More than three decades ago, when the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) at The Ohio State University was founded, its research focus was on traditional areas such as internal combustion engine drivetrains, noise and vibration, while also addressing the then-emerging field of automotive electronics. Today, with the rise of autonomous vehicles (AVs), the center's research direction has undergone a fundamental transformation.

"What was once a discipline dominated by mechanical engineering with a small amount of electronics has now evolved into an industry that relies on computational power, computer science, electrical and electronic systems, and electrochemical energy storage," said Giorgio Rizzoni, director of CAR and professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Ohio State.

The growing emphasis on autonomous driving comes at a time when experts warn of a shortage of qualified autonomous driving engineers. This scarcity of specialized talent could hinder the large-scale deployment of this highly hyped technology.

"People might think there will be a large pool of talent lining up to enter this field, but the reality is that the pipeline of people capable of succeeding in autonomous driving is relatively narrow," said Frank Menchaca, chief growth officer at SAE International, the standards-setting organization.

To address this talent gap and cultivate the future workforce, four-year universities, community colleges, and industry organizations are collaborating with industry experts to develop curricula and are beginning to offer courses in areas such as autonomous driving engineering, software development, and cybersecurity.

According to Allied Market Research, the autonomous driving industry is expected to surge from $54.23 billion in 2019 to $556.67 billion by 2026. Industry leaders warn that such educational programs are crucial to ensuring graduates' skills keep pace with the industry's rapid deployment.

Evolving Educational Needs

Autonomous driving education in academia primarily focuses on engineering and software development, with automakers and other industry leaders often playing a key role in shaping student curricula.

CAR is Ohio State's main research laboratory for connected and autonomous vehicles. One of its projects is EcoCAR, where student teams re-engineer a Chevrolet Blazer over four years, incorporating autonomous and electric technologies. Rizzoni noted that graduate students also have opportunities to collaborate with manufacturers in the Columbus area, with their thesis projects often funded by automakers.

The program's teaching focus includes not only trends toward automation and intelligence in vehicle technology but also energy efficiency and carbon emission reduction. Rizzoni said that industry needs and the evolution of driving technology largely drive the curriculum.

"For example, if you ask Ford Motor Company's vice president of research and development, 'Where is Ford headed?' they will tell you: 'Smarter mobility, different solutions that involve understanding and analyzing data and responding in real time,'" Rizzoni said. "In that sense, we believe our future is where the automotive industry's future lies."

The College of Charleston will launch an electrical engineering degree program focused on autonomous driving this fall. The program will complement its existing systems engineering degree while teaching students how to connect vehicles with various sensors, design their movement, and achieve autonomous vehicle operation. Sebastian van Delden, dean of the college's School of Sciences and Mathematics, said the needs of automakers in the region also drove the curriculum. Like Ohio State students, College of Charleston seniors will collaborate with Mercedes, Volvo, and Bosch—companies with plants in South Carolina—on year-long capstone projects.

van Delden noted that these degrees also help graduates who do not end up working directly in autonomous driving. "Today, in factories and other environments, they need people who can connect and program various Internet of Things devices to implement, design, and plan certain systems," he said. "Our graduates will be ideal candidates for such positions."

Democratizing Job Opportunities

Some community colleges and other groups are also joining the effort.

Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona, partnered with autonomous trucking company TuSimple in 2019 to launch the first autonomous driving certificate program for truck drivers. The 12-credit program teaches students to operate autonomous trucks and develops skills in areas such as logistics, IT, and automated industrial technology. Its introductory course provides a macro perspective on the autonomous driving field, including ethical issues surrounding the technology, such as how autonomous vehicles prioritize lives in collisions.

Missy Blair, senior project manager at Pima Community College's Transportation Training Center, said about 12 students are currently enrolled in the program. The first cohort graduated last fall and is now in TuSimple's hiring process, with the company giving priority to graduates from the center.

Other educational and training institutions—not just academic ones—are also exploring how to enter this field and educate the public about autonomous driving.

