Changing r¿¿le of the engineer in the electronics industry

The growth of the electronics industry from small beginnings to its present major status is reviewed; growth accompanied by radical change in the way the industry itself works. The knowledge base for professional practice has been transformed, and the expansion in the volume of relevant knowledge inevitably forces the evolution of new disciplines, with an unavoidable tendency for once coherent specialisms to split, including, in its turn, electronic engineering; just as disciplines emerged themselves by similar processes of (hotly contested) splitting. Inevitably this process will continue, and both educators and accreditation authorities must adopt a forward-looking and flexible view, if they are not to impede the further development of what bids to be the world´s largest single industry.