Earlier this week, we spent the day at Madison College (MATC) as they uncrated their brand new PCNC 440.

With their size and approachable design, Tormach machines have found their way into a number of classrooms at high schools and colleges around the nation. While the uses for a CNC mill or lathe in the classroom may seem obvious – teaching kids to machine parts – you may be surprised at how many teachers are doing much more than just teaching machining.

Two years ago, we covered how Frankie Flood uses his PCNC 1100 to make various industrial arts projects and even hot-rod pizza cutters for celebrity chefs. Flood is a professor at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, where he runs the university’s Digital Craft Research Lab (DCRL). “I also teach courses in a newly formed program at the university, called Digital Fabrication and Design,” Flood explains. Because the Digital Fabrication program is an applied program in design, it’s offered to Art students as a BA in Art, but also to Engineering students as a certificate program.

Robots are cool. When I was a kid R2-D2 and Rosie were fabrications of a fantastic, future-like world. Now, BB-8 and Beamo are incredibly close to reality.

FIRST Robotics is a quickly-growing STEM initiative, founded by Dean Kamen, that pits kids against each other in robotic contests while promoting a fine combination of cooperation and competition. Teenagers stew over various engineering issues, component failures, and efficiency quotas all while coordinating their teams like a start-up engineering business – in essence, this is one of the truest forms of STEM education out there.

It’s undeniable that education is vital to the advancement of both individuals and civilizations, and with each passing generation (each passing year, even), being educated is becoming more prevalent to success. Some would even argue that it is essential for survival. But, the landscape of education is changing – it has been for some time now. Jobs that had previously been considered “unskilled labor,” now require a 2- or 4-year degree, at a minimum.