
endeavor. So if you want to havea formalized industrial training
program where you're actuallydelivering learning inside the
four walls of your manufacturingoperation to your employees,
you've got to have a specificgroup of people that are focused
(09:02):
on that. Because of this, weonly gave ourselves three stars.
And this prediction, we areseeing those companies that are
going all in creating theseformalized industrial training
programs. But for the vastmajority of companies across the
United States of America, theyhave a long, long way to go. All
right. Our last Predictionnumber eight last year was that
employers will actively recruitand promote those who hold third
(09:23):
party credentials and microcredentials, like these
certifications or credentialsfrom the likes of MSSC nocti,
the smart automationcertification Alliance, creating
certifications, third partycertifications in manufacturing
and other endeavors for studentsto earn and then demonstrate to
an employer or to anothereducator that they have certain
(09:45):
competencies. Well, we certainlysaw tremendous advancements in
this space. I think we have along way to go in terms of
employers recognizing the hugevalue that these types of
certifications have andunderstanding what the
competencies are that. Behindthem. So when they're hiring
this talent, they recognize thatstudents have capabilities and
things like basic operations,advanced operations, robot
(10:06):
operation and programmingindustry, 4.0 IIoT, smart
manufacturing and so on. I justone example. I saw a letter not
too long ago from Amazon,actually their Chief Strategy
Manager to a individual in aDepartment of Workforce in the
state here in the Midwest. Infact, I'll just say it was Leo,
(10:26):
the Department of Labor andeconomic opportunity in
Michigan. And this individualfrom Amazon drafted a letter
specifically talking about, inthis case, the certifications
from the smart automationcertification Alliance, and
stating right in that letter howmuch a company like Amazon, the
second, I believe, largestcompany in the world, values
certifications like those fromsoccer. So we're seeing larger
(10:48):
companies finally recognizingthis huge value that third party
certifications have. Still havea long way to go. I would say
they're still not householdnames in the world of
manufacturing, distribution,advanced manufacturing and so
on. So we gave ourselves threestars. So that's how we did in
2024 in our scores respectively,four stars, four stars, four
(11:11):
stars, five stars, three stars,four stars, three stars and
three stars. That is an averageof 3.75 on a scale of one to
five, I'll take 3.75 not aperfect year, but not a bad one,
either. We did a pretty darngood job looking out at the
landscape last year and figuringout what was going to happen in
the world of semi technicaleducation here in 2024
(11:35):
so what will the future hold for2025 we have a few more
predictions than usual thisyear. Actually, we have 13
altogether, believe it or not,so 13 total predictions. We'll
get through them relativelyquickly. But here is what we
believe here at The TechEdPodcast, is going to happen in
technical and STEM education inthe year to come. The first
(11:58):
several predictions actuallycompete with each other a little
bit conflict with each other alittle bit, and if I don't put
these into perspective, might bea little bit confusing. So as we
go through these first three wesee some trends happening that I
think are going to be reallyinteresting to watch. They're
not all pushing in the samedirection. And so as these
trends converge, it's going tobe interesting to see how all of
(12:19):
this comes together number onein the world of manufacturing.
We are going to see, andcontinue to see more and more on
shoring we've seen this the lastseveral years, with
manufacturing production comingback to the point of
consumption, and as we've talkedabout many times on this
podcast, you know, we wentthrough this thing called COVID,
(12:40):
and all of a sudden everybodyhad an understanding of how
important our supply chain was.
When we could get what wewanted, when we wanted it, at a
price we wanted to pay. It wasreally, really easy to take the
supply chain and to takemanufacturing for granted, and
we went through this period oftime where we couldn't get that,
where to get the kind of basicstaples that we needed to live
our daily lives. In some cases,those products weren't
(13:01):
immediately available. In othercases, they were incredibly
expensive. And so now everybodyhas an appreciation for supply
chain. We have other things thatare driving this. We're seeing
things that are happening inmicro processors and foreign
reliance, and others relying onforeign manufacturing, affecting
everything from inflation tonational defense, you know, all
kinds of spaces within oureconomy. And so we are seeing
(13:24):
more and more of a focus throughthings like the chips and
science act and elsewhere, tobring manufacturing closer and
closer to the point ofconsumption. We interviewed
earlier this year Barbarahumpton, who is the CEO of
Siemens USA, and talked a lotabout how this creates huge
opportunities for peopleconsidering careers in
(13:46):
manufacturing. In fact, Barbarasaid this is the opportunity to
get in on the ground floor ofthis manufacturing Renaissance.
As more and more manufacturingseeks its point of consumption,
more and more manufacturingcomes back to the United States,
it's going to be a great time.
Will continue to be a great timefor American manufacturing. So
we are expecting more on shoringin 2025 that is Prediction
(14:09):
number one, a factor that'sreally going to affect that. I
believe now that we have somecertainty and some clarity
around what the nextadministration is going to be,
who is going to lead the UnitedStates of America, there's going
to be a lot of effort, a lot offocus and a lot of concern about
what we call the Trump tariffs.
We're already seeing increasedtariff pressure on the likes of
(14:29):
Canada and Mexico and China andsome of our European
manufacturing partners,especially right now, in the
automotive market. But thediscussions around tariffs are
going to spread across theentire economy. We're hearing
numbers as big as 25% beingthrown about in terms of the
possibility for tariffs in thecoming year, meaning that
(14:50):
products coming into the UnitedStates are going to be tariff
the federal government is goingto collect basically a fee for
bringing products into theUnited States. States that has
all kinds of implications formanufacturing. Now how much of
this is policy? In other words,how much of this is really going
to happen, and how much of it ispositioning and creating
negotiating leverage to maybeask some of these partners to do
(15:13):
more in certain areas,immigration has been a big
topic. So how much of thisactually comes to pass. I think
we still have to wait and see,but I think in either event,
it's going to mean more domesticmanufacturing. So it really
compounds that previousdiscussion around onshoring that
was already happening. Whathappens with the tariffs in the
threat of tariffs is going tohave a huge impact on
(15:34):
manufacturing. What this isgoing to do for educators is
it's going to even continue todrive up the need for skilled
talent in advancedmanufacturing. So in terms of
what the future holds for oureducation programs, I'm really,
really bullish on the need foradvanced manufacturing talent.
Prediction number two, the Trumptariffs will have a significant
impact, or at least the threatof those tariffs will have a
(15:57):
significant impact onmanufacturing and the supply
chain here in the United Statesof America. Now we have
something that kind of pushes inthe other direction, as I
suggested, as we began ourdiscussion about 2025 so we've
got onshoring, we've got thethreat of tariffs. These are
going to promote manufacturinghere in the United States. The
other trend that we are seeingand the prediction that we are
(16:19):
making is that the manufacturingeconomy and the fact that it is
contracting right now will be ahuge story in the first half of
2025 this is something thatnobody is talking about now. We
were on to this early. Think ouraudience knows I spent a lot of
time in the world of privateequity. We look at a lot of
different companies. We look ata lot of manufacturing
(16:40):
companies. I sit on the board ofmanufacturing companies. I'm
invested in severalmanufacturing companies. Talk to
a lot of people inmanufacturing. One of the
unwritten stories of the secondhalf of 2024 leading into the
election, was that themanufacturing economy was
contracting, and we werestarting to hear about softness
in manufacturing, volume acrossthe economy. Interesting
(17:02):
article. Finally, the electionsover, things are starting to
settle down. It's interesting.
What you learn after all of thatcraziness moves out of the way.
There was a great article in theWall Street Journal, of course,
one of my favorite periodicals,on December 2. It was written by
Ed Frankel and is talking aboutus factory activity. It said it
contracted as demand remainedweak. That was the that was the
(17:25):
headline was that US factoryactivity was contracting as
demand was weakening. It saidmanufacturing activity in the
month of November of 2024contracted for an eighth
straight month. Eighth straightmonth. Now we weren't seeing any
of this as we were watching thenews in the second half of last
year, nobody was talking aboutit. I knew it was happening.
(17:45):
I've got several witnesses whowere sitting in meetings when I
was saying, Look, we're seeingsoftness in the manufacturing
economy. Now, everybody else iswaking up to this. There's a
metric that I watch every singlemonth. It's called the Institute
for Supply Chain management'spurchasing manager index. I've
been watching that metric fordecade upon decade, probably 25
years or so that I looking atit. It works this way. It looks
(18:09):
at what is happening in themanufacturing economy by you
doing surveys and gatheringdata. Is the manufacturing
economy expanding? Is acontracting and it puts it, puts
it on a scale of zero to 150means it's even, in other words,
if there's no change that themanufacturing economy is neither
expanding or contracting, ascore of 50 would be reflected
(18:30):
in that index. Now, if we are ata point where manufacturing
activity is expanding, thatnumber is going to be higher
than 50. So we see numberssometimes like 5354 55 that
means we have a really frothyand exciting manufacturing
economy. Manufacturers aregrowing. Manufacturing companies
are ordering more from othermanufacturing companies.
