Relationship between students' demographics and manufacturing career perceptions (work in progress)

Abstract

While manufacturing continues to be considered the backbone of economic growth in the United States (Nadine & Gielczyk, 2018), manufacturers continue to express concerns related to the availability of a skilled workforce to fill the projected workforce demands-3.5 million available manufacturing jobs by the year 2025 (The Manufacturing Institute & Deloitte, 2015). The 2018 report by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute revealed that manufacturing executives believe there to be three main factors contributing to this concern: (1) the retirement of the baby boomer population, (2) the shifting skills sets related to the digitalization of manufacturing, and (3) the misperceptions that children and their parents hold of manufacturing jobs. Specific to concern number three, research has shown that society seems to hold a negative perception of manufacturing careers, which likely prevents many potential workers from entering the field (Bosman & Strimel, 2018; Deloitte, 2017; Krause & Strimel, 2019). There have been recommendations to establish industry-education partnerships starting as early as an elementary school in both formal and informal settings (Deloitte & the Manufacturing Institute, 2018). While there are numerous outreach initiatives related to career exposure and awareness, specifically in the arena of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education, there is a lack of research focused on how such initiatives can influence a child's perception of manufacturing and how this is related to their upbringing, community, culture, and general demographics. This study sought to determine the relationship between students' career perceptions of the manufacturing industry and their demographic characteristics. A Manufacturing Career Perception Survey was administered to K-12 students before and after a weeklong manufacturing outreach program titled Manufacturing Week. The significance of how each participant's response changed from pre-survey to post-survey was determined by individual demographics using one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Additional descriptive analyses were also carried out to better understand the ways that the participants responded to each survey question. For this study, the demographics considered were gender and ethnicity. The genders in this study were defined as Male/Female while the ethnicities were Caucasian/Minority. Participants from Minority backgrounds were all classified under one group category for data analysis purposes. This analysis can provide additional insight into how demographic backgrounds can be linked to how students perceive manufacturing careers. Recommendations will be suggested for future studies and outreach programs for equitable educational practices related to manufacturing career awareness and exposure.