Would I do it all again?

31-10-2014
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Terry Mackenzie-hoy
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I recently spent time with a group of teachers. I told them that I guessed a major drawback was dealing with parents who wanted to make sure their child was getting the best attention possible and that the teacher, who probably knows that the child in question is a work-shy, lazy and disinterested learner, has to discuss why the child is bad at school.

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0 0 They agreed – problem parents. This was never a problem with my mother. The teaching staff sought her out to tell her that I was very bright and a work-shy, lazy and disinterested fool. I was. I liked physics and some subjects but, really, not that much. I understood them – certainly. Then I discovered electronics and electricity and radios. It was as though a genie had revealed a vast collection of very interesting electronic and electrical stuff. From this interest, I moved into electrical engineering and now into acoustics.

I am often asked by parents if I think their child would do well in electrical engineering or sound engineering or acoustics or whatever I may suggest and what the prospects in these fields may be, specifically in South Africa.

So, here are my answers to: Should a person study electrical engineering and what are the prospects? What about electronic engineering or robotics, or sound engineering or something in between?

Electrical engineering is probably the fastest-growing field in the world, although nobody really gets this. For much of the past 30 years, computers were the thing, but this has now levelled out – there will be growth and new stuff but the big mover will be electricity. Much of Africa is still not grid connected, but this has to – and will happen. For years, Eskom and other power supply authorities preached that power generation must be centralised – and this will happen. There are some things we cannot do right now (such as transmitting big bulk power over a distance of 6 000 km) but this will happen. When the whole of Africa is electrified, there will be huge demand for electrical engineers.

So, good career prospects. Well, if you can get into university, to begin with. If you are white, you have to get super marks to get into the University of Cape Town (UCT), for example (if today’s rules applied when I went to UCT, I would not have been allowed in.) Then, again, a white male engineering graduate has trouble finding work.

But, in all this, the elephant in the room is that you have to pass university. Electrical engineering is very demanding. It is not a social degree – it is a very solid grind. If a person is a party animal, fogetabathit. One in four first-year students graduates in four years and one in two does not graduate at all. Then, if you do get a job, the starting salaries are hopeless (I know because I pay some of them).

Electronics engineering is the same as electrical engineering but with a bias. Huge new stuff is out there, particularly in mining robotics, medical prostheses, nonverbal communication, artificial vision, and so on. But not, really, in South Africa. No real big markets for equipment and heavy competition from other countries. Study difficulties as for electrical engineering.

Sound engineering is fairly simple to study but the work for new graduates is hard – on the road, carry and fetch, and late-night odyssey stuff. Easy to get sucked into drugs and dropouts. However, if you survive, good future, with studios, and so on, but . . . increasingly, all recording stuff is sent off overseas to be firmed up. To succeed, you have to be a very good artist. Then you have to find an employer.

Other stuff, such as mechatronics, a combination of mechanical and electrical engineering, is not as difficult as electrical engineering. Mechatronics unites some aspects of electrical and mechanical engineering that go hand in hand – robotics and hydraulics and computers, for example. But this field is getting very big.

So, would I do electrical engineering again? Oh, yes. But I would love to do robotics and put some real design in instead of the amateur stuff we see. But that is another topic.