Consumers are consuming andcreating demand for manufactured
(18:51):
products and so on. A numberless than 50 tells you the
manufacturing economy iscontracting, and the further
away from 50 in eitherdirection, the more pronounced
that particular trend is. Solet's look at what what's
happened in the last severalmonths. The Institute for Supply
Chain Management said earlierthis year, I think it was toward
the end of November that theirpurchasing manager index of
(19:14):
manufacturing activity wasactually 48.4 I guess it was at
the end of November, up from46.5 in October, right? But it
was still contracting. In otherwords, we were at 48.4 50 means
there's no contraction. We arebelow 50. What that tells us is
that there is a slowdownhappening in manufacturing. And
(19:36):
the truth is that we're going tosee these trends and these
predictions contracting. We'regoing to see onshoring. We're
going to see certainly moreinterest in domestic
manufacturing as we see theimpact of potential tariffs, but
we're also seeing a slowdown inthe manufacturing economy, and
how these first threepredictions converge upon
themselves is going to tell us alot about what happens in
(19:57):
manufacturing and as it relatesto. And for students coming out
of advanced manufacturingprograms from technical
education. The future remains tobe seen. But I think all three
of these predictions are thingsthat we are going to see in the
year 2025 as a result of that,the contraction in
manufacturing, we are going tosee manufacturing layoffs in
(20:19):
2025 we've already seen some in2024 I think as the realization
of the contracting manufacturingeconomy starts to settle in on
people across manufacturing,we're going to see some
downsizing. We're going to goingto see these unfortunately,
they're inevitable inmanufacturing. As manufacturers
adjust their their workforce inthe age of fluctuating demand,
we first encourage manufacturersto think twice before you
(20:41):
announce a layoff or decide tolay your team off. In other
words, we think about how hardwe have worked to create a
manufacturing workforce in thelast several years, the last
decade, really think twicebefore you cut costs just for
the sake of profit, because it'snot going to be long. I've been
through many, many manufacturingcycles. They don't last long.
When we do get a contraction, weusually bounce back relatively
(21:01):
quickly. You don't want to putyourself in the same challenge
you were in a year or two, ayear or two or three or five
ago, where you couldn't findpeople. Hang on to your great
people. Hang on to the greatpeople in manufacturing as long
as you can at the same time.
Look, I've been in the positionwhere you're for whatever
reason, you just can't afford tocontinue to maintain the entire
workforce. I was in a businessone time where half of our our
(21:23):
largest customer, cut ourbusiness in half, and at that
point, it's just unsustainableto be able to continue to
maintain and retain your entireworkforce. So recognizing that
layoffs are going to beinevitable, recognizing that
there may be some downsizing inmanufacturing. Let's talk about
a few things. First of all,manufacturing. When that
(21:44):
happened, will have the fingerpointed to it yet again. People
will be saying, Why would you goto work in manufacturing when
you're just going to get laidoff? Well, you know, as Public
Enemy said back in the 1990s andactually saw Public Enemy in
concert back in the 1980s mighthave even better. 90s might have
even been the 80s. Don't believethe hype, right? When you start
to hear all of this talk about,well, manufacturing isn't a
(22:06):
great career choice because ofthe contraction. Don't believe
the hype. I It drives me crazywhen I hear people say things
like, I want to work intechnology, because if you're
working in manufacturing, you'retoo likely to be laid off. That
drives me nuts. This is one ofthe reasons. Perhaps it's one of
the reasons, according to asurvey, but a Deloitte of 12,000
young people that 80% of themsaid they wanted to work in and
(22:28):
around cutting edge technology.
And anecdotally, many of thosethink that that means working in
the tech sector. It doesn'talways technology careers exist
in manufacturing as well. Butlet's talk about for a moment
whether this paradigm of yourjob is safer in tech than it is
in manufacturing is actuallytrue and is actually accurate.
(22:52):
Tech crunch.com if he's checkedout that website, they track
layoffs and in just in 2024according to them, Cisco, Apple,
infinity and Dell Intel,Salesforce, eBay, even
Microsoft. Several articles, bythe way, just in the last week
that Google may be planninglayoffs in 2025 The truth is
that, yeah, we have layoffs inmanufacturing. We have layoffs
(23:15):
across the economy, including inthe tech sector. So to be fair,
tech companies can be trimmingcertain parts of their workforce
while they're expanding in otherparts of their workforce. So
just because they have a netlayoff or a layoff in one sector
doesn't necessarily mean thatthose are widespread. But what
we're trying to dispel is thisidea that your job is safer in
tech than it is inmanufacturing. I don't think
(23:37):
there's much of any truth tothat. The truth is that if your
company, you're working for goesthrough a contracting economy,
or for whatever reason, demandfor their products are
contracting or decreasing, orfor some reason, they over built
capacity for a trend that didn'tcome to pass, you're gonna see
movement in the workforce.
You're gonna see some peopleunfortunately, possibly losing
(23:58):
their job. But the truth is thatyour job isn't any safer in tech
than it is in manufacturing.
Let's not point the figurefinger at manufacturers. Also.
Keep in mind that over thecourse of the next 10 years,
regardless of what happens inthe next 12 months, we are going
to need more talentedmanufacturing so as you hear
people saying, well, you know,manufacturing contracting, we're
seeing fewer, you know, fewerpeople working in manufacturing.
(24:20):
The long term trend formanufacturing super, super
bullish. According to a study byDeloitte, 3.8 million
manufacturing jobs will becreated between 2024 this year
in 2033 and 1.9 million of thesecould remain unfilled due to the
skills gap. So we have a lot ofroom for manufacturing jobs.
What we want to do is take thelong view of this and continue
(24:43):
to create talent. So as some ofthese trends, like onshoring,
which are not going to slowdown, create more demand for
manufacturing talent that wehave a talented workforce
created by our technicalcolleges, our community
colleges, our engineeringprograms, our high schools, that
is. Ready for the jobs of themanufacturing future. So a long
way through Prediction numberfour, which is that we are going
(25:05):
to see layoffs in manufacturing,I believe, because of this
contraction that's taking placein the manufacturing sector. But
in spite of that, lots and lotsand lots of reason for optimism.
Prediction number five for 2025Tech College enrollment will
skew up over the course of thenext year. Part of that is going
to be driven by people who aremaybe dislocated from their
(25:27):
current job. So if I'm lookingfor a new position, I'm looking
to upskill myself. Where dothose students tend to go? They
tend to find their way back toour Technical and Community
Colleges. And in times ofeconomic slowdown, I can tell
you that that is when ourTechnical and Community colleges
are doubling down on making surethey are training people for the
next age of technology, the nextage of employment. So for those
(25:51):
of us working in technicalcolleges and community colleges,
expect enrollments to start totweak up a little bit, and you
can probably also expect maybeyour average age to tweak up a
little bit as well. The averageage of your student in recent
years, many colleges haveactually seen average ages drop
a little bit as the workforcehas become more sustainable. As
(26:11):
more people have been working,they tend to skew towards
students coming out of highschool. So that's Prediction
number five, technical collegeenrollment is going to skew up,
and the average age will alsoskew up. Prediction number six
is along exactly those samelines, and that is that our
funding at a national level,because of this, is going to
(26:34):
start to trend toward dislocatedworkers. We'll hear things like
boot boot camps that many of usare familiar with from when
we've gone through somedownsizing areas in the past.
Rapid upskilling for new typesof jobs, third party
certifications are also going tobe a big trend. We're already
seeing some of this. And many ofyou follow the what happens with
(26:55):
WIOA, the Workforce Innovationand Opportunity Act. According
to one source I follow, theNational Association of
workforce boards, they actuallywrote a great article last
month. It was entitled, quote,leaders in the Senate and the
House have reached a bipartisanagreement to reauthorize the
Workforce Innovation andOpportunity Act, and they've
added what they call a strongerworkforce for America Act. My
(27:17):
friend Paul Perkins, who hasbeen a guest on The TechEd
Podcast. He's the president ofamateur he's been very, very
involved with the NationalAssociation of workforce boards
and the Workforce Board inIndiana, he told me, not too
long ago, pointed to the a SW, astronger workforce for America
Act recently, as we suggested,promoted and voted on and
(27:38):
enacted by the Senate and theHouse inside aswa, it talks
about increasing the percentageof funds put into short term
training. So we're alreadyseeing at a national level, more
and more we owe a funding goingtoward training, a renewed
interest in the workforce board.
We We owe a funding as itrelates to skilled labor and to
(28:00):
manufacturing. So we're going tosee more and more funding moving
toward dislocated workers, bootcamps, rapid upskilling, short
term training. So keep your eyeson that particular trend. That
is, Trend number six, Predictionnumber seven here on The TechEd
Podcast, on our list ofpredictions for 2025 skilled
trades opportunities will belargely immune from this trend
(28:24):
we're seeing in manufacturing.
So we've talked about not justtrends toward manufacturing
coming back to the UnitedStates, some softness in
manufacturing, what that meansfor Technical and Community
Colleges, what that means forfunding at a national and state
level for boot camps andupskilling, rapid upskilling
third party certifications. Whenwe think about that slowdown,
though, the skilled trades areaslike electricians and plumbers
(28:46):
and HVAC technicians are goingto be immune, I believe, from
the slowdown in this trend.
There was an article in Forbesmagazine in October that
references research by theNational Student Clearing House
Research Center, and it says thenumber of students enrolled in
vocational focused communitycolleges, believe it or not,
(29:07):
increased 16% from 22 to 23 andthis goes back a year or so, but
fields, including HVAC, repairand installation, are seeing
major upticks in young peoplepursuing these careers. It says
seeing huge demand. And this isfrom another article that I read
in The Wall Street Journal,actually seeing huge demand.
There is a trend of privateequity firms, believe it or not,
(29:30):
buying up plumbing, HVAC andelectrical contractors, turning
small business owners that ownedthose contracting companies into
millionaires, and literallydoing it overnight. So we're
starting to see interest fromthe standpoint of investors
getting into this space. Why arethey getting into this space?
Because they don't see anyslowdown whatsoever. So this
(29:50):
particular trend. I'm anelectrician. I'm a sole
proprietor. Maybe I've got acouple folks working for me.
There are private equity groupsat the national level and
beyond, who are doing role. Rollups, what we call roll ups,
buying smaller companies,turning them into a larger
company. And as we mentioned,turning those business owners
who formerly own thosebusinesses into millionaires.
