For a few days now, Computer Engineering (Technical) students have been somewhat disturbed by the appearance of a call for strike made by a student from Salamanca. Unfortunately, there is so much misinformation that it is difficult to find out anything, so I have decided to inform myself a little before making the decision to support “the mobilizations” or not.
Already referring to the issue of the alleged “disappearance” of Computer (Technical) Engineering, first of all say that there is no such disappearance, but that with the arrival of the Bologna plan, to assimilate to European university studies, they will be called degree (4 years duration) and master’s degree (1 or 2 more years). What happens to those of us who have a degree in Technical Computer Engineering or Computer Engineering? Well, to wit, the worst thing that could happen is that the Computer Engineers would be validated with the degree and the IT Computer Engineers would be left with nothing, although it is also speculated that the Technical Engineers would be validated with the degree and the Superiors with the master’s degree.
If these validations do not occur, those who have an “old” degree would depend on the companies when it comes to giving them a certain validity for the labor market (I imagine that if they value it lower, we would be talking about salary differences between the old graduates and the new ones, especially as time passes). Of course, these are just my assumptions and I am open to all kinds of opinions, although, as I say, they would lose value as the years go by.
However, it is not the only problem that students and graduates face, and that is that ours is a relatively young profession that has lacked regulation since its inception, either due to neglect or due to the interests of certain lobbies that are not interested in said regulation. This situation means that, since computing as a profession is not regulated, we are the only engineering (along with chemistry, which is also not regulated) that has not obtained the sheet specifying the training areas in which someone who completes the studies must be competent (known as competences), since, as I say, these sheets are only aimed at studies that give access to regulated professions.
The issue worsens especially after the approval of the files for Telecommunications Engineers, in which competencies specific to Computer Engineering appear (databases, office automation, project management, programming, software, Internet, etc.). How can it be that they provide it to them in those fields and not to us, when that is what we study?
But the fact that a profession is regulated also implies that it will have certain professional powers, or what is the same, that in certain professions only those who have completed a degree with a specific career path will be able to work. That is, if you have sufficient knowledge (skills) for a job, but you do not have the paper proving that you have it, you will not be able to apply for it. In the case of Computer Engineering and Telecommunications, the latter has responsibilities that one of the former could perfectly perform, but, for legal reasons, it cannot.
The ideal, for me, would be for all attributions to disappear except the essential ones (those related to medicine, architecture, etc.) and defined by the European Union, but since it is practically impossible for something like this to happen, I think that we should be put on a par with the rest of the degrees (both in rights and obligations) and even share attributions with some of the areas covered by Telecommunications Engineering.
Returning to the topic of the strike at the beginning, to finish I would like to make clear the demands, which in my opinion are sufficiently restrained and reasonable for the government to take them into account:
- Obtain from the Ministry of Science and Innovation the commitment to prepare a specific guidelines sheet for computer engineering degrees, under the same conditions as the rest of the engineering fields.
- Obtain from the Government the commitment to include in the transposition of the European services directive the professions of technical computer engineer and computer engineer.
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- Obtain from the Ministry of Industry the commitment, in collaboration with the Associations of Computer Engineers, to prepare and submit to Parliament a law that regulates the professional powers of the sector.
If you have read this far, thank you for being interested in the situation, I hope I have made it a little clear, although I admit that it is a little difficult to understand all this fuss. And hey… **maybe in the article feed there is a little gift. A handful of Related Links on the topic:
| The Salmon Blog | Does Computer Engineering disappear? Topopardo | Strike and Manipulation of feelings Universo Universitario | The Coming Computer Engineering From Free Software | The regulation will not be effective… Counterinformation | Letter from the dean of Deusto Bolonia for Dummies | Questions and Answers Emezeta | Is Computer Engineering disappearing? No! Enrique Barreiro | What about Computer Engineering? Computer Strike | Call for Mobilizations |
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