Current and future challenges for Engineering Education: voices from students, alumni, teachers and employers

Engineering education faces the pressure of providing updated scientific and technological training to students, as well as developing the necessary skills that allow them to respond to complex and interdisciplinary problems. The articulation of societal needs, the curriculum design, and the expectations of different stakeholders are setting a real challenge for Higher Education Institutions. To contribute to this discussion, this paper explores the perspectives of four different stakeholders – students, alumni, teachers, and employers – mapping their proximities and distances in talking a better training for engineering students using the example of mechanical and biomedical Engineering graduate and post-graduate courses. The overall vision of the four stakeholders interviewed allows the conclusion that there is a shared understanding of the challenges and some common pathways to accomplish them, although some disagreement about the strategies and the concrete action to be undertaken.