(30:10):
But again, it speaks to thisincredible demand that we have
for the skilled trades. The USBureau of Labor Statistics is
actually predicting a growthrate nationwide for HVAC
technicians and mechanics andinstallers over the course of
the next nine years, believe itor not, is going to be growing
at 6% every single year. So in aspace where we have fewer and
(30:32):
fewer people necessarily workingin that space because of
retirements, because though ofthe aging workforce, demand for
those positions is going to growat a 6% rate. In fact, by one
estimate that I saw recently,37,700 new openings in HVAC
every single year, on averagethrough the year 2032, so for
(30:55):
anybody that's in that spacethat say, HVAC, technician,
electrician, a plumber, workingin other areas of the skilled
trades probably a little lessdisruption for you than what we
might see in the space ofmanufacturing. So so don't
expect that trend to necessarilyhit skilled trades. So our
prediction number seven, skilledtrades opportunities will be
(31:17):
largely immune from the trend inadvanced manufacturing as we see
a little bit of a slowdown inthat space.
All right, so now we're going totalk a little bit about this
dislocated worker funding. So wetalked about the fact that we're
going to see more funding intocreating programs for those that
are dislocated frommanufacturing. We're going to
(31:38):
see less of an impact on theskilled trades, but continued
impact of this trend inmanufacturing. What this is
going to mean is that dislocatedworker funding is not only going
to be focused toward more shortterm training is going to be
focused on short term trainingaround advancing and emerging
technologies. So in thisparticular case, we are talking
about training people forcareers in automation,
(32:01):
automation technicians,electromechanical technicians,
people working in the world ofrobotics, of robotic integration
and even machine learning andartificial intelligence. So look
for this dislocated workerfunding. Certainly it's going to
fund people findingopportunities in traditional
spaces within manufacturing, butparticularly in some of these
(32:21):
emerging technologies, like theones that we just mentioned. So
Trend number eight, dislocatedworker funding is also not only
is it going to rise, but it'sgoing to skew toward advancing
technologies. And as we'rethinking about the future of
education, we want to make surethat our educational programs
are aligned with those trends.
Okay, let's talk a little bitabout higher education in
general, we are going to seecontinued disruption in higher
(32:44):
education, as I mentioned in our2024 trends, we expected
disruption in education. We sawit. We are going to continue to
see huge disruption in the waythat higher educators are
thinking about education. Andone of the examples that I want
to offer is the flexible degree,like the one at the University
of Wisconsin, stout, theirautomation leadership degree.
(33:07):
And when we think aboutdisruption in the world of
higher education, especiallyfour year universities, this is
providing the perfect examplefor how education is going to be
disrupted higher educators fouryear universities, as we all
know, the macroeconomic trendsdo not necessarily favor that
space, and the demographictrends don't necessarily favor
(33:30):
that space. So we've got risingcosts of higher education at the
same time, in some cases,diminishing returns in terms of
the value of a degree. And wehear people argue about, well,
this is, you know, this is thedisparity between if you get a
four year degree, you're goingto be able to make X amount of
money more than a two yeardegree. That's certainly true in
certain spaces, but it's alsonot true in a lot of other
(33:51):
particular disciplines withinhigher education. So
understanding that, on balance,the benefit and the value of a
four year degree is starting tonarrow over some of the other
educational options that ourstudents are able to take when
they are completing their highschool coursework is going to
demand even more innovation inhigher education. We've talked
(34:14):
about the UW Stout degree in thepast. You receive a full 88
credits toward 120 creditbaccalaureate degree just by
earning third partycertifications from the smart
automation certificationAlliance and transferring to
credits from a technical orcommunity college that has a
transfer agreement in place withthe University of Wisconsin.
Style. Think about that. You'remore than three quarters, or, I
(34:36):
guess, almost three quartersthrough a four year degree
without ever paying a penny ofuniversity tuition, without ever
setting foot on a universitycampus. And what's more in that
particular case is you cancomplete your coursework
remotely. You never have toleave your hometown, and you can
earn a baccalaureate degree inautomation leadership, one of
the most in demand competenciesin all of advanced
(34:57):
manufacturing. Tax rate, whilewe talk often, like we said,
about how the demographics arechanging in education, and this
is just a perfect example of howeducation and higher education
is going to change in the nextyear. So we're expecting not
just more disruption in highereducation. This particular
prediction, Prediction numbernine, is that we will see more
(35:19):
flexible degree programs, likethe example that's been set by
the University of WisconsinStout. Keep your eye on that
number 10. We are going tocontinue to see the lines
blurred between what a technicalcollege degree and what a
university degree looks like. Ican tell you, I talked to a lot
(35:39):
of chancellors, Provost vicepresidents, other leaders in
higher education in our fouryear institutions and beyond,
they are all looking at, how dowe take our coursework and
divide it up into smallersections where people certainly
can continue to earn abachelor's degree, a master's
degree, PhD. We have a lot ofdoctorates of education in the
(36:02):
world of technical educationthat nothing wrong with that
pathway. But we are seeinguniversities now finding ways to
chunk up the work that theyhave, the coursework that they
have, into more bite sizedpieces, to reach employers where
they are, to reach the workingAmericans, where they are people
that already have a career maybewant to go back to a four year
(36:23):
university and brush up on aspecific area that they're not
particularly proficient in. Sowe're seeing universities
starting to chunk up theircoursework and their delivery
options in ways that technicalcolleges and community colleges
have been doing for years.
Again, that's just a result ofthe drivers happening
demographically and economicallyhere in the United States. So
(36:47):
while that is happening, whilethat's happening in our four
year degree programs, I willalso tell you that you're going
to see technical collegeslooking to be more and more
creative as well, in maybe evenclosing the gap between what a
traditional associates degreelooks like, what a traditional
baccalaureate degree looks like,and maybe going an extra mile
and providing students morecontent, more learning
(37:10):
opportunities to continue toclose that gap between a two
year and a four year education,I can tell you kind of
privately, that I am seeing somereally, really interesting
innovation that's happening inour Technical and Community
Colleges, things that will beannounced over the course of the
first half of 2025 that arereally going to surprise some
people. So remember that youheard it here first, that some
(37:32):
more of a more of our technicalcolleges, more of our community
colleges, will be figuring out,how do they look, in some cases,
even more like four yearuniversities. All right. On to
Prediction number 11. We'reclosing in on our 13 predictions
for 2025 here on The TechEdPodcast, Prediction number 11 is
(37:52):
all around energy education.
Energy is going to be a keyeducation issue here in 2025
earlier this year, we had Marysnap, who is the Vice President
of Strategic Initiatives forMicrosoft, on The TechEd
Podcast. Mary, of course,talking about a number of
things, including the $3.3billion investment that
Microsoft is making in my homestate, here in southeast
(38:13):
Wisconsin, data centers consumea huge, huge, huge amount of
energy. Let me just give you acouple statistics I found
interesting as I was doing somestudying over the course of last
summer, the energy required totrain one large language model
like chat, G, P, T, is theequivalent of the amount of
(38:33):
energy consumed by 130 homes injust one year, the amount of
energy required to generate animage using artificial
intelligence, just one imagewould charge your smartphone
from zero to 100% lots and lotsof interesting ways of looking
at energy. But because of this,we are going to find, we're
(38:54):
going to need to find as manysources of energy as possible.
The Age of AI, the age of datais not reducing our need for
energy right now, it isincreasing our need for energy.
And for my money, the moreenvironmentally friendly those
energy sources can be, thebetter. So one of the things
that we have our eyes on here atThe TechEd Podcast is what's
(39:15):
happening in the nuclear space.
In fact, watch for in 2025 oneof our episodes with a senior
leader of a company called Wholetech, which is doing some really
cool things in terms ofrecommissioning nuclear reactors
all over the United States. Sowe spent, you know, the last
half century decommissioning ournuclear reactors. Now we are
(39:36):
starting to recommission them,bring that energy power back
online as a source of cleanenergy, as nuclear technology
has changed, as the safetyaround nuclear has changed, as
public perceptions aroundnuclear have changed, and also
as what we call modular nucleartechnology continues to come
online. Don't have a lot of timefor that topic here, but. But
(40:00):
this whole push toward more andmore energy sources is going to
have a resulting impact intechnical and STEM education, in
the need for people whounderstand these energy sources,
who understand how to deriveenergy from alternative energy,
who understand the processcontrol. Because in many cases,
the process control required anenergy mirrors, in some cases,
(40:22):
what you might see in a typicalfood production facility and so
on. So we're gonna have more andmore training around process
control. For those of you notfamiliar, those are things like
level and flow, liketemperature, like pressure, like
SCADA, like PID control and soon. It's a whole different
aspect of process control, andwe're going to need the
(40:43):
technicians, and we're going toneed the skilled talent to be
able to run these facilities. Soyou're going to see demand on
the part of energy producers fortalent that understands how to
maintain the facilities thatproduce this energy. And it's
not going to be just necessarilyin pockets, but with the advent
of some of these new sources ofenergy. We're going to see that
all over the United States. Sowatch for that trend in 2025
(41:07):
Prediction number 11, energyeducation will be a key focus
across the entire country andthroughout the entire 12 months
of 2025 our 12th prediction, andthis kind of piles on a
prediction that we have 2024,and that is the focus on
electric vehicles is not goingto go away. During the last
administration, this was a hugefocus, huge incentives for
(41:29):
purchasing electric vehicles,huge grants that were being
writing, written in that space,for people, for companies,
creating capacity for electricvehicles. That is not going
away, but it is going to evolve.
And we're going to see a majorfocus on training for EV
manufacturing, EV certificationsfor those workers working in EV
(41:50):
manufacturing, continuing tofocus on battery technology and
a focus on infrastructure forelectric vehicles. So let's talk
about this a little bit much ofEV manufacturing. First of all,
so manufacturing electricvehicles isn't a whole lot
different from a typicaladvanced manufacturing facility.
