Engineering education, profession and employer: perception of engineers in electronic sector

The field of Engineering has advanced rapidly in the last decade. However, despite of the needs of engineering resources to keep up with the challenges in the engineering world, Malaysia is experiencing the shortage of engineers towards realizing the dream of Malaysia Vision 2020. Engineering education needs to undergo dramatic changes in order to keep up with a demanding society and declining student enrollment. The purpose of this study is hereby to see the perceptions of engineers towards engineering education, profession and employer by (i) Identifying the education and working background of engineers in the electronic sectors (ii) Determining the different perceptions towards engineering education, profession and employer based on engineer's education and working background and gender and (iii) Determining the level of agreement towards the factors related to engineering education, profession and employer. A survey was done on engineers working in two multinational electronics companies in Malaysia. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics techniques such as frequency, percentage and comparable mean. The independent-sample t test analysis and one way ANOVA analysis were applied to identify the significant difference in variable mean. This study will reveal the education, working and demographic background of the engineers in electronic sectors. The difference perceptions and level of agreements on related factors towards engineering education, profession and employers are also revealed. The results of this study shall be used to provide valuable inputs towards the improvement of the engineering education, engineering profession and employer.