That's not true anymore. Besides teaching a three-day short course on mechatronics as part of an ASME Professional Development program, Craig has also worked on two videotape series on the topic. It gives the engineer greater knowledge, so the concepts that are developed are better, and communications with other engineering disciplines is improved. The result is a highly balanced design. It's either overload the undergrads or make it the focus of a certificate program at the master's level.
Few academics expect mechatronics to attain the level of a formally accepted engineering discipline.
For example, controls has been a well-recognized and important discipline since the Second World War. However, there are few control departments in the United States. It's mostly taught in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and some chemical engineering departments. Yet we graduate lots of people who do the controls function. He concluded that mechatronics' place in the academic hierarchy is really an organizational and bureaucratic issue.