We still have to learn all thesame Mechatronics technologies,
(42:10):
basic AC, DC, electric relaycontrol, motor control, motion
control, programmable actioncontrollers, lean manufacturing,
the list goes on, but we have toadd to that in the world of Ev,
an understanding of EVtechnology, of battery
technology, of Ev, enginefundamentals, and understanding
all of those competencies isgoing to be really important
(42:30):
throughout the supply chain,particularly for tier one, tier
two and tier three, EVmanufacturing facilities. Look
for innovation here, too earlyfor me to tell a couple of
things that we see going on thatwill be announced in 2025 but
around curriculum, aroundcertifications, around the
ability to train people for EVmanufacturing, some big things
are going to happen in the year2025 we're also going to see
(42:54):
more of a focus on efficientproduction. So like any new
manufacturing space,opportunities will abound for
improvement in productivity,efficiency and quality. We're
going to need a generation ofworkforce that continues to
understand how to driveconstraints and challenges and
issues out of manufacturingprocesses. We're going to see
(43:14):
innovation around addressingconcerns regarding the range per
charge on electric vehicles. Soa lot of the reticence that you
hear from people is like, Well,I'm just, I just, you know, I
can't wait to charge up avehicle. What if I What if I run
out of energy, run out of power?
What if my battery goes deadwhen I'm on my way to fill in
the blank, I don't have time tostop for two hours to charge
battery, so on and so forth.
(43:35):
That's a problem that EV isgoing to have to figure out and
solve if they're going toincrease demand for their
products, we expect that theyare going to figure that problem
out, and they are going to solvefor it. Certainly lighter
vehicle, lighter batterytechnology and other one of the
concerns is just the impact of avehicle on our nation's
infrastructure. Electricvehicles tend to be a lot
(43:55):
heavier and put a lot more wearand tear on our roads than a
traditional internal combustionengine vehicle, and so we're
going to see focus on light,lighter weight battery
technology. Finally, one majorconstraint in the world of EV is
charging infrastructure. So wetouched on this just a moment
ago. If I'm traveling in anelectric vehicle, how am I going
(44:16):
to be able to charge thatconveniently and charge it
quickly? It goes to toucheseverything from what are the
locations for the for thecharging facilities,
accessibility, reliability,continued maintenance of
charging infrastructure,implementation and installation
of charging technology, all ofthese are constraints for EV
(44:36):
adoption. So until we can solvefor those problems, people are
going to be reticent, especiallypeople who aren't our early
adopters, are going to bereticent to add that technology
and to get excited aboutelectric vehicles. So we're
going to see a lot of focus onthat particular space. Well, it
turns out the CEO of one of theleading, probably the leading,
(44:57):
electric vehicle brands, mightjust have a. Little bit of
influence at the federal level,if we've been following the news
lately at all, we recognize thatElon Musk is going to have a
huge amount of influence overthe next administration, and the
degree to which this whole issuearound infrastructure gets heard
and addressed remains to beseen. But here at The TechEd
(45:18):
Podcast, we think that EV andthe EV market is going to put a
huge focus on solving for that.
What does that mean foreducation? Well, of course, a
lot of this EV technology, theinstallation of the charging
systems, the maintenance of thecharging systems, accessibility
locations, all of these aregoing to require talent that has
the ability to install andservice EV charging
infrastructure. So expect thatto be a key demand from
(45:41):
employers, and expect ourtechnical community colleges,
high schools and universities tobe working to figure out how we
solve for that demand. Number13, we're at our last prediction
for the year of 2025, number 13,and it's a build on a previous
prediction from last year aswell, teaching applied
artificial intelligence is goingto be all the talk in 2025 and
(46:04):
we're already seeing somereally, really cool things.
We've talked about here on TheTechEd Podcast. Had Mike Bigley
from the White House SchoolDistrict on last year talking
about the advent of teachingapplied artificial intelligence
at his emerging technology labthat is a system that is a
location and an experiment thatis absolutely setting the
standard for how we teachartificial intelligence, how we
(46:26):
teach what we talk here on theon The TechEd Podcast about all
the time, the edge to cloudcontinuum, Smart Sensor, smart
devices, talking to controlsystems, computer networks and
data collectors talking to thecloud, cloud based software that
is analyzing in real time datathat's coming from the edge,
sensors and and devicespredicting the future, creating
(46:46):
all kinds of opportunities inthe world of artificial
intelligence. We can teachapplied AI whole bunch of
different ways. We can putautonomous vehicles in a
classroom, small versions ofautonomous vehicles, teaching it
that way, autonomous mobilerobots, robots that predict
their own future failure andorder their own replacement
parts before the failure everhappens. We can teach it on
(47:07):
drones, unmanned groundvehicles, unmanned aerial
vehicles, where we're teachingthings like sensors and data
acquisition and telemetry andGPS, all part of the edge to
cloud continuum, teaching AI ingeneral and this, and it's not
just chat GPT, right? Chat GPTis AI, but AI is not chat GPT.
It is so much more, and findingways to teach that in an
(47:30):
exciting, applied way. In 2025,of all the predictions that
we're making today, and we'remaking some pretty big ones,
this is the one that I'm mostconfident in. This is the one
that I am most excited about is,how are we going to teach
applied under artificialintelligence, throughout stem
and technical education, somereally, really smart people
working on some really smartways to teach really smart
technology. It's going to bereally, really fun to watch. The
(47:52):
other thing that's going to befun to watch is how the year
2025, rolls out across stem andtechnical education, and here at
The TechEd Podcast, one finalprediction that isn't on our
list of 13, but it's the one weend with every year, and that is
regardless of what happens,regardless of how accurate these
predictions are, we expect thatthey will be pretty accurate.
(48:13):
One thing you can count on forsure is The TechEd Podcast will
be here to bring you the bestcontent in STEM education, the
best content in technicaleducation, to make sure that
you, our audience, are connectedto the people doing the most
innovative things in industryand in education. It is going to
be a great year for The TechEdPodcast. It's going to be a
(48:35):
great year for STEM andtechnical education, and we
can't wait to spend it with allof you. Thank you for joining us
on this episode of The TechEdPodcast, where we think about
the future and make our 13predictions for STEM and
technical education. Thank youfor a wonderful 2024 and here's
to an even better 2025 in STEMand TechEd. You.
Music.
Matt Kirchner (00:08):
Well, it is the end of the year 2024 is almost
behind us, and it is hard for meto believe that we are heading
into another great andincredible year in technical
education, we've had so much funthis year on The TechEd Podcast,
so many guests who have taughtus so many interesting things,
made so many predictionsthemselves about the future. And
(00:32):
this episode is reflecting alittle bit on everything we've
learned, and as we do everysingle year here at The TechEd
Podcast, thinking about what isgoing to happen in the world of
STEM and technical education inthe year to come? Yes, it is our
2025 predictions episode,something we do every year here
at The TechEd Podcast. We startby reflecting a little bit on
(00:54):
the prior year, talking aboutthe predictions we made a year
ago and how we did and then wedive into what is going to
happen in 2025 so what does thefuture hold for technical
education? We will get into thatin just a moment. But before we
do How did we do on ourpredictions in 2024 we actually
had eight predictions altogetherthat we made for you a year ago,
(01:16):
and I am going to review everysingle one of them. If you
listen to this episode beforeyou know, we score every single
prediction on a scale of one tofive. So one means it was a
total miss. Five means, oh, mygoodness, we nailed it. And of
course, the numbers in betweentell us about how close we were
on each individual prediction.
So let's go with our 2024predictions, the predictions we
made a year ago. Again, therewere eight of them. The first
(01:39):
one was that curriculum, elearning and hands on training
in the world of electricvehicles was going to be a key
topic in the year 2024Well, we gave ourselves four
stars on this one, I can tellyou, certainly living here in
the Midwest, spending a lot oftime, particularly in the state
of Michigan, where EV is anincredibly hot topic, it was the
talk of the entire state ofMichigan and the Midwest, and
(02:03):
really all over the UnitedStates. When we talked a year
ago, we had just finished up atechnical work group meeting in
Detroit, Michigan talking aboutcertifications in EV
manufacturing. Tremendousexcitement there and from there,
this topic has flourished. Many,many schools, many, many
technical colleges, many, manycommunity colleges and our K 12
districts looking at how weimplement EV learning into
(02:25):
technical education. We're goingto talk more about EV a little
later when we get to ourpredictions for next year. But
for now, we're giving ourselvesfour stars on this one. There
were a lot of moving pieces,especially politically at the
national level, that had, Ithink, an impact on investment
in the way that people werethinking about EV, that's all
behind us. We have a clear pathto the future. Four stars on
(02:47):
that particular prediction. Wealso talked about the fact that
we were at the dawn of majordisruption in higher education,
that we're just at the beginningof this huge sea change in
higher education. We talked lastyear about the enrollment clip,
the fact that demographics don'tnecessarily favor higher
education, especially our fouryear universities, and that they
(03:10):
need to innovate again. We'regoing to talk more about that as
we get into predictions for nextyear. But absolutely, I spent
time at the Alliance forinnovation and transformation in
higher education. In Phoenix,Arizona, was actually a keynote
speaker on one day at thatparticular conference. And I
will tell you that the world isalive with innovation and higher
(03:30):
education. More great things tocome. Four stars on that
prediction. Number Three fromlast year, by the end of 2024 at
least 1/3 of school districts,50% of technical colleges, and
50% colleges and 50% ofengineering programs will have
concrete plans to implement AIcurriculum. Four stars here as
well. That's a little bitanecdotal. There's not a lot of
necessarily third party data tobe able to support this. But I
(03:53):
can tell you, as someone whotravels all over the United
States meeting with K 12educators, Community Technical
College leaders and universitychancellors, provosts, deans and
so on. Everybody is talkingabout and has plans to implement
some version of artificialintelligence learning into their
curriculum. Absolutely a rockstar hit on that particular
(04:15):
prediction. Four stars for thatone. So far so good. Four stars
on all three of our first threepredictions, our fourth one,
almost halfway through lastyear's predictions, more than
50% of educators, includingteachers, instructors, deans and
staff, will be actively usingartificial intelligence in their
day to day jobs. I saw aninteresting study from CNBC.
