North America is building rare earth plants faster than it trains the people to run them

The US awarded 285 mining and mineral engineering degrees in 2024, less than half of what its own government estimates it needs. China already has an undergraduate degree devoted solely to rare earths. The American response is only now emerging — and it runs through the classroom.

A report published on September 25, 2026 by MINING.COM and The Northern Miner crossed two timelines that rarely appear together: that of the rare earth and magnet factories announced in the United States, and that of the engineering programs that are supposed to staff them. The numbers do not add up. In 2024, US universities delivered 285 degrees in mining and mineral engineering, counting bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees. The Department of Energy's estimate of need implies something around 600 a year. Only 14 universities maintain accredited mining engineering programs, and three of them — Colorado School of Mines, Missouri S&T and the University of Arizona — account for almost half of graduates. Since 1985, twelve universities have closed their programs, among them Berkeley, Columbia, Ohio State and Texas A&M. On the other side, in 2024 China added an undergraduate degree in Rare Earth Materials Science and Engineering to its national catalog of programs, approved first at the Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology, in Baotou, about 150 km from the world's largest rare earth mine. The US government has begun to respond: the DOE launched PROSPECT, a US$100 million initiative to double within two years the number of graduates in fields linked to critical minerals, and on September 14 opened a US$16 million prize for universities, community colleges and technical schools to design ready-to-deploy programs.

The first lesson is that industrial capacity cannot be bought with capital alone. A rare earth separation plant can be financed, permitted and built in three or four years. A process engineer capable of running a solvent extraction circuit with dozens of stages takes four years of undergraduate study plus a few more years of practice to become reliable. When both clocks start together, the second one arrives late. USA Rare Earth's demonstration in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, shows the scale of the problem: a single pilot solvent extraction circuit occupies 28 engineers, scientists and technicians working rotating shifts. Multiply that by commercial plants and the bottleneck appears. The second lesson is about specialization. Traditional mining engineering trains people for mining, geotechnics and mineral processing. Separating rare earths is a different craft: it requires coordination chemistry, fine hydrometallurgy and cascade process control. China understood this and built its own training track, with rare earth chemistry courses, classes inside companies and labs connected to industry. Outside China, no equivalent undergraduate degree exists. The knowledge the West is trying to recover is not only in patents; it lives in the people who spent years tuning these plants. The third lesson is that serious industrial policy is starting to include education in the same package as mines and factories. PROSPECT does not fund only elite universities: the US$16 million prize accepts proposals aimed at early-career professionals, workers already employed, teachers and even high school students. Each winner can receive up to US$1 million, and the DOE plans to announce up to 16 winning institutions on October 20. The design recognizes that the shortfall cannot be solved only with more engineering degrees — lab technicians, plant operators and reskilling people already working in chemistry or oil count just as much.

Brazil faces the same dilemma, on a smaller scale. The National Policy on Critical and Strategic Minerals, signed into law in September, creates instruments to attract investment in rare earths and processing, but any separation plant installed in the country will compete for a small pool of professionals trained in hydrometallurgy and process chemistry. Anyone studying mining engineering, chemistry or metallurgy today has a concrete window ahead: demand for critical mineral processing specialists is likely to outstrip supply for several years, in the US, Canada, Australia and Brazil. For universities and companies, the American case shows that waiting for the plant to be finished before thinking about training is too late. Joint industry-academia programs, elective courses on rare earths and internships at pilot plants are responses that can start before the first investment leaves the drawing board.