U.S. universities are building a new semiconductor workforce
So, it&#x27;s been a while since I worked in semiconductor manufacturing, but I know a little bit about this from personal experience.  The community colleges, yes maybe; the universities, no not particularly.<p>Once upon a time every fab needed lots of engineers, because they were designing the manufacturing process (because each company had only one fab, or at least only one modern one).  As they grew, they kept hiring engineers for each fab, mostly out of habit and custom.  Then they put huge bureaucratic obstacles in the way of changing anything, because the manufacturing process was already designed (at another fab), and you didn&#x27;t want every engineer who wanted to make his mark on things to screw it up.<p>The thing is that if you make a change in step 87 out of 450, and that change turns out to screw things up, you can have (450-87)&#x2F;450 = 80% of your factory is full of dud semiconductors.  It takes a few months for a wafer to get from the beginning to the end of the line, so that&#x27;s a couple months of production from your multi-billion dollar fab, that you can throw in the trash.  So mostly, they don&#x27;t want the engineers to do any design, because there&#x27;s way more downside than upside.  Only at the R&amp;D fab is anything like real design done.<p>Now, to run the (rather complex) equipment, you probably want a lot of community college graduates, although frankly a smart high-school graduate could do it well with a few days training.  But the only reason they &quot;require&quot; so many engineers at production fabs, is that they don&#x27;t realize it&#x27;s not necessary.  It&#x27;s a bunch of people who worked for years to get an engineering degree, put in a place where they are very nearly forbidden to change anything.<p>If the multi-billion dollar fab is made, they will run it.  If there are not enough college graduates to staff it, they will miraculously discover that smart high school graduates will do just as well, as long as there are engineers at the R&amp;D fab.