Impact of global forces and empowering situations on engineering education in 2030

Over the last couple of decades the world around us has changed at a dizzying pace by the globalisation and digitalisation, the horizontalisation of the socio-economic world, and the blending of technical, economical and societal cultures. The ways we communicate, work, play, travel and do business have changed dramatically, and are expected to change at an even faster pace in the future. We have entered an era where higher engineering education has to move from content coverage to content mastery. Are our programmes good enough to absorb the changes in the world 10 to 15 years from now? This paper discusses the results of an exploration by a Think Tank of academic staff about “what future engineers should learn in higher engineering education in 2030”. Key issues are the embedding of personal development in a meaningful way - the teaching of the “whole engineer”, the creation of purposeful engineering profiles for society, keeping them specific enough to create in-depth learning.