The 2010 Gigascale Imperative: Why The Instruction Of Electronics Technology Must Change!

Approximately four decades have past since the first implementations of two-year college electronics programs with curricula recommended by the United States government. Today’s electronics programs look remarkable similar to those early programs. This paper contends that there needs to be substantial change to how electronics technology is taught or the skill sets of tomorrow’s graduates will becomes even more disconnected from the world of work than they are today. This change needs to embrace and emphasis a systems level approach to the teaching of electronics technology along with an infusion of the Scan’s report soft skills into the curriculum. Several suggestions of how this may be accomplished are presented here. I. Overview Approximately forty years have past since the implementation of the first government recommended two-year college electronics curricula. Although tremendous technologic change has occurred in the electronics field and its manufacturing industry, little change has occurred in the typical curriculum leading to an associate degree in this area. Except for the continuous and rapid accretion of new technical subject matter into the typical curriculum, today’s programs look remarkable similar to those of the early 1960s. This paper contends that there needs to be a rapid and pervasive systemic change to electronics technology education now or there is a real danger that the skill sets of tomorrow’s graduates will become even more disconnected from the world of work than they presently are. This change needs to embrace and emphasis a systems level approach to the teaching of electronics technology along with a meaningful infusion of the Scan’s report soft skills into the curriculum. During the early 1960s, the United States Office of Education, under the then Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, prepared curriculum guides to assist the States in the development of technical education programs. The guide for Electronics Technology was extensively used to design new electronics programs at the post-secondary level [1] . The stated goal of the curricula proposed by the guide was to produce competent technicians that could work with engineers and scientists: doing research and development work or serving as customer (field) service, operations (manufacturing), and communications technicians. As already stated, although forty years has past and incredible technological change has occurred in the field, little change has occurred in the typical curriculum leading to a degree in the electronics area. Even with the addition of new technical subject matter into the typical curriculum, today’s programs look remarkably similar to the one proposed in the original guide [2] . In a closely related matter, beginning in the mid-1980s, the field of engineering education started to respond to numerous reports that there needs to be changes made to engineering education. An P ge 10255.1