The need for restructuring the education systems

for technicians and technologists in

developing countries by Gama1 A. Mokhtar, Asser A. Zaky and

Mohamed M. El-Faham

W i l s t educational authorities in developing countries arefocusing their attention on the prol+ration o f universities little attention is being paid towards improving the standards gvocational and technical

education and increasing the number o f vocational and technical institutes. lhere seems to be a lack o f appreciation that skilled technicians and technologists are the backbone o f any industrialised state and h a t

it is their skill and competence that determine the standard ofenginecring practice attainable and set the level oftechnological and economic advancement that can be achieved. In this paper a comparative study o f the technical education systems in both developed and developing countries is presented and it is proposed how in the latter they should be upgraded to iniprove the education o f technicians and technician-engineers

and make it an attractive alternative to a university education.

day technological and industrial achieve- ments are a measure of the extent of development of nations and are the main r criteria by which nations are categorised. It

could be said that technology is the true basis of the xcendancy ofwestern civilisation.

At the start of the industrial revolution in the 18th century many countries experienced a strong opposition to technology &on1 conservatives and traditionalists. The choice was either to become a major industrial nation and acquire economic and nditary strength by building a strong iiational base or to be content with one’s heritage in a rapidly changing world. Most nations realised that the only real choice was to proceed with technological progress and industrialisation. This produced profound social changes and made large demands on all aspects of cducation, especially technological education, the response being to create engineering colleges and vocational and technical schools.

For a long tinie the basic purpose of vocational and t echca l education has been mainly:

to educate for general employment to educate for employment in a specific trade.

The main objective ofa technical vocational education for a specific trade was the production of a workforce possessing a high level of manual skills. However, in view ofthe enormous technological advances that have taken place in the latter half of the 20th century, industrial countries have come to realise that manual skills alone are not su5cient, and that vocational and technical programmes must he redesigned in order to meet the demands of the complex world of today’s technologies. Curricula must be redesigned to provide broad-based, transferable technician skills together with a sound mathematidscience foundation.

The industrial and developed countries are aware of the critical importance of technical education and

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technologist (technician~engineer) Skilled worker

engineer technician engineer technician I

Fig. 1 The four types of technology worker

technical training, within the framework of their overall education system, in ensuring econonuc success in a fiercely competitive world. I t is therefore paradoxical that developing countries are more concerned with university education than with technical education. In fact their need to modernise and expand their decrepit vocational and technical education system and institutions is far greater than that of the developed world. The latter load? less- developed countries with high technology and related products that are sometirnes inappropriate to their present stage of development, inappropriate not because ofa lack ofengineers (university graduates) but because of a lack of competent technicians and technologists with the necessary sMls and training to deal with such technology. When a foreign ‘expert’ is sent to these countries to investigate a technical problem, he is invariably either a technologist or a skilled technician.

The level of competence of a country’s rlulled

workers and technicians is centrally important to the tlexibihty and productivity of its labour force. The technical skills required in highly developed countries that have entered or are entering the so-called postindustrial age may differ radicdlly from those required in developing countries just entering their own industrial age. In developing countries, skilled and labour-intensive jobs are increasingly being carried out by robots and unmanned machines; new technical skills are required to meet the demands of the emerging new technoloyes-information technoloin, biotechnology, nanotechnology and cross-disciplinary technologies- rather than the skills required for the traditional specidst fields. Yet the manufacturing workforces of developing countries, many of which are overpopulated, still need to include technicians and technologists skilled in the trad~tional fields.

The technology hierarchy

The word ‘technology’ comes &on1 the Greek word ‘techne’-art, skill-and ‘logos’pscience, discourse; hence it literally means ‘the science of skills’. Today it has come to signify the application of scientific knowledge to industry. This application requires a vast range of crafts and skills (know-how) involving design, construction and maintenance ofartefacts and systems. Thc workforce embraced by technology is one with varying degrees of technical abilities, sMls and levels of qualifications required to perform specific tasks. Those who work in the field of technology can be classified according to their level of qualification and the type of work they perform in theirjobs as follows (Fig. 1):

Skilled workers: Those hghly trained to perform jobs requiring a high degree ofnmual slalls and use oftools, e.g. turners, welders, glassblowers, master-nmorls.

