My apologies to Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson for my take off on their hit song. But the comment fits. Parents don't want their kids to grow up to be technicians. They want them to be, as the song continues, "doctors and lawyers and things". And I can confirm that this is true.
While I was department head here at Austin CC, we had orientations for prospective students to introduce them to the industry, the work and the currculum. Many students brought their parents. After the presentation, many of the questions centered on the percieved limited value of an AAS degree and a technician's job. The questions included: Where does this lead career-wise? Are jobs available? Wouldn't a bachelors degree be better? In general the overall tone was that most parents want their kids to get a bachelors degree. And it is difficult to argue with that. Even though a CC program would be measurably cheaper and the student would go to work sooner or the program was a better fit to the student's interests and mental capacity, parents were fighting it. As a parent myself, I guess I cannot blame them. On the other hand, I started out in life with an AAS grad, worked as a tech for years, but eventually went on to a bachelors in technology degree and a long successful career as an engineer. So there is hope, we just haven't communicated that to students and parents.
I saw this same scene play out again at a session one of the local manufacturers put on for potential employees. They promoted the local CC AAS program. But again parents said they didn't think it was in the best interest of their kid. The question was, why can't the kid just go on the get a BSEE and be an engineer? And, oh by the way, can the kid with the AAS go on and get a BSEE?
We seem to have two major probelms here. First is an image problem. A tech is viewed as being a lesser person than an engineer. I am not sure I see it that way as the work they do is vastly different, one more hands-on and practical and the other more theoretical. But for those who do not know the field, they think otherwise.
The second problem is an almost complete lack of knowledge of the difference between engineering and technology. The confusion over the differences keeps students from enrolling and parents from blessing technology, not to mention the on-going confusion with employers.
Seems like we really need to hire a PR firm to inform and educate on both fronts. The schools sure as heck are not going to do it.
1 comment:
Remember the TV show "What's My Line?". This is an adaptation:
What do you call a college graduate with a BA in Liberal Studies? A waiter.
What do you call a college graduate with a BA in Journalism? A bus boy.
What do you call a college graduate with a BS in Computer Science? Out of work after having trained their replacements in India.
What do you call a college graduate with a BS in Electronics Engineering? Looking for work in all the wrong places after being riffed in favor of a set of Sun Microsystems workstations running Cadence Electronic Design software. Higher productivity, don't you know.
What do you call a college graduate with an ASET? Fully employed with lots of overtime doing maintenance on Light Rail Vehicles for San Francisco Muni Railway (starting at $28.50/hour--plus bennies).
I spent ten years (part time--3 to 5 hours/week) as an academic advisor at College of San Mateo. I've been teaching electronics technology full time since the '80s. There is no way a local community college can change the perception you referred to. This is a job for industry and the industry trade groups--AEA, SEMI, IEEE, ISA, CEA. They have to be the leaders on this with ads just as effective as those done by the Army and the Navy--even the Marines. The ads are slick, targeted (maybe not the right word), and fast paced. Kids love 'em.
And, the PR has to be on TV. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, the independent stations are flooded with ads from Heald, ITT, DeVry, and some automotive school. The ads are slick, targeted, and fast paced. And, they are booked right when the target audience is viewing--between 10 AM and 3 PM during the day and late nights. During an enrollment management committee meeting, my college's president asked me where we should advertise technology programs on TV. I got in trouble for the answer, but I told her to buy time leading into, in the middle of, and at the end of "Bay Watch" reruns and/or reruns of the old Gilligan's Island. That's where the young demographic happens to be. Bottom line, we cannot afford that kind of attitude altering effort--but industry can.
Question is--are they even concerned about the issue or have they put into place training programs to get the kinds of techs they need 'cause the local CC ET grads have no idea as to how to connect a computer to a scope, establish communications, take some measurements, and port the data to a waiting Excel spreadsheet?
How many community college faculty members does it take to change a light bulb? What's change.
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