This was earlier this year, allthe way back in June, and
(04:38):
believe it or not by the middleof this year, by the middle of
2024 it said 46% of teachers and48% of students saying they were
using chat GPT, at least as justone example, at least every
single week. So if we were bythe middle of this year at 46%
of teachers using those types ofplatforms. A generative AI, in
(04:59):
this case, chatgpt. No doubt wehit more than 50% in the second
half of the year. We gaveourselves five full stars on
that prediction, all right.
Prediction number five lastyear, forward thinking
educational institutions willmake major changes in how
students experience learning inthe age of artificial
(05:21):
intelligence. Now here, here wasthe thinking last year, is that
we're going to be using AI moreand more in the classroom. We're
going to have more personalizedlearning programs. We're going
to be matching curriculum withwhere a student is in their
predict particular educationalpathway. We only gave ourselves
three stars on this. There's alot of talk around those types
of advancements, I've got totell you that everybody is
(05:42):
thinking about them. Everybodyis finding new ways to implement
them. I had a conversationearlier this week about a school
district that's utilizing KhanAcademy and providing
personalized learning plans toevery single student. So I would
say, I would say I was almosttempted to say four or five
stars when we say forwardthinking educate educational
institutions would be makingmajor changes in how students
(06:06):
experience their learning. Iguess it really depends on how
we define forward thinking. Someof them, way out in front, have
already done this many morethinking about it. Three stars
on that particular prediction.
All right. Number six. NumberSix related to precision
agriculture, as our audienceknows we are totally changing
the way that we prepare thesoil, the way that we see, the
way that we irrigate, the waythat we fertilize, the way that
(06:27):
we harvest, the way that wemanage livestock, all of these
things in the world ofagriculture. And so we predicted
that edge to cloud, edge tocloud technology and precision
agriculture was going to driveall kinds of learning platforms,
like several that I saw a yearago when I was at a CTE. Well,
we gave ourselves four stars. Iwill tell you that we're really,
(06:49):
really interested in what istaking place in terms of
teaching autonomous farming, interms of teaching how we take
various attachments, cedars,irrigators and so on, using GPS,
using telemetry, and teachingautonomous farming. So I would
tell you, and if you were at a ct this year, of course, an A C T
being the Association for careerand technical education, they're
(07:13):
showing San Antonio, you knowthat we are seeing some really
cool advancements in how we'rebringing precision egg into the
classroom. Four stars on thatPrediction number seven, we're
only two away from being donewith our list of 2024.
Predictions is that we will seeway more formalization in the
way that industrial employersare delivering learning to their
(07:37):
employees. And the truth of thematter is, we gave ourselves
three stars here. I think we'restarting to see more and more of
that, but it really depends onhow the industrial employer is
looking at industrial training.
So I saw a study recently thatwas actually performed by one of
our internal teams. And here'swhat it found. It found that for
(07:59):
those companies that had anindividual or a team of people
responsible specifically fortraining, in other words, that
was their key responsibility.
For those companies, 92% of themwere utilizing formalized
training systems to train theiremployees, right? And then, when
we looked at the companies thatmaybe had a person that had a
lot of hats to wear, they wereresponsible for a lot of
(08:20):
different things. In thoseparticular cases, only 5.4% of
those companies had implementeda formalized training program.
There's a lesson there forindustrial employers, and that
is, if you want to be seriousabout training, if you want to
be serious about closing the gapin skilled talent in your
company, you have to havesomebody dedicated to that
effort. If it's somebody'safterthought, if it's just
(08:42):
another responsibility thatsomebody has on the list,
probably not likely to be verysuccessful in that particular
endeavor. So if you want to havea formalized industrial training
program where you're actuallydelivering learning inside the
four walls of your manufacturingoperation to your employees,
you've got to have a specificgroup of people that are focused
(09:02):
on that. Because of this, weonly gave ourselves three stars.
And this prediction, we areseeing those companies that are
going all in creating theseformalized industrial training
programs. But for the vastmajority of companies across the
United States of America, theyhave a long, long way to go. All
right. Our last Predictionnumber eight last year was that
employers will actively recruitand promote those who hold third
(09:23):
party credentials and microcredentials, like these
certifications or credentialsfrom the likes of MSSC nocti,
the smart automationcertification Alliance, creating
certifications, third partycertifications in manufacturing
and other endeavors for studentsto earn and then demonstrate to
an employer or to anothereducator that they have certain
(09:45):
competencies. Well, we certainlysaw tremendous advancements in
this space. I think we have along way to go in terms of
employers recognizing the hugevalue that these types of
certifications have andunderstanding what the
competencies are that. Behindthem. So when they're hiring
this talent, they recognize thatstudents have capabilities and
things like basic operations,advanced operations, robot
(10:06):
operation and programmingindustry, 4.0 IIoT, smart
manufacturing and so on. I justone example. I saw a letter not
too long ago from Amazon,actually their Chief Strategy
Manager to a individual in aDepartment of Workforce in the
state here in the Midwest. Infact, I'll just say it was Leo,
(10:26):
the Department of Labor andeconomic opportunity in
Michigan. And this individualfrom Amazon drafted a letter
specifically talking about, inthis case, the certifications
from the smart automationcertification Alliance, and
stating right in that letter howmuch a company like Amazon, the
second, I believe, largestcompany in the world, values
certifications like those fromsoccer. So we're seeing larger
(10:48):
companies finally recognizingthis huge value that third party
certifications have. Still havea long way to go. I would say
they're still not householdnames in the world of
manufacturing, distribution,advanced manufacturing and so
on. So we gave ourselves threestars. So that's how we did in
2024 in our scores respectively,four stars, four stars, four
(11:11):
stars, five stars, three stars,four stars, three stars and
three stars. That is an averageof 3.75 on a scale of one to
five, I'll take 3.75 not aperfect year, but not a bad one,
either. We did a pretty darngood job looking out at the
landscape last year and figuringout what was going to happen in
the world of semi technicaleducation here in 2024
(11:35):
so what will the future hold for2025 we have a few more
predictions than usual thisyear. Actually, we have 13
altogether, believe it or not,so 13 total predictions. We'll
get through them relativelyquickly. But here is what we
believe here at The TechEdPodcast, is going to happen in
technical and STEM education inthe year to come. The first
(11:58):
several predictions actuallycompete with each other a little
bit conflict with each other alittle bit, and if I don't put
these into perspective, might bea little bit confusing. So as we
go through these first three wesee some trends happening that I
think are going to be reallyinteresting to watch. They're
not all pushing in the samedirection. And so as these
trends converge, it's going tobe interesting to see how all of
(12:19):
this comes together number onein the world of manufacturing.
We are going to see, andcontinue to see more and more on
shoring we've seen this the lastseveral years, with
manufacturing production comingback to the point of
consumption, and as we've talkedabout many times on this
podcast, you know, we wentthrough this thing called COVID,
(12:40):
and all of a sudden everybodyhad an understanding of how
important our supply chain was.
When we could get what wewanted, when we wanted it, at a
price we wanted to pay. It wasreally, really easy to take the
supply chain and to takemanufacturing for granted, and
we went through this period oftime where we couldn't get that,
where to get the kind of basicstaples that we needed to live
our daily lives. In some cases,those products weren't
(13:01):
immediately available. In othercases, they were incredibly
expensive. And so now everybodyhas an appreciation for supply
chain. We have other things thatare driving this. We're seeing
things that are happening inmicro processors and foreign
reliance, and others relying onforeign manufacturing, affecting
everything from inflation tonational defense, you know, all
kinds of spaces within oureconomy. And so we are seeing
(13:24):
more and more of a focus throughthings like the chips and
science act and elsewhere, tobring manufacturing closer and
closer to the point ofconsumption. We interviewed
earlier this year Barbarahumpton, who is the CEO of
Siemens USA, and talked a lotabout how this creates huge
opportunities for peopleconsidering careers in
(13:46):
manufacturing. In fact, Barbarasaid this is the opportunity to
get in on the ground floor ofthis manufacturing Renaissance.
As more and more manufacturingseeks its point of consumption,
more and more manufacturingcomes back to the United States,
it's going to be a great time.
Will continue to be a great timefor American manufacturing. So
we are expecting more on shoringin 2025 that is Prediction
(14:09):
number one, a factor that'sreally going to affect that. I
believe now that we have somecertainty and some clarity
around what the nextadministration is going to be,
who is going to lead the UnitedStates of America, there's going
to be a lot of effort, a lot offocus and a lot of concern about
what we call the Trump tariffs.
We're already seeing increasedtariff pressure on the likes of
(14:29):
Canada and Mexico and China andsome of our European
manufacturing partners,especially right now, in the
automotive market. But thediscussions around tariffs are
going to spread across theentire economy. We're hearing
numbers as big as 25% beingthrown about in terms of the
possibility for tariffs in thecoming year, meaning that
(14:50):
products coming into the UnitedStates are going to be tariff
the federal government is goingto collect basically a fee for
bringing products into theUnited States. States that has
all kinds of implications formanufacturing. Now how much of
this is policy? In other words,how much of this is really going
to happen, and how much of it ispositioning and creating
negotiating leverage to maybeask some of these partners to do
(15:13):
more in certain areas,immigration has been a big
topic. So how much of thisactually comes to pass. I think
we still have to wait and see,but I think in either event,
it's going to mean more domesticmanufacturing. So it really
compounds that previousdiscussion around onshoring that
was already happening. Whathappens with the tariffs in the
threat of tariffs is going tohave a huge impact on
(15:34):
manufacturing. What this isgoing to do for educators is
it's going to even continue todrive up the need for skilled
talent in advancedmanufacturing. So in terms of
what the future holds for oureducation programs, I'm really,
really bullish on the need foradvanced manufacturing talent.
