Roy is Right

Roy Brixen of San Mateo College in California recently posted some very interesting comments to my recent blogs. Check out his comments to my Gloom and Doom and Things They Don't Teach You in School blog entries.

I certainly have to agree with Roy about the gradual fading away of engineering technician positions in industry. There used to be at least one and maybe as many a 8 engineering techs assigned to an engineer. That need in the 1950's is what originally created the Associate degree in engineering technology. Today, there are very few engineering techs. An engineer is lucky to have one tech today and most have none. While engineering techs have not gone away entirely, they are a pretty rare breed today. Most of them tend to be in organizations where lots of R&D is done where special equipment and one-of-a-kind things are built. Today, the engineer himself or herself, does even the tech work as Roy indicates. Design and simulation software helps do it all in record time.

In my travels and visits around the country as a Technology Editor for Electronic Design magazine, I usually ask companies about what techs they employ and what they do. Mostly the companies I visit have NO techs. Yes, none. I am not making that up. Those that do have techs use them mainly for testing.

Most AAS degree programs in electronics were designed to teach engineering techs. That is why the programs and courses are still heavily vested in math and circuit analysis. These programs are out of sync with what is actually going on. And that may be one of the reasons that programs are in decline. They don't match up with the real needs.

So if there are not that many engineering techs jobs today, what kinds of tech jobs are there? The good news is that there are still lots of tech jobs out there. They just are not engineering tech type jobs. Instead, they are jobs more involved with installation, repair, service, troubleshooting, testing and measuring. And there are still a few good manufacturing jobs out there for techs.

A second point, as Roy pointed out, is that the jobs tend not to be in the electronic industry. They exist in any organization that uses electronic equipment of any kind. Some examples are instrument techs in a process control plant, a field service tech that works on office machines like copiers, an MRI machine maintenance tech, or a two-way radio tech working for city fire and police. Anyway, you get the idea. The fact is, most of these jobs are not called electronic techs. They have other names.

If you are looking to revise and update your programs, read Roy's comments they begin to think how you can adjust course content and curriculum to better meet the real need. And that should lead you to figure out how to name and promote your programs to attract new students.

Good luck with that and don't forget to share your comments with us here.

Thanks, Roy.