I highly agree with this article. I went into electronics engineering having no electronics experience. I did learn the internal workings of a copmuter on cooperative work terms, and I consider that a blessing. I probably know more about the internal workings of a computer than a good 2/3 of my class, and there is still a lot that I don’t know. We have no classes on computer hardware, and just a few on networking. However, we have fabulous lab instructors, from whom I’ve learned as much as from my profs. Lastly, at least in the US and Canada, there’s Radio Shack. They have these fabulous little project books for all types of electronics – communications, digital, even solar power, to name a few.
Regarding demand, I once had a professional engineer tell me that engineers support technical development in society like a pyramid, with the engineers at the bottom, creating a basis for everything else. Unfortunately, he said, these days, the shift is to have less at the bottom and more people managing them, mostly because a lot of people aren’t willing to put in the effort anymore for an engineering or computer science degree. The result is less support for more structure until the pyramid is reversed. I don’t have a problem with giving tech classes to more liberal arts people – in fact, I encourage people to learn more, especially when they say, “Oh, it’s too confusing and there’s so much to know!” My girlfriend, a history major, could definitely use one or two of these classes. It just fumes me when these people who do only have one or two classes think that they know all there is to know about computers and where they are heading. My solution? Read. Then play. Or even the reverse, though the former can be much cheaper. The only way to really understand how something works is to make it work yourself.