Prediction number two, the Trumptariffs will have a significant
impact, or at least the threatof those tariffs will have a
(15:57):
significant impact onmanufacturing and the supply
chain here in the United Statesof America. Now we have
something that kind of pushes inthe other direction, as I
suggested, as we began ourdiscussion about 2025 so we've
got onshoring, we've got thethreat of tariffs. These are
going to promote manufacturinghere in the United States. The
other trend that we are seeingand the prediction that we are
(16:19):
making is that the manufacturingeconomy and the fact that it is
contracting right now will be ahuge story in the first half of
2025 this is something thatnobody is talking about now. We
were on to this early. Think ouraudience knows I spent a lot of
time in the world of privateequity. We look at a lot of
different companies. We look ata lot of manufacturing
(16:40):
companies. I sit on the board ofmanufacturing companies. I'm
invested in severalmanufacturing companies. Talk to
a lot of people inmanufacturing. One of the
unwritten stories of the secondhalf of 2024 leading into the
election, was that themanufacturing economy was
contracting, and we werestarting to hear about softness
in manufacturing, volume acrossthe economy. Interesting
(17:02):
article. Finally, the electionsover, things are starting to
settle down. It's interesting.
What you learn after all of thatcraziness moves out of the way.
There was a great article in theWall Street Journal, of course,
one of my favorite periodicals,on December 2. It was written by
Ed Frankel and is talking aboutus factory activity. It said it
contracted as demand remainedweak. That was the that was the
(17:25):
headline was that US factoryactivity was contracting as
demand was weakening. It saidmanufacturing activity in the
month of November of 2024contracted for an eighth
straight month. Eighth straightmonth. Now we weren't seeing any
of this as we were watching thenews in the second half of last
year, nobody was talking aboutit. I knew it was happening.
(17:45):
I've got several witnesses whowere sitting in meetings when I
was saying, Look, we're seeingsoftness in the manufacturing
economy. Now, everybody else iswaking up to this. There's a
metric that I watch every singlemonth. It's called the Institute
for Supply Chain management'spurchasing manager index. I've
been watching that metric fordecade upon decade, probably 25
years or so that I looking atit. It works this way. It looks
(18:09):
at what is happening in themanufacturing economy by you
doing surveys and gatheringdata. Is the manufacturing
economy expanding? Is acontracting and it puts it, puts
it on a scale of zero to 150means it's even, in other words,
if there's no change that themanufacturing economy is neither
expanding or contracting, ascore of 50 would be reflected
(18:30):
in that index. Now, if we are ata point where manufacturing
activity is expanding, thatnumber is going to be higher
than 50. So we see numberssometimes like 5354 55 that
means we have a really frothyand exciting manufacturing
economy. Manufacturers aregrowing. Manufacturing companies
are ordering more from othermanufacturing companies.
Consumers are consuming andcreating demand for manufactured
(18:51):
products and so on. A numberless than 50 tells you the
manufacturing economy iscontracting, and the further
away from 50 in eitherdirection, the more pronounced
that particular trend is. Solet's look at what what's
happened in the last severalmonths. The Institute for Supply
Chain Management said earlierthis year, I think it was toward
the end of November that theirpurchasing manager index of
(19:14):
manufacturing activity wasactually 48.4 I guess it was at
the end of November, up from46.5 in October, right? But it
was still contracting. In otherwords, we were at 48.4 50 means
there's no contraction. We arebelow 50. What that tells us is
that there is a slowdownhappening in manufacturing. And
(19:36):
the truth is that we're going tosee these trends and these
predictions contracting. We'regoing to see onshoring. We're
going to see certainly moreinterest in domestic
manufacturing as we see theimpact of potential tariffs, but
we're also seeing a slowdown inthe manufacturing economy, and
how these first threepredictions converge upon
themselves is going to tell us alot about what happens in
(19:57):
manufacturing and as it relatesto. And for students coming out
of advanced manufacturingprograms from technical
education. The future remains tobe seen. But I think all three
of these predictions are thingsthat we are going to see in the
year 2025 as a result of that,the contraction in
manufacturing, we are going tosee manufacturing layoffs in
(20:19):
2025 we've already seen some in2024 I think as the realization
of the contracting manufacturingeconomy starts to settle in on
people across manufacturing,we're going to see some
downsizing. We're going to goingto see these unfortunately,
they're inevitable inmanufacturing. As manufacturers
adjust their their workforce inthe age of fluctuating demand,
we first encourage manufacturersto think twice before you
(20:41):
announce a layoff or decide tolay your team off. In other
words, we think about how hardwe have worked to create a
manufacturing workforce in thelast several years, the last
decade, really think twicebefore you cut costs just for
the sake of profit, because it'snot going to be long. I've been
through many, many manufacturingcycles. They don't last long.
When we do get a contraction, weusually bounce back relatively
(21:01):
quickly. You don't want to putyourself in the same challenge
you were in a year or two, ayear or two or three or five
ago, where you couldn't findpeople. Hang on to your great
people. Hang on to the greatpeople in manufacturing as long
as you can at the same time.
Look, I've been in the positionwhere you're for whatever
reason, you just can't afford tocontinue to maintain the entire
workforce. I was in a businessone time where half of our our
(21:23):
largest customer, cut ourbusiness in half, and at that
point, it's just unsustainableto be able to continue to
maintain and retain your entireworkforce. So recognizing that
layoffs are going to beinevitable, recognizing that
there may be some downsizing inmanufacturing. Let's talk about
a few things. First of all,manufacturing. When that
(21:44):
happened, will have the fingerpointed to it yet again. People
will be saying, Why would you goto work in manufacturing when
you're just going to get laidoff? Well, you know, as Public
Enemy said back in the 1990s andactually saw Public Enemy in
concert back in the 1980s mighthave even better. 90s might have
even been the 80s. Don't believethe hype, right? When you start
to hear all of this talk about,well, manufacturing isn't a
(22:06):
great career choice because ofthe contraction. Don't believe
the hype. I It drives me crazywhen I hear people say things
like, I want to work intechnology, because if you're
working in manufacturing, you'retoo likely to be laid off. That
drives me nuts. This is one ofthe reasons. Perhaps it's one of
the reasons, according to asurvey, but a Deloitte of 12,000
young people that 80% of themsaid they wanted to work in and
(22:28):
around cutting edge technology.
And anecdotally, many of thosethink that that means working in
the tech sector. It doesn'talways technology careers exist
in manufacturing as well. Butlet's talk about for a moment
whether this paradigm of yourjob is safer in tech than it is
in manufacturing is actuallytrue and is actually accurate.
(22:52):
Tech crunch.com if he's checkedout that website, they track
layoffs and in just in 2024according to them, Cisco, Apple,
infinity and Dell Intel,Salesforce, eBay, even
Microsoft. Several articles, bythe way, just in the last week
that Google may be planninglayoffs in 2025 The truth is
that, yeah, we have layoffs inmanufacturing. We have layoffs
(23:15):
across the economy, including inthe tech sector. So to be fair,
tech companies can be trimmingcertain parts of their workforce
while they're expanding in otherparts of their workforce. So
just because they have a netlayoff or a layoff in one sector
doesn't necessarily mean thatthose are widespread. But what
we're trying to dispel is thisidea that your job is safer in
tech than it is inmanufacturing. I don't think
(23:37):
there's much of any truth tothat. The truth is that if your
company, you're working for goesthrough a contracting economy,
or for whatever reason, demandfor their products are
contracting or decreasing, orfor some reason, they over built
capacity for a trend that didn'tcome to pass, you're gonna see
movement in the workforce.
You're gonna see some peopleunfortunately, possibly losing
(23:58):
their job. But the truth is thatyour job isn't any safer in tech
than it is in manufacturing.
Let's not point the figurefinger at manufacturers. Also.
Keep in mind that over thecourse of the next 10 years,
regardless of what happens inthe next 12 months, we are going
to need more talentedmanufacturing so as you hear
people saying, well, you know,manufacturing contracting, we're
seeing fewer, you know, fewerpeople working in manufacturing.
(24:20):
The long term trend formanufacturing super, super
bullish. According to a study byDeloitte, 3.8 million
manufacturing jobs will becreated between 2024 this year
in 2033 and 1.9 million of thesecould remain unfilled due to the
skills gap. So we have a lot ofroom for manufacturing jobs.
What we want to do is take thelong view of this and continue
(24:43):
to create talent. So as some ofthese trends, like onshoring,
which are not going to slowdown, create more demand for
manufacturing talent that wehave a talented workforce
created by our technicalcolleges, our community
colleges, our engineeringprograms, our high schools, that
is. Ready for the jobs of themanufacturing future. So a long
way through Prediction numberfour, which is that we are going
(25:05):
to see layoffs in manufacturing,I believe, because of this
contraction that's taking placein the manufacturing sector. But
in spite of that, lots and lotsand lots of reason for optimism.
Prediction number five for 2025Tech College enrollment will
skew up over the course of thenext year. Part of that is going
to be driven by people who aremaybe dislocated from their
(25:27):
current job. So if I'm lookingfor a new position, I'm looking
to upskill myself. Where dothose students tend to go? They
tend to find their way back toour Technical and Community
Colleges. And in times ofeconomic slowdown, I can tell
you that that is when ourTechnical and Community colleges
are doubling down on making surethey are training people for the
next age of technology, the nextage of employment. So for those
(25:51):
of us working in technicalcolleges and community colleges,
expect enrollments to start totweak up a little bit, and you
can probably also expect maybeyour average age to tweak up a
little bit as well. The averageage of your student in recent
years, many colleges haveactually seen average ages drop
a little bit as the workforcehas become more sustainable. As
(26:11):
more people have been working,they tend to skew towards
students coming out of highschool. So that's Prediction
number five, technical collegeenrollment is going to skew up,
and the average age will alsoskew up. Prediction number six
is along exactly those samelines, and that is that our
funding at a national level,because of this, is going to
(26:34):
start to trend toward dislocatedworkers. We'll hear things like
boot boot camps that many of usare familiar with from when
we've gone through somedownsizing areas in the past.
