Engineering Graduates: Competencies Required (I)
India has produced the largest number of engineering graduates every year, approximately one million engineers pass out every year from various engineering institutions. The world’s largest concentration of engineering institutes is found in India. Unfortunately, many graduates do not meet the desired skills, abilities and knowledge for getting job opportunities. We all know that engineers are important for meeting the needs of people, economic development and service to society. To produce engineering professionals in any of the categories is a continuing process. Building a knowledge base and enabling graduates to continue studying will be the main goals of engineering education. This will help them develop the abilities needed for autonomous practice. The competencies needed for independent practice, where the graduate assists engineering practitioners and advances to increasing solo and team responsibility until they can demonstrate their proficiency at the level needed to be registered. After obtaining registration, the practitioner needs to continue honing their skills.
Engineers are estimated to retain and improve competency throughout their working lives. Several international accords offer recognition of engineering graduates from accredited programs of each signatory by the remaining signatories.
In this blog, we will discuss the required competencies for engineering graduates that are given by the various international accords and national education quality assurance bodies. These bodies accredited the programs to ensure the overall quality. Here, we will focus on the required competencies at the micro level which is based on various accreditation bodies. Competencies that are required for graduates are called Graduate attributes. Graduate attributes are the skill sets that are expected from graduates. The graduate attributes, identify the different characteristic that allows the individual roles of engineers. Our main aim is to explain each attribute in detail in statements that are formulated for engineering graduates. These relate to the skills, knowledge, analytical ability attitude and behavior that students acquire through the program. In India National Board of Accreditation (NBA) is responsible for the accredited engineering program. In 1994, the AICTE founded the NBA, which gained independence in 2010, and in 2014, India became a permanent signatory to the Washington Accord (WA), which acknowledges the worldwide equivalency of engineering degrees. NBA has defined the following twelve Programme Outcomes (POs) that explore Graduate attributes for engineering graduates.
Program Outcomes (POs)
Engineering Knowledge: Engineering Knowledge means students can apply knowledge of mathematics, science, computing and engineering fundamentals and an engineering specialization in respectively to develop solutions to complex engineering problems. A systematic theory-based knowledge of the natural sciences applicable to the discipline and understanding of relevant social sciences. Utilize a conceptual approach to mathematics, along with numerical analysis, data analysis, statistics and formal aspects of computer science to support detailed analysis and modeling applicable to the discipline. Engineering specialist knowledge base that provides intelligible frameworks and overall learning for the accepted practice areas in the engineering discipline. Other competencies that are required for engineering graduates are discussed in the next blog.
Author
Prof. Vaibhav Patel
AP, CSE, NIIST