Employability in Engineering Education: Are Engineering Students Ready for Work?

Abstract

International professional organisations, including accreditation bodies, have stressed that a so-called skill-gap between engineering education and work exists, which increases the focus on employability in engineering education research. In this chapter, we propose a comprehensive definition of employability that combines scientific and domain specific engineering skills with process competences and a concern to the business and societal context in which engineering work is embedded. From that point of view, we set out to study which skills students find important to be employable, whether this perception of importance varies over time, and also which skills the students think they have actually achieved during their study. We draw on data provided from the project research project PROCEED (Programme of Research on Opportunities and Challenges in Engineering Education in Denmark (2009–2013)) and the follow up project PROCEED-2-Work, where the latter has a specific employability perspective. Data have been collected through a survey handed out to all Danish engineering students enrolled in 2010, and data was collected in 2010, 2011 and as a part of PROCEED-2-Work in 2015. The results show a kind of instrumental turn in what students think matters in engineering work throughout their study, and a general lack of attention to more contextual factors. The chapter concludes with a discussion about potential pillars of change with a more comprehensive view on employability.