The goal of education is to teach a specific set of skills that make the workers marketable for high demand jobs. With change inevitable, it is no surprise that jobs become obsolete if they cannot adapt, and that people need to be able to adapt in order to keep their changing jobs. The old ideal of staying with one or two companies throughout your career is no longer the norm, so education needs to change and adapt too. Much like the manufacturing industry, education’s end result is only as good as the individual components. Master the components, and you have mastered the end result. Manufacturing has figured this concept out, so can education follow?
Foundational Electricity
Laura Lyons • October 14, 2020
Fundamental skills will allow for a feeling of confidence
If this last year has shown us anything, it is that things can change in the blink of an eye, especially when it comes to a career. As a kid, when you think about your career, typically you do so in the broad sense like doctor or firefighter- the specifics haven’t been decided yet. But as we get older, we realize we need to be careful of our career choices because we will have to stick with them for years. But are our students and educators prepared for the changes that are inevitably coming? Do they know what to do? The first step is to fall back on the education that set them up to be successful in their career choice in the first place, back to the foundation.
Education needs to change and adapt just as educators expect students to change in order to meet the skills that employer’s need. The process to make sure students are knowledgeable and are marketable in a high stake, competitive, global world requires a change from a narrow and specific skill base to the marketable proficiency/mastery of foundational skills. For example, take electricity. Think about how many jobs rely on knowledge of electricity: Transportation, Industrial, HVAC, Construction, Smart Grid, and many others. So, if electricity is a critical skill for all of these jobs, why is the fundamental electrical training different for each of them? Shifting from narrow and limited to mastery of fundamental skills will allow for a feeling of confidence when the career path shifts.
Each of us is in charge of our own company, You, Inc. As company owner, you get to decide which resources, or skills, you have at your disposal. In a global economy, those with the skills in demand get the jobs. The mastery of general skills allows for an advantage over mastery of a narrow specific set of criteria. Knowing change is constant, are educators doing their best to help their students be ready, and are students doing their best to make themselves marketable in changing times? Foundational skills instead of specific narrow criteria allows for stronger building blocks, especially in electricity. Stronger education creates stronger more marketable employees which creates stronger businesses. Isn’t it interesting how a strong foundation isn’t shaken by the changing times?
- Laura Lyons
President of ATech
The automotive industry is an ever-changing landscape of engineering innovation. As always, this atmosphere of change has once again made the attempt to lurch forward. There are multiple changes and challenges coming for automotive technicians in the near future. Some small, some large, and some totally ground-breaking. I won’t be going too far into the technology of some of these innovations as some are not only complicated, but quite difficult to describe. I will, however, do my best. As a round-up of older developments let’s take a look at these technologies from Nissan, Konigsegg and Liquid Piston that seemed far-fetched only a few years ago. Seven or eight years ago Nissans developed a variable compression engine that changed the stroke of the piston as needed to alter the performance characteristics. Thus, aiding both performance and fuel economy. When a change in compression is needed, an actuator motor adjusts the pistons position changing the compression from 14:1 (economy) to 8:1 (performance). This engine is now offered in many of their newer vehicles and will be installed in all of their Nissan Murano SUVs in the 2025 model year. It is an engineering marvel that seemed like magic only seven or eight years ago. The engine has proven itself fairly reliable and Nissan is hoping that it will perform as their new standard looking forward. Of course, their engineers are now on to greater things.
What's Old Is New...
I have been dreaming about and studying engines and engine performance of cars, trucks, and motorcycles for the better part of 45 years. It’s a hobby. It keeps me busy on cold winter evenings. It’s something that has become a large part of my life and, like playing with dogs, is something I love to do. I have written about engines and the engineering that is involved in them for the last 15 years, and I have always been forward-thinking. When a new engine is being lauded by the manufacturers as the next big thing, I read all about it and report those findings here. In the past, I have written about every one of the engines in this article at one time or another, and each one was glowingly revealed by the engineers with the statement “We can expect these engines in our cars in the next few years”. Well, a few years have passed and now most of these engines ARE in our cars and trucks and should be reaching repair shops and dealerships now. We just haven’t heard that much about them because people, as a general rule, really don’t care that much about which engine is in their car if it gets good gas mileage, is reasonably reliable, and has a little umph to get on the highway. Well, that is not us. We care. We study it. It’s what we do and why you are where you are reading this article. Without further ado, let us look at the “Engines of the Future” that you can buy (and service) now.
***Reprinted with permission of author***
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