Most any 4-year STEM program for sure. From the multiple, "less than ideal" hires that I've been a part of, I would NOT hire any Industrial Automation/Controls Engineer that did not have a 4-year STEM degree. Moving forward, that will be the very first filter for the resumes to pass through, at least with me anyways. Secondly, they MUST HAVE a passion for coding!!! It must be something that they love to do. I don't just mean ladder logic. I can teach anyone ladder logic. I'm talking about common textual languages like C++ and Python, even MATLAB if that's what you learned in school because that can port easily to other textual languages. They MUST know and LOVE coding!!! I'm sick of getting these "ladder logic" only guys and that's all they can do. One trick ponies. When I show them something in a textual language, they instantly go dumb. Controls Engineering is WAAAAAYYYYY MORE than just understanding basic electrical and how to navigate a ladder diagram program!!
If it's up to me, our next hire for Controls Engineer will be a software engineer.
please no more software engineer types. They may work out for the first few machines that get pumped out of a building, but down the road when a part is hard to come by, or the machine needs to be modified it becomes a problem.
I say this because software guys tend to write and copy/paste blocks of code to do certain tasks, and they'll end up making it such a custom application that it defeats the purpose of using a PLC in the first place.
Ladder logic isn't just basic instructions anymore anyway so i feel that point is a bit off nowadays. Ladder is still a much preferred way to visually identify issues within a machine.
My opinion as to why regular Coding like C++ or python is not the way to go for PLCs is because they are in a changing environment that requires troubleshooting back to physical problems. If you've ever seen someone try to deciper how a circuit works on a PCB without a print, then you would probably understand why it's so difficult for programmers to understand their own code they wrote just 5 years ago.
Computer coding is like PCB circuits, whereas PLC Ladder logic programming is like a circuit board with a bunch of relays and modules all wired together with terminals... to put it bluntly, in a way describing how easy it is for an outsider to deal with it.
But thats just my opinion.