An interesting perspective

This past weekend I had dinner with a good friend of mine. We taught together at Austin CC but like me he left to go back to industry.

This friend is in the training business. His current job is to teach basic electronics (DC, AC, semi, digital, etc) to techs employed by a major semiconductor company. These techs have been with the company for a while. For some unexplained reason, the HR department decided to give them a test to see just how much electronics they did know. Despite the fact these are all competent employees, only one of a batch of 20 passed the test. So in order for these employees to keep their jobs and be promoted, they had to be trained so they could pass that test. And so the courses my friend is teaching. Does that strike you as odd? Why not train them in fresh, new up-to-date subjects?

The interesting thing he said that even those these guys are techs, their job does not really involve knowing that much electronics. They operate equipment and maintain it but that process requires little or no electronics knowledge. Yet the company insists that they know those basics. My friend is happy as he has a nice job teaching what he knows.

That makes me wonder just how in touch the HR people or the managers are with what the employees really do and how that ties into the electronic fundamentals they insist that these guys know. Not much by the looks of it. No one has really sat down and tried to match knowledge and skills to education. Or maybe it was done in the past and no one ever updated it. Sound familiar?

I have seen things like this in the past. When I was department head, I went to most of the large companies locally that hired techs. I asked for a copy of any exam they give to new hires. I got three of them. Then I proceeded to match up the questions with what we taught. Basically, we covered most of the items with just a few glitches that were easily fixed.

The most amazing thing was how dated the tests were. Even though the AAS curriculum is pretty dated itself as are most texts, these tests were worse!! No kidding. They were mostly left overs from the 60s or 70s. No one ever bothered to up date them. I even saw one exam that had a question to identify a vacuum tube RC phase shift oscillator. Can you imagine? Those things haven't been used in a half century or so. Anyway, if we want our graduates to pass these little jewels from the past, we better keep teaching the technology of yesteryear. Forget all the new stuff.

Strange as it may seem, what do we really want for our graduates? Is it to be extremely knowledgeable and skilled in the very latest technology or just to get jobs? Apparently not. Hey, why not just teach the tests these companies give and be done with it. Who needs a new curriculum any way?

So I am thinking that it is not just the dated faculty that insists on teaching the dated unneeded materials. The companies want that too. Whether that comes from some HR wonk who doesn't know squat about electronics or a hiring manager, I do not know. Scary. I do know that I have heard some faculty and even some working engineers and managers who served on our industry advisory committees say something like, "we want our new hires to be trained like we were." I guess that is more important than a curriculum being up to date and in tune with the real world.

I am beginning to wonder if it is worthwhile to fight for a new and better curriculum. After all, maybe an AAS degree is just a credential to get your foot in the door. It may be mostly irrelevant what you learn along the way. I hate when that happens.