Part of the reason for this skills gap is that people in the United States who have worked in the semiconductor industry tend to have experience in chip design, not manufacturing. Over the years, many U.S. companies order chips from contract manufacturers overseas, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, instead of embarking on the extremely expensive process of manufacturing, testing, and packaging the chip itself. But as geopolitical tensions with China increased, American leaders began pushing to build some capacity for advanced chip manufacturing in the US as an insurance policy in the event of a trade breakdown.
In preparation for that day, the Trump administration pressured Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to build on American soil capable of mass production of advanced chips. But finding people in Arizona, where the barns will be built, with the same skills and work ethic that exist at the company’s plant in Hsinchu, is a challenge, says the company’s founder, Morris. Chang, tell me told a symposium last year.
Attracting skilled foreigners who can help train an American workforce is essential to success, at least in the short term, according to a report by the Center for a New Technology and Security. emerging market, estimates that “at least 3,500 foreign-born workers will be needed” to staff new American television shows. Some may come from American universities, but many will need to be recruited from Taiwan and South Korea.
The state of higher education in this area is also worrisome. The number of American graduates studying semiconductor-related fields remains almost flat since 1990, while foreign enrollment in those fields at American universities has tripled. Based on “Winning the Tech Talent CompetitionAccording to a report by the Centers for Strategic and International Studies, just 23,000 Americans are expected to graduate with PhDs in science, math, engineering, and technology-related fields by 2020. 2025, while 17,000 foreign students in these fields will graduate from American universities.
It’s great that non-netizens are helping to close the yawning gap with China, which estimated 77,000 PhD graduates that year. But we cannot take foreign talent for granted. As of 2016, the total number of foreign enrollments to US universities has decreased every yearleading some to worry that foreign enrollment in semiconductor-related fields could also be at risk in the future.
Philip Wong, a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University, told me that the pull of the United States is not what it used to be. Although bright students from Asia continue to flock to Stanford, he says, some of them have passed up the opportunity to stay in the US to work in vibrant tech industries closer to home. “They don’t have to come to America to have a good career,” Mr. Wong told me. “If you look back a few decades, the reason for students to come to America is starting to disappear.”
