Robert Friedland

U.S. Produces 300 Mining Engineers vs China’s 3,000

Here’s an important story in the Washington Post, with a link below, about how the United States forgot how to mine anything and what it is costing our nation today. If America wants to reduce its dependence on imports from the rest of the world to rebuild its industrial base, speeding up permitting and investing in the sector is not enough. We need to move fast to rebuild a greatly diminished pool of trained American mining engineers and we need to do it fast and at the scale of the American economy. U.S. mining schools collectively graduated about 300 mining engineers last year, according to the Foreign Policy article by @Christinalu on the @washingtonpost Post’s Ripple platform. (300!) China, by contrast, is home to about 45 mining engineering programs and churns out about 3,000 graduates every year, according to 2024 estimates. @MBazilian leads the @payneinstitute at @coschoolofmines where my son @govind_ivanhoe studied Geology & Geological Engineering and my brother Eric Friedland studied Geophysics. I’m regular speaker at the Payne Institute and urge everyone to direct their attention to this thought leading institution. https://t.co/tWAOKcdLt0