What Engineers Learn Doesn’t Always Match What Employers Need

University faculty plan the courses offered to students using accreditor standards and their own perceptions of what expertise, abilities, and capabilities new graduates will need to be successful in their engineering careers. But what employers require of newly minted mechanical engineers isn’t always considered. “Engineering curricula are built around faculty and accreditors' perceptions of what knowledge, skills, and abilities graduates will need in engineering careers,” reported Gabriella Coloyan Fleming, research scientist, Department of Engineering Education, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va., in the paper “What engineering employers want: An analysis of technical and professional skills in engineering job advertisements” published in the Journal of Engineering Education.

The research team of Fleming, Michelle Klopfer, Andrew Katz, and David Knight conclude that “skills and abilities are more important to engineering employers, as they more directly relate to what engineers do in their jobs on a daily basis and include both technical and professional skills. However, as engineering faculty largely have backgrounds in academia, their perceptions of what skills graduates need to be hirable for and successful in nonacademic careers may not be fully accurate.”