Meeting the Demand for Broadband Communications Engineers: The Role of Academia

The evolving area (both from a R&D, as well as a market point of view) of broadband communications systems and services, requires a highly educated and trained engineering workforce. In such a framework, the role of academia is to appropriately prepare the students, in order to satisfy the relevant job market demand. The purpose of this paper is to present the actions taken by the Department of Electronics at the Technological Educational Institute of Crete (TEIoC/DoE) towards the desired target. In particular, the main courses and laboratories that support the broadband communications engineering education are presented. Furthermore, other activities described in the paper and contribute to the broadband communications engineering education of students include: the involvement of students in representative R&D projects while carrying out their diploma thesis, the methodology followed during the workplace learning of our students at the last semester of their studies, and initiatives that in some way cultivate a "broadband culture". Finally, various statistical data indicate the degree of success of our approach.