| The purpose of this study was to determine if manufacturing engineering technology faculty differed with manufacturing managers in respect to the importance, level of instruction needed, ad the future importance of the eleven subject areas identified in a Society of Manufacturing Engineers' curricula recommendation study. Five hundred manufacturing managers and 81 manufacturing engineering technology educators were surveyed using the same instrument.;MANOVA, specifically Wilks' lambda, and ANOVA were applied to the data for each topic within the three categories of the eleven subject areas. Significance at the.05 level was found in 16 of the 33 sub-hypotheses. The groups differed significantly in respect to the importance of: humanities and social sciences; design for production; materials; manufacturing processes; manufacturing systems and automation; manufacturing management, productivity and quality; and a capstone experience. Significant differences were found in the two groups' perception of the level of instruction needed for: science and mathematics; communications; manufacturing management, productivity and quality; and the capsone experience. The two groups also differed significantly in their perceptions of the future importance of: science and mathematics; design for production; manufacturing systems and automation; manufacturing management, productivity and quality; and computer applications.;Results are compared with other studies and with recent criticisms directed toward manufacturing-related education. Recommendations for future study include replicating the study with practicing manufacturing engineers, comparing the responses according to geographic region or type of manufacturer, replicating this study in five years, and preparing a separate study to determine how much influence industrial experts have on curriculum development.;Eleven major hypotheses, with three sub-hypotheses each, were developed to determine if the two groups differed over the importance, level of instruction needed, or the future importance of these subject areas in the manufacturing engineering technology curriculum: science and mathematics; communications; humanities and social sciences; design for production; materials; manufacturing processes; manufacturing systems and automation; controls; manufacturing management, productivity and quality; computer applications; and a capstone experience. The survey instrument was printed in booklet form which arranged a series of topics under the eleven subject areas. Thirty-eight educators and 163 manufacturing managers responded for response rates of 46.9 and 32.6 per cent, respectively. |
