Experience is a critical part of the engineering education, one that's pretty much impossible to impart in the environment of a university. We're still much like the blacksmith of old, who started his career as an apprentice, and who ends it working with apprentices, training them over the truth of a hot fire. Book learning is very important, but in the end we're paid for what we can do. In my career I've worked with lots of engineers, most with sheepskins, but many without. Both groups have had winners and losers.
Technicians are masters of making things.
A good tech can burn a PAL, assemble a board, and use a milling machine. Since technicians spend their lives daily working intimately with circuits, some develop an uncanny understanding of electronic behavior. Some companies won't let engineers touch a product. A tech is the developer's hands and senses. Though the engineer knows more about what the system should do, I imagine the techs have a deeper understanding of what it does do.