As software engineering jobs go down, Universities across America are preparing engineers for roles in …
As traditional software engineering roles decline due to the disruption caused by AI, universities across America are now preparing the students for careers in semiconductor manufacturing, according to a report by CNBC. A new data from Mckinsey and the SEMI Foundation warns of a shortage of up to 157,000 chip workers by 2030, underscoring the urgent need for skilled engineers and technicians to support the country’s fastest chip buildout in history. “I’m concerned,” Jon Taylor, executive vice president of Samsung’s semiconductor division in Austin, Texas, told CNBC. “We just don’t see that there’s enough technical people in the pipeline.”
Shortage comes as the US undergoes its fastest chip manufacturing expansion
The shortage comes as the US undergoes its fastest chip manufacturing expansion in history, driven largely by the race to produce enough memory and logic chips to power artificial intelligence. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and Intel are already producing advanced logic chips at new fabrication plants in Arizona, and Samsung is set to become the next major chipmaker to manufacture advanced logic in the US when production begins later this year at the first of two new fabs in Taylor, Texas — part of a $35 billion investment expected to create roughly 3,500 jobs.“We’re hiring engineers, we’re hiring technicians, we’re hiring people in supply chain,” Taylor said. “Everybody wants and needs the same thing, and it’s a bit of a race against time right now as everything is starting to come online.”Despite being the birthplace of the semiconductor industry and a global leader in chip design, the US has manufactured almost all advanced chips in Asia for decades — and that’s where the deepest talent pipelines remain. Micron has responded by holding expedited hiring sprees at technical universities in South Korea, interviewing and offering permanent positions to students in a single day.
A bright spot for computer science graduates
For American college students who’ve watched software engineering roles shrink amid AI-driven uncertainty, chip manufacturing is emerging as an unexpected alternative career path. Universities including Purdue and Arizona State are investing heavily to prepare students for the shift.“We’re already the largest producer of college graduates for the Intel Corporation globally, and so we’re trying to now become that for TSMC,” said Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University.Pay remains a sticking point, however. US chip jobs typically pay between $127,000 and $187,000, with senior roles exceeding $238,000, according to the SEMI Foundation — figures that lag behind South Korea, where chip workers are highly sought after and bonuses have ballooned above $500,000 amid strike threats at Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix, despite grueling 12-hour shifts.“As people continue to evolve their skills, they’re going to have to pay higher salaries,” Crow said, “particularly as they’re scaling and scaling and scaling and the workforce demands are so significant.”
The memory chip crunch
Demand is especially acute at memory chipmakers, which are racing to add capacity amid a global shortage that has left companies like Nvidia and AMD scrambling to secure supply. The epicenter of that buildout remains South Korea, where SK Hynix is preparing to bring online what CNBC described as the world’s largest memory campus, starting in February.Micron is constructing America’s first advanced memory fab in Boise, Idaho, expected to open next year, with a second facility under construction in Clay, New York. SK Hynix is separately building its first US facility, a $4 billion memory packaging plant at Purdue Research Park in Indiana, though the two companies will be competing for the same limited pool of domestic memory workers.“We can secure a number of high-quality employees within a few years, based on the collaboration with the local community,” SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-Jung said at a groundbreaking ceremony in Indiana. “It’s really the critical issue.”Separately, a Reuters report indicated SK Hynix is in talks with Intel to manufacture memory chips in the US for the first time, potentially by leasing part of Intel’s Ohio chipmaking facility, according to people familiar with the matter. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has also pushed Samsung and SK Hynix to build front-end memory fabs domestically, though Taylor noted such decisions sit above his role aBoth Samsung and SK Hynix said they’re temporarily relocating workers from South Korea to launch their new US fabs, echoing a similar approach TSMC used when its first Arizona fab began construction in 2021. “If you look at where advanced technology currently resides, it is in Asia,” Taylor said. “Our South Korean colleagues are here to help us start up this equipment that we don’t have a lot of experience on.” ASML, the Dutch chip equipment maker, has also opened a US-based training center to help close the gap.
Building a domestic pipeline
With H-1B visas for foreign chip talent proving costly and cumbersome, manufacturers say their long-term strategy is building a homegrown pipeline. Purdue launched a series of semiconductor degrees in 2022 and now enrolls roughly 2,500 students in chip-related coursework each semester, training them on equipment similar to what they’d encounter at SK Hynix’s nearby fab.“If you want young people specifically prepared in semiconductors, this is the one place you can come right now for people who have actually majored in and achieved a degree in that,” said Mitch Daniels, Purdue’s interim president and former governor of Indiana. “And our job fairs are always overbooked.”Arizona State converted a former Motorola fab into its MacroTechnology Works cleanroom with $200 million in backing from Applied Materials, while TSMC runs a technician program at the university that guarantees graduates a job interview. TSMC told CNBC it visited roughly a dozen universities last year and plans to offer advanced roles to many of its interns to help staff the 6,000 positions needed across its first three Arizona fabs.Intel, meanwhile, launched an Arizona apprenticeship program in 2024 and has committed $50 million in scholarships across more than 80 Ohio institutions near its under-construction fab, alongside a broader K-12 semiconductor education initiative launched in 2025. Samsung has run its own workforce development program since 2023, donating millions to the University of Texas, Texas A&M, and the University of Illinois to launch new chip engineering programs, plus $1 million toward technical labs at Taylor High School and over 100 internships annually.Federal support has also played a role: more than 80 community colleges have launched or expanded semiconductor programs since the CHIPS Act passed in 2022, aided by a $200 million federal workforce fund.Still, industry leaders warn the clock is ticking. “If we don’t move more quickly and aggressively than we have before, we will lose,” Daniels said. “And we can’t afford to have that on our record.”
