Engineering Technologists fire Engineers

摘要

A perennial debate among engineering and engineering technology educators has been the question of where baccalaureate engineering technology (ET) graduates fit within the spectrum of engineering and technical careers. Many claim that a A-year ET education is simply a path to an engineering career that emphasizes applications of technology ot>er theory. Others claim that a A-year ET education is "engineering-light" or "applied engineering" and only prepares graduates for supprting roles to "real" engineers. This is an important issue for ASEE's Engineering Technology Council (ETC). Thus, in an attempt to help answer tbis question, ETC's ET National Forum committee recently conducted a surrey to obtain data about industry's perspectives on the comparative capabilities and performance of engineering and engineering technology graduates. The target audience for the surrey was companies that hire both types of graduates and that would, therefore, bare a sound basis for comparing the two. The survey responses, which came from 200 companies, most of which do hire both types of graduates, are described in this paper. The surrey results indicate that roughly out of 10 companies make no distinctions between graduates when hiring into engineering positions, nor do they make significant distinctions in assigning functions and responsibilities, nor do they note important differences in capabilities of either group while on the job. This paper describes the surrey instrument and the surrey process used to develop these results, provides details of the key results, and recommends future actions to confirm the results indicated by this effort.