Online course provider Coursera announced in 2019 a partnership with the University of Toronto to offer a $79-per-month course covering autonomous driving technologies such as LiDAR, software, motion planning, intersection management, and safety. The institution said more than 46,000 people have enrolled so far.

SAE International also recently launched a 12-week bootcamp on autonomous driving system robotics, designed to halve the average eight-month onboarding time for new engineers at automakers. The course uses hands-on learning, teaching participants to program mobile robots and covering software engineering topics such as machine learning, path planning, and visual intelligence.

"We want to make these job opportunities accessible to more people and hope to work with students from various educational backgrounds," Menchaca said.

Innovation and Differentiation

Although academic autonomous driving programs are still relatively young, institutions are attracting prospective students through their unique characteristics.

Cybersecurity is becoming increasingly important as automakers, cities, and academia pay more attention to the vulnerabilities of autonomous driving. George Mason University (GMU) in Fairfax, Virginia, has provided cybersecurity training and research for decades, including for autonomous vehicles and infrastructure. Leveraging this expertise, the university created the nation's first accredited cybersecurity engineering degree program, which currently has 500 undergraduate students enrolled and offers an accelerated master's program.

Duminda Wijesekera, a computer science professor at GMU's Volgenau School of Engineering, said the program was launched amid concerns from automakers and tech companies about vulnerabilities in their products and their desire to find graduates who can help solve these issues. "They need software skills, cybersecurity skills, and people who understand data fusion," he said. "It's very hard to find such people in the current labor market. Our goal is to cultivate a new workforce that understands both engineering disciplines and programming."

The university also plans to strengthen these efforts through its newly established Mason Innovation Lab, which will serve as a central hub for various laboratories and other technologies to enable "more diverse experimentation."

The College of Charleston, meanwhile, requires engineering students to take four semesters of a foreign language. van Delden said students may lean toward German given Germany's role in automotive manufacturing. The language requirement will help prepare students to become part of an international workforce. "We teach them all the technical content, including physics, math, and engineering, but we want to cultivate engineers who can think about how to solve these problems within a broader global, social, cultural, and ethical framework, and who pay attention to the world around us."

Autonomous driving students at the College of Charleston can also study abroad, which is relatively rare in engineering due to demanding course requirements. Students can choose to spend a semester at the National University of Ireland or Heriot-Watt University in Scotland during their sophomore year.

Impact on the Workforce

These academic programs are being launched at a time when elected officials and others continue to focus on the impact of autonomous driving on the workforce—especially whether they will displace some workers.

At a 2018 event in Washington, D.C., U.S. Senator Gary Peters (D-Michigan) warned that artificial intelligence and other automated trucking technologies could lead to a "hollowing out of the middle class." He also warned that trucking "will be one of the earliest applications of this technology," which could negatively affect the nation's 3 million truck drivers.

Peters and others reiterated these concerns at the January nomination hearing for Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Buttigieg noted that in emerging technologies, policy has not kept pace with innovation, including in workforce development.

Blair of Pima Community College said a key goal of its program is to raise public awareness of autonomous driving and help truck drivers understand that trucking and freight jobs may change but will not truly disappear. "Basically, the core message is that while the job won't go away, it will change," she said.

The close collaboration between automakers and academia on these programs may also lay a strong foundation for students' future employment prospects. Mercedes and Volvo have manufacturing plants in South Carolina and send representatives to the College of Charleston's industry advisory board; BMW also has a plant in the state. TuSimple's main testing facility is in Tucson, while Honda has invested in CAR since its founding and has manufacturing operations near Ohio. This local presence helps create a pipeline for local graduates to jobs at nearby manufacturers.

"One of the major goals we hope to achieve through engineering education, as we have done in computer science, is to truly support the local economy," van Delden said. "There are many big companies in town now, and we want them to hire locally. So why not cultivate the graduates they need? They can more easily access internships and job opportunities because they are at local companies."

As the automotive industry continues to innovate and become more technology-focused, Rizzoni emphasized that academia must continue to prepare students for this future. "Our role is to cultivate the next generation of automotive industry leaders, and the next generation will be different from past ones," he said. "Our mission is to ensure we prepare them fully and ready them for the major transformation ahead of us."