But the engineering talent and computer coding skills that the industry needs is in short supply. That's why General Motors CEO Mary Barra announced a new push to train engineers on Wednesday in New York City. The effort is specifically aimed at recruiting women and minorities.
GM has long helped train engineers. Barra earned a degree in electrical engineering from General Motors Institute in Flint, Michigan -- now Kettering University -- an engineering and business school that was, at the time, operated by GM.
"A car today has hundreds of millions of lines of code," Barra said in an exclusive interview with CNN. "We do see a shortage if we don't address this and I mean fully fundamentally. Every child needs to have these skills."Well, I checked out their job openings. As of June 28, 2017 they have 254 engineering jobs open, at a wide range of experience levels. They could, if they wanted, take that $10 million and use it to bump up the pay and benefits by an average of $40k per opening. Or they could invest in on-the-job training, bringing in people whose resumes show potential but aren't ideal matches to the jobs. That's what they would do if the talent shortfalls were as serious as they claim. Instead they're talking to reporters about STEM education.
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Wednesday's announcement is part of GM's larger push to spend over $10 million in 2017 to improve education in the so-called STEM areas of science, technology, engineering and math.
What I find most fascinating is that GM used to operate Kettering University but has walked away from it. If they have such great needs for STEM talent, why not keep running a university that meets their needs?