Rapid upskilling for new typesof jobs, third party
certifications are also going tobe a big trend. We're already
seeing some of this. And many ofyou follow the what happens with
(26:55):
WIOA, the Workforce Innovationand Opportunity Act. According
to one source I follow, theNational Association of
workforce boards, they actuallywrote a great article last
month. It was entitled, quote,leaders in the Senate and the
House have reached a bipartisanagreement to reauthorize the
Workforce Innovation andOpportunity Act, and they've
added what they call a strongerworkforce for America Act. My
(27:17):
friend Paul Perkins, who hasbeen a guest on The TechEd
Podcast. He's the president ofamateur he's been very, very
involved with the NationalAssociation of workforce boards
and the Workforce Board inIndiana, he told me, not too
long ago, pointed to the a SW, astronger workforce for America
Act recently, as we suggested,promoted and voted on and
(27:38):
enacted by the Senate and theHouse inside aswa, it talks
about increasing the percentageof funds put into short term
training. So we're alreadyseeing at a national level, more
and more we owe a funding goingtoward training, a renewed
interest in the workforce board.
We We owe a funding as itrelates to skilled labor and to
(28:00):
manufacturing. So we're going tosee more and more funding moving
toward dislocated workers, bootcamps, rapid upskilling, short
term training. So keep your eyeson that particular trend. That
is, Trend number six, Predictionnumber seven here on The TechEd
Podcast, on our list ofpredictions for 2025 skilled
trades opportunities will belargely immune from this trend
(28:24):
we're seeing in manufacturing.
So we've talked about not justtrends toward manufacturing
coming back to the UnitedStates, some softness in
manufacturing, what that meansfor Technical and Community
Colleges, what that means forfunding at a national and state
level for boot camps andupskilling, rapid upskilling
third party certifications. Whenwe think about that slowdown,
though, the skilled trades areaslike electricians and plumbers
(28:46):
and HVAC technicians are goingto be immune, I believe, from
the slowdown in this trend.
There was an article in Forbesmagazine in October that
references research by theNational Student Clearing House
Research Center, and it says thenumber of students enrolled in
vocational focused communitycolleges, believe it or not,
(29:07):
increased 16% from 22 to 23 andthis goes back a year or so, but
fields, including HVAC, repairand installation, are seeing
major upticks in young peoplepursuing these careers. It says
seeing huge demand. And this isfrom another article that I read
in The Wall Street Journal,actually seeing huge demand.
There is a trend of privateequity firms, believe it or not,
(29:30):
buying up plumbing, HVAC andelectrical contractors, turning
small business owners that ownedthose contracting companies into
millionaires, and literallydoing it overnight. So we're
starting to see interest fromthe standpoint of investors
getting into this space. Why arethey getting into this space?
Because they don't see anyslowdown whatsoever. So this
(29:50):
particular trend. I'm anelectrician. I'm a sole
proprietor. Maybe I've got acouple folks working for me.
There are private equity groupsat the national level and
beyond, who are doing role. Rollups, what we call roll ups,
buying smaller companies,turning them into a larger
company. And as we mentioned,turning those business owners
who formerly own thosebusinesses into millionaires.
(30:10):
But again, it speaks to thisincredible demand that we have
for the skilled trades. The USBureau of Labor Statistics is
actually predicting a growthrate nationwide for HVAC
technicians and mechanics andinstallers over the course of
the next nine years, believe itor not, is going to be growing
at 6% every single year. So in aspace where we have fewer and
(30:32):
fewer people necessarily workingin that space because of
retirements, because though ofthe aging workforce, demand for
those positions is going to growat a 6% rate. In fact, by one
estimate that I saw recently,37,700 new openings in HVAC
every single year, on averagethrough the year 2032, so for
(30:55):
anybody that's in that spacethat say, HVAC, technician,
electrician, a plumber, workingin other areas of the skilled
trades probably a little lessdisruption for you than what we
might see in the space ofmanufacturing. So so don't
expect that trend to necessarilyhit skilled trades. So our
prediction number seven, skilledtrades opportunities will be
(31:17):
largely immune from the trend inadvanced manufacturing as we see
a little bit of a slowdown inthat space.
All right, so now we're going totalk a little bit about this
dislocated worker funding. So wetalked about the fact that we're
going to see more funding intocreating programs for those that
are dislocated frommanufacturing. We're going to
(31:38):
see less of an impact on theskilled trades, but continued
impact of this trend inmanufacturing. What this is
going to mean is that dislocatedworker funding is not only going
to be focused toward more shortterm training is going to be
focused on short term trainingaround advancing and emerging
technologies. So in thisparticular case, we are talking
about training people forcareers in automation,
(32:01):
automation technicians,electromechanical technicians,
people working in the world ofrobotics, of robotic integration
and even machine learning andartificial intelligence. So look
for this dislocated workerfunding. Certainly it's going to
fund people findingopportunities in traditional
spaces within manufacturing, butparticularly in some of these
(32:21):
emerging technologies, like theones that we just mentioned. So
Trend number eight, dislocatedworker funding is also not only
is it going to rise, but it'sgoing to skew toward advancing
technologies. And as we'rethinking about the future of
education, we want to make surethat our educational programs
are aligned with those trends.
Okay, let's talk a little bitabout higher education in
general, we are going to seecontinued disruption in higher
(32:44):
education, as I mentioned in our2024 trends, we expected
disruption in education. We sawit. We are going to continue to
see huge disruption in the waythat higher educators are
thinking about education. Andone of the examples that I want
to offer is the flexible degree,like the one at the University
of Wisconsin, stout, theirautomation leadership degree.
(33:07):
And when we think aboutdisruption in the world of
higher education, especiallyfour year universities, this is
providing the perfect examplefor how education is going to be
disrupted higher educators fouryear universities, as we all
know, the macroeconomic trendsdo not necessarily favor that
space, and the demographictrends don't necessarily favor
(33:30):
that space. So we've got risingcosts of higher education at the
same time, in some cases,diminishing returns in terms of
the value of a degree. And wehear people argue about, well,
this is, you know, this is thedisparity between if you get a
four year degree, you're goingto be able to make X amount of
money more than a two yeardegree. That's certainly true in
certain spaces, but it's alsonot true in a lot of other
(33:51):
particular disciplines withinhigher education. So
understanding that, on balance,the benefit and the value of a
four year degree is starting tonarrow over some of the other
educational options that ourstudents are able to take when
they are completing their highschool coursework is going to
demand even more innovation inhigher education. We've talked
(34:14):
about the UW Stout degree in thepast. You receive a full 88
credits toward 120 creditbaccalaureate degree just by
earning third partycertifications from the smart
automation certificationAlliance and transferring to
credits from a technical orcommunity college that has a
transfer agreement in place withthe University of Wisconsin.
Style. Think about that. You'remore than three quarters, or, I
(34:36):
guess, almost three quartersthrough a four year degree
without ever paying a penny ofuniversity tuition, without ever
setting foot on a universitycampus. And what's more in that
particular case is you cancomplete your coursework
remotely. You never have toleave your hometown, and you can
earn a baccalaureate degree inautomation leadership, one of
the most in demand competenciesin all of advanced
(34:57):
manufacturing. Tax rate, whilewe talk often, like we said,
about how the demographics arechanging in education, and this
is just a perfect example of howeducation and higher education
is going to change in the nextyear. So we're expecting not
just more disruption in highereducation. This particular
prediction, Prediction numbernine, is that we will see more
(35:19):
flexible degree programs, likethe example that's been set by
the University of WisconsinStout. Keep your eye on that
number 10. We are going tocontinue to see the lines
blurred between what a technicalcollege degree and what a
university degree looks like. Ican tell you, I talked to a lot
(35:39):
of chancellors, Provost vicepresidents, other leaders in
higher education in our fouryear institutions and beyond,
they are all looking at, how dowe take our coursework and
divide it up into smallersections where people certainly
can continue to earn abachelor's degree, a master's
degree, PhD. We have a lot ofdoctorates of education in the
(36:02):
world of technical educationthat nothing wrong with that
pathway. But we are seeinguniversities now finding ways to
chunk up the work that theyhave, the coursework that they
have, into more bite sizedpieces, to reach employers where
they are, to reach the workingAmericans, where they are people
that already have a career maybewant to go back to a four year
(36:23):
university and brush up on aspecific area that they're not
particularly proficient in. Sowe're seeing universities
starting to chunk up theircoursework and their delivery
options in ways that technicalcolleges and community colleges
have been doing for years.
Again, that's just a result ofthe drivers happening
demographically and economicallyhere in the United States. So
(36:47):
while that is happening, whilethat's happening in our four
year degree programs, I willalso tell you that you're going
to see technical collegeslooking to be more and more
creative as well, in maybe evenclosing the gap between what a
traditional associates degreelooks like, what a traditional
baccalaureate degree looks like,and maybe going an extra mile
and providing students morecontent, more learning
(37:10):
opportunities to continue toclose that gap between a two
year and a four year education,I can tell you kind of
privately, that I am seeing somereally, really interesting
innovation that's happening inour Technical and Community
Colleges, things that will beannounced over the course of the
first half of 2025 that arereally going to surprise some
people. So remember that youheard it here first, that some
(37:32):
more of a more of our technicalcolleges, more of our community
colleges, will be figuring out,how do they look, in some cases,
even more like four yearuniversities. All right. On to
Prediction number 11. We'reclosing in on our 13 predictions
for 2025 here on The TechEdPodcast, Prediction number 11 is
(37:52):
all around energy education.
