The need for restructuring the education systems for technicians and technologists in developing countries

Whilst educational authorities in developing countries are focusing their attention on the proliferation of universities, little attention is being paid towards improving the standards of vocational and technical education and increasing the number of vocational and technical institutes. There seems to be a lack of appreciation that skilled technicians and technologists are the backbone of any industrialised state and that it is their skill and competence that determine the standard of engineering practice attainable and set the level of technological and economic advancement that can be achieved. In this paper a comparative study of 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 improve the education of technicians and technician-engineers and make it an attractive alternative to a university education