Today a country's economic viability and its citizens' job mobility require that its workforce have a strong micro- and nanotechnotogy education providing a skill set covering synthesis, fabrication, and characterization. An international model is offered for creating such a skilled workforce which is based on a resource sharing approach between research universities and technical colleges. For the good of a country and its citizens, workers must have the educational background that allows them to move from job to job as sectors wax and wane. This broad twenty-first century education that is proposed provides the infrastructure that is needed to accomplish this and to thereby give a country the intellectual capital to be a competitive force on the rapidly changing world manufacturing scene. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.