Energy is going to be a keyeducation issue here in 2025
earlier this year, we had Marysnap, who is the Vice President
of Strategic Initiatives forMicrosoft, on The TechEd
Podcast. Mary, of course,talking about a number of
things, including the $3.3billion investment that
Microsoft is making in my homestate, here in southeast
(38:13):
Wisconsin, data centers consumea huge, huge, huge amount of
energy. Let me just give you acouple statistics I found
interesting as I was doing somestudying over the course of last
summer, the energy required totrain one large language model
like chat, G, P, T, is theequivalent of the amount of
(38:33):
energy consumed by 130 homes injust one year, the amount of
energy required to generate animage using artificial
intelligence, just one imagewould charge your smartphone
from zero to 100% lots and lotsof interesting ways of looking
at energy. But because of this,we are going to find, we're
(38:54):
going to need to find as manysources of energy as possible.
The Age of AI, the age of datais not reducing our need for
energy right now, it isincreasing our need for energy.
And for my money, the moreenvironmentally friendly those
energy sources can be, thebetter. So one of the things
that we have our eyes on here atThe TechEd Podcast is what's
(39:15):
happening in the nuclear space.
In fact, watch for in 2025 oneof our episodes with a senior
leader of a company called Wholetech, which is doing some really
cool things in terms ofrecommissioning nuclear reactors
all over the United States. Sowe spent, you know, the last
half century decommissioning ournuclear reactors. Now we are
(39:36):
starting to recommission them,bring that energy power back
online as a source of cleanenergy, as nuclear technology
has changed, as the safetyaround nuclear has changed, as
public perceptions aroundnuclear have changed, and also
as what we call modular nucleartechnology continues to come
online. Don't have a lot of timefor that topic here, but. But
(40:00):
this whole push toward more andmore energy sources is going to
have a resulting impact intechnical and STEM education, in
the need for people whounderstand these energy sources,
who understand how to deriveenergy from alternative energy,
who understand the processcontrol. Because in many cases,
the process control required anenergy mirrors, in some cases,
(40:22):
what you might see in a typicalfood production facility and so
on. So we're gonna have more andmore training around process
control. For those of you notfamiliar, those are things like
level and flow, liketemperature, like pressure, like
SCADA, like PID control and soon. It's a whole different
aspect of process control, andwe're going to need the
(40:43):
technicians, and we're going toneed the skilled talent to be
able to run these facilities. Soyou're going to see demand on
the part of energy producers fortalent that understands how to
maintain the facilities thatproduce this energy. And it's
not going to be just necessarilyin pockets, but with the advent
of some of these new sources ofenergy. We're going to see that
all over the United States. Sowatch for that trend in 2025
(41:07):
Prediction number 11, energyeducation will be a key focus
across the entire country andthroughout the entire 12 months
of 2025 our 12th prediction, andthis kind of piles on a
prediction that we have 2024,and that is the focus on
electric vehicles is not goingto go away. During the last
administration, this was a hugefocus, huge incentives for
(41:29):
purchasing electric vehicles,huge grants that were being
writing, written in that space,for people, for companies,
creating capacity for electricvehicles. That is not going
away, but it is going to evolve.
And we're going to see a majorfocus on training for EV
manufacturing, EV certificationsfor those workers working in EV
(41:50):
manufacturing, continuing tofocus on battery technology and
a focus on infrastructure forelectric vehicles. So let's talk
about this a little bit much ofEV manufacturing. First of all,
so manufacturing electricvehicles isn't a whole lot
different from a typicaladvanced manufacturing facility.
We still have to learn all thesame Mechatronics technologies,
(42:10):
basic AC, DC, electric relaycontrol, motor control, motion
control, programmable actioncontrollers, lean manufacturing,
the list goes on, but we have toadd to that in the world of Ev,
an understanding of EVtechnology, of battery
technology, of Ev, enginefundamentals, and understanding
all of those competencies isgoing to be really important
(42:30):
throughout the supply chain,particularly for tier one, tier
two and tier three, EVmanufacturing facilities. Look
for innovation here, too earlyfor me to tell a couple of
things that we see going on thatwill be announced in 2025 but
around curriculum, aroundcertifications, around the
ability to train people for EVmanufacturing, some big things
are going to happen in the year2025 we're also going to see
(42:54):
more of a focus on efficientproduction. So like any new
manufacturing space,opportunities will abound for
improvement in productivity,efficiency and quality. We're
going to need a generation ofworkforce that continues to
understand how to driveconstraints and challenges and
issues out of manufacturingprocesses. We're going to see
(43:14):
innovation around addressingconcerns regarding the range per
charge on electric vehicles. Soa lot of the reticence that you
hear from people is like, Well,I'm just, I just, you know, I
can't wait to charge up avehicle. What if I What if I run
out of energy, run out of power?
What if my battery goes deadwhen I'm on my way to fill in
the blank, I don't have time tostop for two hours to charge
battery, so on and so forth.
(43:35):
That's a problem that EV isgoing to have to figure out and
solve if they're going toincrease demand for their
products, we expect that theyare going to figure that problem
out, and they are going to solvefor it. Certainly lighter
vehicle, lighter batterytechnology and other one of the
concerns is just the impact of avehicle on our nation's
infrastructure. Electricvehicles tend to be a lot
(43:55):
heavier and put a lot more wearand tear on our roads than a
traditional internal combustionengine vehicle, and so we're
going to see focus on light,lighter weight battery
technology. Finally, one majorconstraint in the world of EV is
charging infrastructure. So wetouched on this just a moment
ago. If I'm traveling in anelectric vehicle, how am I going
(44:16):
to be able to charge thatconveniently and charge it
quickly? It goes to toucheseverything from what are the
locations for the for thecharging facilities,
accessibility, reliability,continued maintenance of
charging infrastructure,implementation and installation
of charging technology, all ofthese are constraints for EV
(44:36):
adoption. So until we can solvefor those problems, people are
going to be reticent, especiallypeople who aren't our early
adopters, are going to bereticent to add that technology
and to get excited aboutelectric vehicles. So we're
going to see a lot of focus onthat particular space. Well, it
turns out the CEO of one of theleading, probably the leading,
(44:57):
electric vehicle brands, mightjust have a. Little bit of
influence at the federal level,if we've been following the news
lately at all, we recognize thatElon Musk is going to have a
huge amount of influence overthe next administration, and the
degree to which this whole issuearound infrastructure gets heard
and addressed remains to beseen. But here at The TechEd
(45:18):
Podcast, we think that EV andthe EV market is going to put a
huge focus on solving for that.
What does that mean foreducation? Well, of course, a
lot of this EV technology, theinstallation of the charging
systems, the maintenance of thecharging systems, accessibility
locations, all of these aregoing to require talent that has
the ability to install andservice EV charging
infrastructure. So expect thatto be a key demand from
(45:41):
employers, and expect ourtechnical community colleges,
high schools and universities tobe working to figure out how we
solve for that demand. Number13, we're at our last prediction
for the year of 2025, number 13,and it's a build on a previous
prediction from last year aswell, teaching applied
artificial intelligence is goingto be all the talk in 2025 and
(46:04):
we're already seeing somereally, really cool things.
We've talked about here on TheTechEd Podcast. Had Mike Bigley
from the White House SchoolDistrict on last year talking
about the advent of teachingapplied artificial intelligence
at his emerging technology labthat is a system that is a
location and an experiment thatis absolutely setting the
standard for how we teachartificial intelligence, how we
(46:26):
teach what we talk here on theon The TechEd Podcast about all
the time, the edge to cloudcontinuum, Smart Sensor, smart
devices, talking to controlsystems, computer networks and
data collectors talking to thecloud, cloud based software that
is analyzing in real time datathat's coming from the edge,
sensors and and devicespredicting the future, creating
(46:46):
all kinds of opportunities inthe world of artificial
intelligence. We can teachapplied AI whole bunch of
different ways. We can putautonomous vehicles in a
classroom, small versions ofautonomous vehicles, teaching it
that way, autonomous mobilerobots, robots that predict
their own future failure andorder their own replacement
parts before the failure everhappens. We can teach it on
(47:07):
drones, unmanned groundvehicles, unmanned aerial
vehicles, where we're teachingthings like sensors and data
acquisition and telemetry andGPS, all part of the edge to
cloud continuum, teaching AI ingeneral and this, and it's not
just chat GPT, right? Chat GPTis AI, but AI is not chat GPT.
It is so much more, and findingways to teach that in an
(47:30):
exciting, applied way. In 2025,of all the predictions that
we're making today, and we'remaking some pretty big ones,
this is the one that I'm mostconfident in. This is the one
that I am most excited about is,how are we going to teach
applied under artificialintelligence, throughout stem
and technical education, somereally, really smart people
working on some really smartways to teach really smart
technology. It's going to bereally, really fun to watch. The
(47:52):
other thing that's going to befun to watch is how the year
2025, rolls out across stem andtechnical education, and here at
The TechEd Podcast, one finalprediction that isn't on our
list of 13, but it's the one weend with every year, and that is
regardless of what happens,regardless of how accurate these
predictions are, we expect thatthey will be pretty accurate.
(48:13):
One thing you can count on forsure is The TechEd Podcast will
be here to bring you the bestcontent in STEM education, the
best content in technicaleducation, to make sure that
you, our audience, are connectedto the people doing the most
innovative things in industryand in education. It is going to
be a great year for The TechEdPodcast. It's going to be a
(48:35):
great year for STEM andtechnical education, and we
can't wait to spend it with allof you. Thank you for joining us
on this episode of The TechEdPodcast, where we think about
the future and make our 13predictions for STEM and
technical education. Thank youfor a wonderful 2024 and here's
to an even better 2025 in STEMand TechEd. You.
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