advanced technical education diploma -

Thanawiya Fanneya (technical secondary certificate)

technician diploma

BSC

basic education certificate Thanawiya Amma (general secondary certificate)

age 15 18 ....._ ~ ......... * *

- duration: piimary+secondary=12 years

Fig. 2 Broad outline of the Egyptian education system

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BTEC 1 st diploma

comprehensive aid modern tllrther education colleges

n n n

BTEC

HNC vocational National

Ouaiificatians “0)

HND

GCSE NAS-level universities BSC

- I duration: piimary+secondary=13 years BTEC: Business and Technical Educational Council

GCSE: General Certificate of Secondary Education NAS: AdvancediAdvanced Supplementary Level HNC: Higher National Certificate HND: Higher National Diploma

Part-time

Sandwich course-an undergraduate course that incorporates periods Of industrial training or professional experience outside university and planned to integrate withihe academic syllabus to form an okial pan of the university course.

Fig. 3 Broad outline of the British education system

Tcckti icinns: Those qualified in a narrow field of sprcialisation. Graduates of technology schools foollowing 2 to 4 years study. they are versed more in engineering practice than in design and theory and work mainly on repair and maintenance as well as installation work. Today many technicians also work as computer programnlers. Technologist (tediniciair ergirveri): These are the link between engineers and technicians. They are graduates of an engineering polytechnic or of a polytechnic given university status who have studied for 4 years. The emphasis of their training is on practice-less mathematics and science than in universities-and more applied technology courses plus hands-on training. Their jobs involve construction, operation, maintenance and repair, and engineering support work, such as building prototypes on a development project. They are often hired as engineers. Engitteers: University graduates whose education provides extensive theoretical background in ‘core’ subjects with emphasis on niathematics and basic engineering sciences and limited coverage of practical applications and design subjects. Their jobs cover a wide r ang of duties: planning, desip, research and drvelopment, management, operation, maintmance etc.

Thr different levels overlap to a greater or lesser extent and the overlap is greatest at the technologist-engineer level.

Education systems

Systems ofvocational education and training ‘faitfilly reflect the characteristics of the societies of which they are part. It is a truism that educational system as a whole are nucrocosms of the societies of which they are part, a truisni that applies afortiori to vocational education and training.” We have chosen to delineate here the Egyptian, British and German systems.

The British system has been chosen for two reasons: the first i s that Britain has long been a leadmg industrial nation whose education system has been adopted by nwny of its former colonies (today developing nations); the second is that because Germany has ovemken Britain both economically and industrially there ha^ been continual pressure to introduce a ‘new vocational” into the British system, in particular to emulate the long- established and effective German ‘dual system’ with its rnixture of vocational education and general education and a strong involvemcnr by indusny”.

Figs. 2,3 and 4 give the broad outlines of these three systet11s.

In Egypt there are 110 polytechnics. In Britain all the

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Fachschulen

Fachhochschuireife

Dipilng (FH)

Di pllng

Dipllng (SA) Berufsakademien

+ .......................................

- I duration: primary+secondary=i3 years

8 Practice within school

Practice outside school (on-job training): dual sysiem

Fig. 4 Broad outl ine of t h e German education system

polytechrucs were given university status in 1992 and took university titles5; some, however, have reniained more technologically oriented than others. In Germany there is a large variety of techuical and vocational institutes: Fachhochschulen (universities of applied science), Beruisakadenllen (universities that combine teaching and on-the-job training) and Beru&schulen and Fachschulen (technical trade schools). Fachhochschulen, established in the early 1970s, provide students with the academically based and practice-oriented higher education and training required of a technician engineer. They have become increasingly attractive to students with an Abitur (niatriculation) because their graduates have relatively favonrable employment prospects- German industrial firins consider this type of education more focused on their needs. In 1992 the Fachhochschulen accounted for two-thirds ofthe engineering degrees awarded. It is worth noting that as Fachhochschulen d d not cxist in the former East Germany, they are now being established there to create a more hghly skilled labour force and thus foster economic growths.

A national experience

To fill the need for technologists brought about by a large-scale nationahsation and industrialisation policy, the Egyptian government founded, in 1965/66, ten new higher education institutes of technology (polytechnics). However, in founding these institutes, no consideration was given to the acute shortage of properly quahfied technology teachers.

