Teaching Engineering Practice: Which are the soft skills that are important to the Engineering industry

Current trends in engineering have been recording major changes in the mode of operation that require close alignment with academia to ensure the suitability and successful outcome of graduate student employment. In an ever changing environment traditional “hard” aspects of engineering knowledge are essential but do not, by themselves, ensure a graduate candidate’s suitability for a particular post. Increasingly, the industry is observing a “divergence” between academic teaching and industrial practice in terms of the necessary “soft” engineering skills.

This paper identified and quantified the difference of opinion between students and industry professionals and illustrated the differences in what each perceive as important and difficult leading to a better understanding of the changes in terms of curriculum delivery and expectation management to avoid integration issues of graduate engineers in the industry.