What Competencies Should Engineering Programs Emphasize? A Meta-Analysis of Practitioners' Opinions Informs Curricular Design

Designing a curriculum is a multifaceted challenge that includes questions about learning goals, such as Which competencies are important for professional practice? and What should the relative emphasis be among them? Faculty decisions can be informed by practitioner’s opinions, expressed as ratings of importance to professional practice for each of ABET’s eleven competencies (Criterion 3a-k). This meta-analysis combines importance ratings by 5978 engineers in ten different studies, published 1992 through 2007. Multiple comparison procedures on the mean ratings for each competency show six distinct levels of importance: 1) (highest importance) problem solving and communication, 2) ethics, 3) life-long learning, 4) experiments, teams, engineering tools, and design, 5) (average importance) “math, science, and engineering knowledge”, and 6) (lowest importance) contemporary issues and understanding the impact of one’s work. Ratings of two non-ABET competencies fell between the top two levels: “decision-making” and “commitment to achieving goals”. Others compared with the third level, including: “able to transition...to the industrial environment”, “project management”, and “leadership skills”. Engineering curricula whose graduates will thrive in practice must develop competencies beyond the traditional emphasis on “math, science, and engineering knowledge”, and possibly beyond ABET’s eleven.