Teachers i h m various universities were recruited to teach either part-time or full-time in these institutes. Lacking the necessary training and practical experience, lecturers taught exactly the same counes that they taught at their own univenities. When students at these institutes reahsed this, they denlanded that the degree granted by the institutes should be identical to that granted by the universities, i.e. a BSc degree and not a Diploma. Under the mounting pressure it was not long before these institutes wert. turned into universities, thus defeating the purpose for which they were founded-a classical example of putting the cart before the horse. This has led to an increase in the already acute shortage of technologists and a large surplus of engineers with skills poorly adapted to the needs of the industrial system. The consequences have been (a) a high percentage (-15%) ofstructural unemployment ofuniversity graduates, i.e. unemployment that is the result of poor adaptation of a worker's qualification and s k d s to the actual need', and (b) employment of engineers to work as technologists, for which they are not qualified to perform the various hands-on tasks required. Moreover, as in most developing countries, both public and private sectors of industry neither perceive the need nor have the know-how or programmes to train new recruits. Reliance is placed essentially on the old 'pick it up from fellow workers' method, which might have worked in the.past but is ineffective in an age in which technology is not only changing ultra rapidly but also becoming more complex.

Table 1 shows the number of engineers per 1000 of

.. .

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the population and per 1000 of the workforce in Egypt and in a number of developed countries’. Taking into consideration the very large technological gdp that exists hetween a developing country and developed ones, these ratios are not indicative of a significant techno~ogic~ standing. For the ratio of engineers to workforce to

.. Table 1: Number of engineers in developing and developed coutries

’ WYPt 3.43 14.5 : UK 4.44 9-7 ~ USA. 6.61 13-8 Japan 6-23 12-7

4.4 i Germany 7.03 - i Italy -

Y

be meanin& the ratio of worktorce to population must he taken into consideration. In developed countries it is more than 50% whereas in Egypt it is benveen 25% and 35%. However these ratios are significant because they indicate that in developing countrics the number of engineers produced greatly exceeds actual requirements. In fact in the Arab world more than 80% ofengineering graduates are employed as technologists.

The relative neglect of vocational and technical education in favour ofuniversity education is in essence a social one. A vocational and technical education is seen as a path for the less able student-tcchniciaia are regardcd as an inferior caste-whereas a university degree is a major step towards improving one’s social standing and a major opportunity for attaining high- prestige occupations. It may he that it is not a university education per se which matters, but rather the degree awarded, namely a BSc degree. The lower social and psychological iniportance attached to the title of the dcgrce awarded by technical colleges is a major reason for the reluctance of secondary school-leavers to enter polytechnic-type institutes. This barrier can he overc~nie by recognising degrrrs awarded by such institutes 3s equivalent to a BSc degree. In Britain all polytechnics have been given university status and in Germany the degrees awarded by Fachhochschulen and Berufiakadenrien have been given Uiploni-

lngeniurstatus (Dipllng(FH) and DiplIng(BA). It is up to employers to decide which type ofgraduate would best meet their requirements.

Modfying and uphting an education system re- quires enlightened attitudes towards vocational and technical education by both government and in- dustry-enhghtemnent in the sense of a deep conviction that the economic well-being ofa nation is almost totally dependent on the quality ofits education system, and of technical ,education in particular. University education must yield its leading position in favour of a substantial expansion and upgrading of vocational and technical institutes providing a broad- based secondary vocational education and a technological education with a strong maths/science foundation matched to the needs of technologist- engineers.

The importance of the participation of industry in vocational and technological education cannot he overeniphasised. Industry is both the benefactor and the beneficiary. Without subsrantial involvement by industry no vocational and technical education progran~nie can be completely successful. In Japan, the USA and Germany companies are willing to invest considerable amounts of money, not only in initial vocational training hut also in retraining and updating the s k i l l s of their employees to meet technological changes in good time. Whereas other developed

industrial sponsorship is especially desirable for practice-oriented courses

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34.0%@ 62.2%

3.8%

Britain Germany

no qualification 0 university 0 intermediate

and the latter can 'benefit greatly from the experiences of the former. Today educational conservatism is in reality educational and economic stagnation. Perhaps the best method ofassessing the impact and effectiveness of changes in an educational system is by undertakmg pilot projeco. An excellent recent example of such a project, which should be emulated by developing countries, is the DUOQUAL project undertaken by more than 10 European countries. Thr essence of the project is to integrate vocational and

secondary education level (1619 year olds), immediately after compulsory education, in order to improve the occupational tlexibhty of graduates. The project comprises different schemes (depending on the existing vocational and training systems of the countries involved) with various degrees ofintegnhon ofvocational and general-education acadenuc subjects, i.c. different degrees of work orientation (practical training): low, medium and high. The progranmies lead eventually to certification in the form of a combined 'matriculation and vocational certification' as an expression of a 'double qualification'. Such a qualification may or may not be an entitlement towards university education depending on the university entrance requirements of the country concerned. AU schemes include action-oriented education and training based predominantly on projects.

