Report on the Prioritization of Skills and Competences Required by Future Engineers as part of A-STEP 2030 project

Résumé 0

This document reports on the outcomes of three separate studies 1) Universum’s study about universitystudents’ and graduates’ different aspects of their career expectations and their ideal employers. 2)On-line-survey of 16-year-old pupils in Finland: Self-assessment tool: How much of an engineer are you?3) Outcomes from two BEST (Board of European Students of Technology) symposia about Diversity inSTEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education in 2019 as part of the A-STEP 2030project (EU Erasmus + project funded under call number 2018-1-FR01-KA203-047854).The aim of the Universum study was to carry out EU mapping of future engineering profession with thevalues of engineering students of today. The data for this analysis was collected from responses to theUniversum survey between September 2018 and April 2019. The data used in this study was collectedfrom 6 countries; Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland and Sweden. Three questions were selectedfor the study: 1) which of these career goals are most important to you? (Select 3) 2) how do you rateyourself in the following skills? (Select 3 strong skills and 3 weak skills) 3) which of these employerattributes are most important to you? (Select 3). For each question, the differences between male andfemale engineering students, engineering and humanities students and students from generation Y and Zwere investigated in six target countries. This analysis is included in Report 3. This report R4 presents amore detailed view and comparison between Denmark, Finland, France and Ireland.The key findings show that there are differences between countries among engineers, among humanitiesstudents and among generations Z (age 17 to 22) and Y (age 23 to 38). Generally, it can be said thatthere is a tendency among students in all countries to rate issues surrounding environmental and socialresponsibility as more important than economic issues, issues which certainly had formerly been accordedgreater prominence. Especially humanities students - but also female engineering students - rated theseenvironmental and social responsibility issues very highly among their career goals and attractiveemployer attributes. The other difference between humanities and engineering students’ attitudes wasthat the goal: “To be a leader or manager of people” was, in all studied countries, more important toengineering students than to humanities students.All students rated the career goal “Work/life balance” as very important and - at the same time - allof them said that their weakest soft skill was “Time management”. The other weakest soft skill commonto all students was “Integrity”. Concerning “Communication” skills, there still seems to be room fordevelopment for all students - even though humanities students trust themselves more than engineeringstudents in this regard. Engineering students think that their strongest soft skills are “Problem-solving”,“Responsibility” and “Teamwork”, while humanities students consider their strongest soft skills to be:“Responsibility”, “Positive attitude” and “Adaptability”. Regarding “Responsibility”, the youngergeneration Z looks to be a bit more responsible than the older Generation Y.For the humanities students - “To be dedicated to a cause or to feel that I am serving a greater good”was the most important career goal. Nearly two thirds of all humanities students selected this career goalfrom among the three most important ones. On the contrary, only slightly more than one third (35,1%)of engineering students rated this goal among their three most important. Among engineering studentsin all studied countries, “Commitment to diversity and inclusion” and “Corporate social responsibility”were the two least attractive employer attributes. For this group, on average, the most important workattribute was “Innovation”, the second most important being “A creative and dynamic work environment”and the third most important “Professional training and development”.The Finnish 16-year-old pupils’ attitudes towards the Sustainable Development Goals - according to theon-line-survey completed by Metropolia University of Applied Sciences - showed that the most importantSDG to them was “Good Health and Well-Being”. Also, more than 60% of pupils had selected “QualityEducation”, “Zero Hunger” and “Climate Action” among the three most important SustainableDevelopment Goals. The least votes were accorded to the following: “Sustainable Cities andCommunities”, “Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure”, “Decent Work and Economic Growth”, and“Affordable and Clean Energy”. Over 75 % of pupils wanted to promote SDGs. Pupils were also askedabout their willingness to learn the following: a) skills needed for sustainable development, b) problemsolving skills, c) interpersonal skills, d) skills to work responsibly and d) time management skills. The surveyindicated that most of the pupils recognized the need for all the skills mentioned, while only a very smallnumber accorded them no importance at all. According to their responses, most of the pupils were willing to work in groups, ready to apply technology, and prepared to solve challenging problems inmulticultural environments.The various ideas and recommendations from BEST’s two symposia about Diversity in STEM education ispresented in chapter 7. Diversity can be seen to play a key role in the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) and that’s why it is important to take it into account in developing engineering education.According to BEST’s results, the ten most important skills for STEM graduates are: critical thinking,analytical skills, problem solving, innovation, collaboration, communication, customer orientation,adaptability, social responsibility and balance. The skills needed in STEM professions - according to BEST- are: teamwork (25.5 %), ability to learn (17.6 %), adaptability (17.6 %), communication (11.8 %),Leadership (5.9 %) and versatility (5.9 %).The findings of all these three studies will be published as Intellectual Output 2 of the A-STEP 2030project.