Electronic Engineering is an academic discipline that has changed out of all recognition over the past decade. This phenomenon has been driven by equally dramatic developments in the landscape of global industry, with the growth in the dominance of the communications and computing industries and an acceleration of the rate of technological development. As these industries have come to dominate more traditional manufacturing areas, Electronic Engineering has also changed.

The consequence of rapid change in the industrial sector is a corresponding shift in the demand for the kinds of skills and knowledge needed by engineering, other technical and even managerial employees. For example, the demand for highly skilled staff in the IT industry in particular is huge and growing - current UK vacancies in the industry are calculated to number some 150,000 and this is estimated to grow to some 300,000 by 2003. This is a small proportion of the worldwide demand for highly developed technical skills - a similar situation exists throughout the Americas and East and SE Asia.

Postgraduate Electronic Engineering education has a key role to play in filling the skills gap and enabling companies to maintain their ability to improve product capability and develop new products. British universities have taken the world lead in establishing specialised MSc programmes that are designed to address specific levels in the value chain of industry.

Queen Mary, University of London has pioneered this approach by developing a suite of Master's programmes in Internet Computing, E-commerce Engineering, Information Technology and Signal Processing which is closely related, but with each programme aimed at developing a slightly different area of skills.

Strathclyde University has adopted a slightly different approach, with an emphasis on the public policy and regulatory context of the communications industries in its Master's programme. The department's traditional strength in control technology has also been combined with communications and digital processing in another Master's.

As is the case in many British universities, these programmes have been developed in close consultation with partner companies and research funding bodies to ensure direct and immediate relevance to industrial needs. The result is that graduates from these programmes are extremely employable and can expect rapid career development and high salaries. Starting salaries are now often similar to the legal and financial professions.

Another striking change in Electronic Engineering that is also a consequence of the demands of industry is a convergence with business and management disciplines. Again, British universities have responded by providing programmes at a high level which are not simply coverage of the two areas, but bring them together. So, for example, Queen Mary offers modules in such areas as 'marketing in the ecommerce environment' to interested students, rather than a bolt-on marketing course.