A market-driven engineering curriculum

Last weekend, presidents, CEOs, and GMs from the top 20 semiconductor companies (including Hitachi, Intel, Texas Instruments, etc.) in the Philippines visited the chancellor of UPLB and proposed that the engineering curriculum be modified according to the needs of the market. The semiconductor industry represent more than 50% of the Philippines' export income, have more than 40,000 employees of which about 5-10% are engineers. It was their findings that new engineers still need significant trainings before being able to do actual jobs, in short, newly grad engineers are not ready. The chancellor agreed only to add or modify at most 8 units and not the entire curriculum.

The one thing that the agricultural engineering community could learn from here is not "we are not alone" but a new approach towards creating a solution to the number 1 problem of agricultural engineers, that is, very thin job opportunity. Maybe it is time to have collaboration between agricultural engineers and our target market: the DA, agricultural companies (San Miguel, Purefoods, Bounty, etc.), LGUs, etc.. It would be a big step if we could have a consultancy meeting with these companies and government agencies on whether they really need agricultural engineers and what skills or services they need. Based on this consultation, we may modify our curriculum or provide the necessary trainings for existing agricultural engineers.