Engineering technology: a Malaysian case

The current and rising challenges in engineering technical education demand graduate engineers who are well-prepared to provide innovative solutions as technical specialists, system integrators and change agents. As a result, technical engineering education has necessitated the accessibility, flexibility and challenges for quality and accredited engineering programs. Realizing the importance of producing a highly competent manpower to support the move towards a knowledge-based economy, the Malaysian government has put considerable pressure to the universities to produce engineers who are competitive in the global market. Hence, this paper evaluates the universities response towards the assignment of developing a highly competence engineering technology workforce in support of the government policy. It examines how a case study university charts its route towards this direction through its implementation of engineering technical education. Specifically, it analyses the faculty planning and future direction in the use of hands-on skills in teaching and learning. This paper also investigates the obstacles and barriers by university management in dealing with issues concerning national quality assurance and accreditation pertaining to the engineering technical education programmes. A key conclusion of this research is that Malaysian universities need to evaluate its engineering technical education strategies if they aim for quality assurance and accreditation to be established and aspire for successful attempts towards the creation of the requisite knowledge workers that Malaysia needs