GRADUATE ENGINEERS PERCEPTIONS OF THEIR ENGINEERING COURSES - COMPARISON BETWEEN ENHANCED ENGINEERING COURSES AND THEIR CONVENTIONAL COUNTERPARTS

The Dainton enhanced engineering courses were designed to produce engi neers who would be better prepared for careers in manufacturing manage ment than their counterparts from conventional engineering programmes. As part of a large scale evaluation of these courses, the views of 16 7 students and 220 graduates of the programmes were compared with thos e of a control group of 353 students from conventional engineering cou rses. Respondents were asked for their opinions of 19 course elements in terms of the amount of time devoted to each as a preparation for a career as a professional engineer in industry. In general, enhanced st udents viewed their courses more favourably than students from convent ional courses. Thus, over half of the conventional students criticised their courses for a lack of business and management material, compare d with less than one in five enhanced students. There were few differe nces between the two groups in their views about the technical content of their courses. Criticisms about insufficient time being devoted to CADCAM, Engineering Practice, and Engineering Applications were commo n in students from both types of course. The views of enhanced graduat es, who had up to five years' work experience post graduation, were si milar to those of the undergraduates. The results are discussed in ter ms of their implications for engineering education in general.