Initial assessment of the various schemes shows a predominantly upward trend in enrolment and is an indication ofhoth the attractiveness and relevance ofthe dual qualification in the majority of the participating countries. The German pilot project appears to have been the most successful and is planned to become part and parcel of the regular vocational school system. This success is mainly due to the relative ease with which such a project could be accommodated into the Iong- established dual system of vocational training which exists in Germany and which involves substantial participation by industry as a partner. A comprehensive report and analysis of the DUOQUAL project may be obtained via the Internet'n and is compulsive reading for aU those engaged or interested in vocational and technical education.

The Arab Academy for Science and Technology is an ideal place to initiate a pilot project as it incorporates a vocational ceubtl, a technical school and a college of engineering with univcrsity status. A pilot project is under way with German co-opention, and as the Academy is an educational institution of the Arab League the results will relevant to all countries in the regional.

Conclusions and recommendations

For developing countries to survive in today's fiercely competitive and technologically oriented world, let alone to boost their industrial and economic standing, drastic and immediate niesures have to be taken to upgrade their vocational and technical education systems and these must be given top priority in their education policies. The following are a number of recommendations which, if implemented, could lead to a significant improvement in vocational and technical education.

Vocational and technical education systems, especially those at secondary and tertiary levels, must become more dynamic (i.e. have a s n d e r time- constant) and more flexible and must be oriented towards meeting the needs of industry and modern technologies.

The training needs of further education teachers and workplace trainers must be properly met and co- ordinated if the standards of vocational education and training are to be significantly raised. There must be a .massive training programme with nussions abroad if necessary More involvement by industry and government in providing practical training. Less expansion of universities and the creation of more polytechnics. The status of technologists should be boosted by awarding them engineer status in the form of a BSc degree. Employers should hire 'engineers' or 'technician-engineers' accordmg to the s k i h required and there should be no discrimination between the two types in t e rm of salary. Job opportunities will be much better for the latter than the former. This should reduce the pressure on universities, increase enrolment in technological institutes and decrease structural unemployment. School curricula should be broadened to include practical subjects and to increasc the adaptability of school-leavers to different &hire vocations. The German dual system should be emulated as closely as possible by urging large industries and public utility companies to contribute substantial funds and iachties. Pilot programmes along the lines of the DUOQUAL European project should be started and critically evaluated.

References

1 CANTOR, L.: 'Vocational education and training in the developed world' (Routlcdge, London, 1989)

2 PRAIS, S. J., and WAGNER, K.: 'Schooling standards in England and Germany: some comparisons bared on economic performance', Not. Inrr. Emn. Rev, May 1985, pp.53-76

3 GAMLIN, J. E : 'Engineering education and the school system', IEE l'mc., 1988. 135, Qp.271-276

4 MANLY, R. W: 'Learning our ICSSOIIP: the &tun. of education and training in Britain', E q . Sii. Edur. J., 1992, 1, (I), PP.318

5 UNESCO: world guide to highher education' (1996, 3rd edn.)

6 GALURAITH, J. K.: 'Thc new industrial state' (Pelican Bookr, UK, 1974)

7 'Collected data on engineering skills and experience in the Anb world' (in Arabic). Union of Arab Engineers, Septcniber 1989

X PKAIS, S. J.: 'Vocational qualifications of the labour farce in Britain and Germany', Not. Inrr. Emion. Rev., November 1981, pp.47-59

9 HAWLEYK.: 'The rebirth of UK engineering', En~qinceritiy Eclinology, 2002, 4,.pp.t2-18

I O Set littp://www.b.rhuttle.dr/wifo/duoqual/qua~

OIEE 2002

Professor Mokhrar is Prcridrnt of The Anb Academy for Science and Technology (AAST), PO Box 1029, Abou Kir, Alexmdria, Egypt. Professor Zaky is Consultant to and Professor EILFaham is Dean of Graduate Studies at AAST. Professor Zaky is an IEE Fellow. E-mail: asierz.lki@datlxpn.conl.eg

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