In the Monday, June 20th issue of USA Today on the first page of the Money section, is an article that may give all of you some concern. The title of the piece is Perplexed consumers dial up tech 'geeks'. It talks about the great growth in consumer electronics and how Best Buy just hired 1500 more employees to its Geek Squad. Their total Geek Squad is 8000 strong and they expect as many as 12000 by next year. These are the guys who install, service and support consumer electronic installations with big screen HDTV, DVD players, TiVo, surround sound, stellite radios and other sophisticated gear. It has gotten tougher and tougher for the average consumer to handle the complexity. What I wonder is where are these new employees coming from? Where did they learn this or how did they acquire the necessary background?
One thing for sure, they didn't learn consumer electronics in a community college. It is just not taught.
I suspect that these employees are really a type of electronic technician. They are not called that, but what they do is clearly electronic. They probably do not have to know how to bias a bipolar transistor or solve mesh equations which is what we are teaching our students now. You have to wonder why. Today everything is at the systems level rather than the component level. Something CCs do not teach. Again, why?
The good news here is that there are jobs for technical types that are in fact electronic techs even though they are not called that. The bad news is that the CCs are not part of the education solution.
In an earlier Wall Street Journal article, both Best Buy and Circuit City indicated a shortage of persons who knew this stuff. I can't help but think that CCs should have a consumer electronic curriculum or at least some courses on these subjects. I bet that would help enrollments not only because the jobs are there but also because the subject is so interesting.
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