New Promise, Old Premise: Workforce Education and Opportunity in American Nanomanufacturing

As once-thriving U.S. manufacturing sectors contract, the idea that unemployed citizens will now find work in nano-scale manufacturing draws commitments of educational resources across the country. So-called nanotechnician curricula proliferate at two-year institutions and their enrollments climb steadily. Yet industrial forecasters and even some instructors see few jobs of this kind on the horizon. This is, in essence, a case of new technological knowledge reproducing old social patterns that have historically brought disadvantage to those groups of Americans most dependent on sub-baccalaureate education. The newness of nano as a field–one touted as both scientific and economic innovation–disguises long standing class, race and gender-derived inequities in technical education and labor.
Dr. Amy E. Slaton is a professor of history at Drexel University. She holds a PhD in the History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania. Her most recent book, Race, Rigor and Selectivity in U.S. Engineering: The History of an Occupational Color Line (Harvard University Press, 2010), follows racial ideologies in engineering higher education since the 1940s. She is currently writing on the challenges facing two-year colleges seeking to prepare high-tech workforces as automation, outsourcing, and other impediments to industrial employment gain momentum in American manufacturing. Prof. Slaton produces the blog, STEMequity.com, centered on equity in technical education and workforce issues.

hm 2/19/13