October 1, 2025 From Classroom to Career, The Spark That Builds a Workforce

While October’s Manufacturing Month celebrates innovation and progress, it also casts a light on a growing crisis; a shrinking workforce.

By Clint Smith, Sr. Education Market Specialist, Mastercam

In a high school shop in northern Michigan, a group of teenagers machined parts for NASA’s Human Exploration Rover Challenge. The group at Ogemaw Heights High used CAM software to program their cuts, working through mistakes and pressure, knowing the parts would be used in a real-world engineering competition. One student looked up after finishing and said, “I didn’t know school could be like this.”

In that instant, the abstract became real. Suddenly, the classroom wasn’t just a place to learn, it was a launchpad. And it’s just one example that must be replicated again and again. Because while October’s Manufacturing Month celebrates innovation and progress, it also casts a light on a growing crisis. The manufacturing industry is expanding, but its workforce is shrinking.

As the Senior Education Market Specialist at Mastercam, I see this gap firsthand, and I also see the solution. It starts in the classroom, and it’s fueled by competition.

One of the most exciting examples is Clash of the Trades, the Project MFG national championship where top students from across the country go head-to-head. High school and college teams face real machining challenges in a high-pressure, reality-style contest filmed for YouTube. Using professional tools like Mastercam, they program toolpaths, solve complex problems, and learn to perform as teams under serious time constraints. For many students, it is the first time they realize, “I could actually do this for a living.”

In Fall River, Massachusetts, Diman Regional Vocational Technical High School is taking that idea even further. Inside Diman’s 12,000-square-foot shop, students train on Haas, Doosan, and Mazak machines. They begin with handwritten code and graduate into full CAM programming using Mastercam, the same software they will find in aerospace and medical manufacturing jobs.

And Diman is just one of thousands of schools doing this work. Every year, more than 150,000 students around the world learn on Mastercam’s Educational Suite. We partner with schools, colleges and workforce development programs to ensure that students train on the same software they’ll encounter on the job. And we don’t stop there. We work alongside organizations like SkillsUSA, WorldSkills and Project MFG to bring students into competitions that push their abilities further and align with the needs of industry.

For me, competitions like these recharge my batteries because they prove young people want to learn and work in manufacturing. I see talented, polite and determined students showing up in uniforms, representing their schools and states with pride.

Mastercam has supported SkillsUSA for more than 25 years, and I’m honored to serve as co-chair of the CNC Technical Committee. This year, we had record participation, with more than 150 students competing in CNC contests alone. That tells me interest in manufacturing is not shrinking. It’s growing. And with Project MFG, we’re seeing even more innovation, from five-axis machining to additive manufacturing challenges that simulate the pressures of real-world production.

This work matters to me personally. I started as a machining student at Vincennes University with no background at all. I found mentors. I found a path. And now I get to help others do the same.

Manufacturing is advancing rapidly with automation and AI, but the solution to the skills gap is human. We need more schools investing in hands-on learning. We need more programs to spark interest like those at Ogemaw Heights or at Diman Regional. Because that single moment in a school shop? It is how the future of manufacturing gets built.

About the Author
Clint Smith brings nearly two decades of hands-on manufacturing and teaching experience to his role as Senior Education Market Specialist at Mastercam. A trained machinist and former CNC instructor, he partners with schools and Mastercam Resellers to strengthen manufacturing education and address the skilled labor shortage. He serves on multiple advisory boards for schools across the country and is a member of three Tech Committees for SkillsUSA.

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