Question of the Month: How To Keep EE Degree Programs Current?

Curricula should include multiple disciplines. EEs should learn about mechanics, fluids, chemistry and thermodynamics etc. These will always be relevant even if a particular job requires deep specialization because products, processes and systems are always multidisciplinary. Jobs that require leading edge technology usually go beyond what academia has been able to institutionalize, so that level of learning needs to be done on the job.

The key to all technical vocations is the need to learn new things on the job.

I was constantly doing web searches, library searches and a lot of reading to keep up with the changes in technology.

Technical education is a life long pursuit.

If you think you are done when you graduate, then you just do not understand how fast things are changing.

Every day is finals week.

So, are you suggesting that a degree course should entail a refresher/update course every year? 

I'm going to be slightly controversial and say they were never appropriate. I had the pleasure of a couple of universities for various reasons and what I learned there which was useful in year one of working was nothing which I hadn't learned at College in physics. However I did start my first electronics job with reasonable skills and competence - it's just very little of it came from university. 

The difficulty I face is that whilst I wasted a lot of time at university studying basic electronic design (op amps and stuff), you can learn that in a few weeks (a university year was only 26-28 weeks including 4 weeks of exams so we weren't really flat out! In reality that's all they/we were doing really but under the guise of a year of study) and go on to be commercially useful. It's only 20 years later that I wish I could go back for the other year of knowledge and experience that I got at university. That stuff would make so much more sense and have much more application when not muddled in with trivial stuff like understanding GBW product and calculations about switching on times of transistors - again Q=It is college level stuff. 

The last year was just full of nonsense such as budget/management stuff which is useful but looking through the notes and syllabus, largely outdated by the time it became useful except for the few core weeks of knowledge like critical paths etc. and none of that is particularly mind breaking (mind numbing perhaps!).  

To revisit this as I would like I would have to book into a two year program of study (maybe I could just quit after the first (ie second teaching year) year and it wouldn't really matter if I passed the exams or not - £9k to just sit in those lectures would be good value. Not only do I think that an engineer with experience would be able to deal with that level of information in half the time and with half the effort, but it would mean more to them, work wonders for their careers and give them a break from boring work! It would really define the difference between an engineer and senior/principle engineer. Most of all, it would be a bit more affordable - when I was 18 I didn't have a penny! Now I could easily take a year (7 months really - see academic year lengths above) off work, probably be supported by my employer anyway (they're nothing special in that respect, just coherent thinkers) and not really have to worry about passing the exams because a certificate of attendance is more useful than exam grades beyond 30. 

What's more, at the peak of my career, I could be learning up to date, relevant syllabus material instead of programming in assembly on a Motorola 68k! Even the university at the time said that was going to be useless but they weren't sure what the next step needed to be as industry hadn't yet settled so I'm willing to forgive them on that - the principles stood and to be fair, it was still a relevant skill at the time, just not very forward thinking. 

In fact, now I've written this, I wonder why I'm not doing it. However I think this fits in with what DAB said - formal education builds around some key skills that get you started. By 30 you shouldn't need to think about designing an op amp circuit but as a graduate at 21 you can't yet build an op amp circuit with the same confidence. Once you can do that in your sleep you can start thinking about other building blocks. 

Actually, that's largely what I wrote in my reaction ;) 

In my old job, learning was a continuous process.

I am not sure a refresher or update course would be able to keep you current, depending upon your industry.

In Aerospace, we were under a constant state of change as new technology appeared daily.

Apart from universities there is issue with governments and policy makers that needs to be changed to make next generation of EE engineers.

Specifically, in the developing world governments do not have right understanding of the technology and skilled workers in tech domain. Their policies are not friendly to the skilled workers in this field that is why many of the EE engineers try to find jobs abroad in developed world. That unfortunately do not work for everyone. Every EE engineer can not find a job opportunity or they do not find right living conditions out of their home country.

That is why it is quite important for governments to understand where technology stands today and where they need to put their efforts. In fact, I find the policies of the government here in India that is ""anti-EE engineers"" that is killing the job market and startups to create products.

I chose other.  Lately I noticed that I am one of those people that needs to see to believe.  In the last few years I've been in the lab much more and it's really helped to cement certain concepts that had until now remained elusive.  In other words, seeing is believing.  Ironically when I think back to my schooling I didn't like labs because it felt like a race against the clock to collect all the results.... and then what I was left with was so messy that I had to rewrite everything afterwards.  I think it would be great if the labs were structured to have less overhead in terms of the write ups etc and focused more on discovery.

A lot of labs have not been through an evolution like agile software has gone through. A revolution of thoughts.

Rigidity (in processes, compliance, ...): is it an asset?
Or is it an inhibitor? Is the value somewhere in the middle?
Flexibility, is that an asset or a disturber? 
Is avoiding any risk an asset. And is avoiding any risk actually avoiding each risk?
Are rigid processes avoiding the risks that may occur? And is the cost higher than the impact?

In software, economics have already decided (for the non-top-500 - those in the top 500 can be inefficient and survive - they can ignore reality because of budget) 

Rigidity can only be efficient if it's challenged. Great detailed long term plans (those that every one praises at the begin of a project) are usually a pipe dream, unless they are adaptable and resilient to reality.

In a sense I was saying, as you put it, 'rigidity is an inhibitor.'  Even the fixed semester schedule is a bummer.  Some flexibility to accommodate different methods of learning would be great.