Technology: The Twilight Zone
In speaking with a colleague on the west coast recently, he referred to the education and jobs for bachelor of technology graduates as the "twilight zone". I know what he means. Since he and many others in technology or engineering education have BSEE credentials, he cannot really know what it is like. The BSET degree seems to be a very misunderstood segment of engineering/technology education in industry and academia. Because I am a product of the system that produced bachelor of technology degrees as well as being on the hiring side in industry and academia, I can probably speak with some perspective on this subject. Here is my view.
Engineering Lite
Most of those with BSEE degrees think of BSET graduates as engineering lite. That is if they know anything at all about BSET degree programs at all which in my experience they do not. In fact they do not seem to recognize BSET grads at all and this is reflected in industry hiring. Are BSET grads capable of doing engineering? You bet. In fact, most BSET grads are actually employed as engineers. What else would they be employed as? Not techs as engineering tech positions dried up years ago. Originally the thought or goal was to have the BSET grad be a "super tech" that supported engineering but alternatively worked in manufacturing and other non-design jobs. These jobs were called technologists.
The term technologist is strictly a term dreamed up by the academicians that invented the BSET degree in the first place. In reality there never has been a real job in industry with that title. At least over the past 40 years, I have not seen it. If a BSET grad was hired it was as some super tech kind of job or as an engineer. Maybe it was as a field engineer or project engineer, but the job was officially engineering. I know the BSEE degree people really hate to hear that but it is true. I just wish that the administrators running BSET university programs would give up on the technologist term. Let it go. It is a myth....a mirage. It does not exist. Deal with it. But I guess it is the crutch that they use to distinguish themselves from the engineering departments who educate "real" engineers. An academic necessity as opposed to anything in the real world.
I initially went to school and got an AAS degree. That was in the hey day of engineering techs that did assist engineers in all manner of ways. I worked as an engineering tech for several years before realizing that I was stalled career-wise as I could rise no higher with my AAS degree. Lots of AAS grads hit this wall and feel the need and desire to go back to school and get the bachelors degree. I certainly did. But after finding out that none of my AAS work counted toward a BSEE degree, I was pretty depressed. Then in the mid-1960's the University of Houston offered the first bachelors of technology degree. It was called the Bachelors in Applied Science (BAS). It accepted AAS degree grads and gave them two more years of courses. It added some science and a full dose of math through differential equations, Laplace, etc. plus some additional social studies and advanced electronics courses.
I was somewhat skeptical what kind of reaction employers would have to my BAS degree. Most, of course, never heard of it and had no clue what a BAS grad could do. I think that is still the case 40+ years later today. Employers mostly do not have a clue to what these folks can do. In any case, there was an acute engineering shortage at that time and because I did have a "technical" bachelors degree I was hired as an engineer. Could I do the work? Of course. In fact, it was easy to compete with the recent BSEE grads who had far less hands-on practical and lab work than a technology grad has. And that is true even today. I remember hiring a recent BSEE from a major university. His first assignment was to design an amplifier to retrofit in a piece of telemetry gear. He did know how to design the amplifier but he was confused about what transistor to use, how to lay out a PC board and how to test it. That kind of info comes only from experience or, in many cases, a technology degree program.
In another instance, I was hiring a professor for an AAS degree program of which I was department head. Most of the candidates had MSEEs and a few PhDs. But not one of them, and I am serious about this, could pass the simple lab test I gave. It was to breadboard a 555 timer astable from a schematic with the components given then measure the frequency of the output on an oscilloscope. These folks didn't know the resistor color code, or how to find pin 1 on the IC or really know that an electrolytic capacitor was polarized. Reading an oscilloscope was also a major failure. Amazing really. But any of these guys could actually use the software to design a chip or to do extensive math analysis on the circuit. In any case, I hired the only technology graduate who had a BSET from Devry. He immediately built the circuit and gave me the frequency. Easy as pie. Hiring engineers to teach techs may not be the best thing to do, but that is what we have. BSEEs try to teach AAS students how to be an engineer and how to design when in today's world, techs don't really do those things. No wonder AAS degree programs are screwed up.
Anyway, I went on to a long engineering career working with NASA contractors on aerospace stuff and in the geophysical fields. About the only place I felt weak was with the very deep math analysis of very complex circuits and systems. But I was a whiz with the practical engineering stuff, especially digital which did not require all that mesh and nodal analysis and other similar methods.
Today's BSET grads are what I would call practical engineers. And there is more practical engineering in industry (the engineering grunt work if you will) than the heavy analysis and research engineering that really does need to be done by an MSEE or PhD. I just wish that those in industry knew this. A few do after years of hiring BSET's from local universities. But most do not and therefore allocate the BSET to the twilight zone. If you are ignorant of something you tend to avoid it. Human nature. A tragedy really as companies would benefit and there would be no so called engineering shortage.
Yes, BSET grads are in the twilight zone. Most know it or figure it out pretty fast after they graduate. They go into sales or marketing jobs, manufacturing or other support roles requiring a heavy technical background. But they can do engineering. The courses they take in the BSET programs are separate from similar courses in BSEE programs but the content is virtually the same and as I have discovered, the BSET guys use the same texts as the BSEE guys. But, and here is the real difference, the BSET guys get far more lab and hands-on work. The BSEE guys spend most time in front of a PC doing IC design work. As they well should.
It is really amazing how BSET programs have co-existed with BSEE programs for years and even grown. There are jobs out there for these grads. They are competent, knowledgeable, and in reality make better practical engineers than BSEE grads. They are denied access to professional engineering licensing because they are not real engineers. I have heard that some states actually recognize BSET grads to take the EIT and PE exams. Good for them. Do you think a person would actually apply for the EIT or PE exam if they did not think they could pass? Duh...... In fact, from my own examination of the PE exam, most of it is stuff you could actually learn on your own. God forbid they would let a self taught person take the exam even if he or she was a true genius or expert.
Proposal
Here is my current thinking on BSET grads and degrees. And it is not just because "I are one."
First, AAS grads really do need a path for higher education. The BSET is it. And in the real world, it matters less what the bachelors degree is in that just the fact that you have one at all. After years in the industry, what degree you have becomes nearly irrelevant (except in academia where they are totally hung up on what degree and where it is from). Keep giving the AAS grad a place to go and grow.
BSET grads for the most part do engineering work. Whether most colleges will admit to it or not. It is true. It is time to stop trying to separate or distinguish what is or is not real engineering. To do this I would merge BSEE and BSET departments and create a curriculum that provides one degree, the BSEE, that has two separate paths. One leads to a practical or applied engineering degree and the other a more advanced design and analysis slant that leads to the MSEE and PhD. The math, science and basic courses are all the same. AAS grads coming in for the BSEE would have to catch up on the math and some more in-depth electronics courses, but they could get in line for the degree. In the senior year, the paths diverge and the courses taken will steer the future education path. All that would be pretty easy to do in my mind. But I doubt we will ever see that. I am sure the BSEE departments wouldn't want their curricula to be dumbed down. Can you just imagine MIT and Stanford taking AAS degree transfers? Not really but it could be done with the proper restructuring of the engineering curricula to better match what is actually going on out in the real world.
Wouldn't it be great to start from scratch and build an engineering/technology degree program that better fit the real world? It would eliminate much of the current structure but it would also make the curricula much more relevant to the work and the technology of the 21st century. But that will never happen. So we will continue to live with degree programs that were designed for an earlier generation. Inwardly focused colleges and universities don't really care all that much about the industry they serve or the students they train. Some do of course but most don't. So the twilight zone continues to exist.
