The Future of the Printing Workforce

Once, most high schools in America taught printing. In metropolitan areas, there were high schools specifically for printing. Initially, these schools and departments focused on letterpress and then offset lithography.

 

Many students pursued a printing career because it was in the family. For others, they were touched by the printing bug in class.

When desktop publishing and digital printing came along, skillsets changed. Students spent more time in front of a screen designing a page rather than printing a page.

 

The Museum of Printing hosts 32 school groups a year. Most printing programs today are called graphic communication, and they integrate graphic design. The high schoolers we see have their sights on graphic design as a career, not printing.

In class, students design a page and output to a digital printer. They spend more time in front of a screen. Some schools still have an offset duplicator and some bindery equipment, but their number is dwindling.

 

We graduate 40,000 graphic designers each year from 2- and 4-year baccalaureate programs in the U.S. We graduate less than 1,500 from baccalaureate printing-specific programs. Of course, there are many high schoolers who do not go to college.

 

Most of the skillsets of the “old” printing industry are now apps. The terms “dot etcher” and “film stripper” are alien to modern ears. Our machines are highly automated. When you go from a PDF to a printing plate, all the analog steps, and the jobs that went with them, disappear.

There was a push in the 1980s to attract young people to printing, and they did a brochure with job descriptions. I wonder how many kids are eager to be “estimators?”

Many schools cannot afford the very machinery they need to teach on. They wind up with a sheetfed digital printer which also provides inplant printing for the school.

There has been effort to develop print skills. Print[ED] was developed in 1986 by the Printing Industries of Georgia. In 1990, Printing Industries of America adopted the Georgia program as a national industry-approved accreditation program. GAERF assumed management in 2000. In 2019, GAERF transferred administration to the Printing & Graphics Association, MidAtlantic (PGAMA).

Because there are so few high schoolers opting for college degrees in printing, much of the scholarship money raised by the printing industry supports graphic design students.

It is time for everyone with a vested interest in printing to unite and develop realistic programs that attract, and educate, the next generation of printers.