Education, Demographics and the Future of Technology Based Industries Technical Industries: Their Dependence on the Educational System

To summarize this paper, we in industry care about engineering education because our industries' survival and success depend critically upon the professional socialization process that we call engineering education. This process of engineering education needs some rather fundamental changes because the shift from the industrial age to the information age has brought many fundamental changes into our businesses and into society in general. My three recommendations for engineering education are: ??? Continue to teach the fundamentals of the engineering disciplines and their underlying mathematics and sciences. ??? Teach students a set of critical, intellectual process skills. ??? Teach students how to continue to learn for a life-long career.