Today, my NMITE colleague Bertie Knight and I are at the University of Sheffield for the UK & Ireland Engineering Education Research Network (EERN) Annual Symposium, where we're facilitating a workshop based on our paper being published today in the conference proceedings.
The paper explores a question that has occupied a great deal of discussion in higher education over the past decade: how do we produce industry-ready graduates?
It sounds like an entirely sensible question. Universities are increasingly expected to demonstrate the employability and workplace relevance of their programmes. Employers want graduates who can contribute from day one. Professional bodies encourage strong alignment between education and practice.
But I wonder whether we have become so focused on the answer that we have stopped interrogating the question itself.
The more I reflect on the challenges facing engineering education, the more I am convinced that industry readiness isn’t the problem we think it is. The challenge, rather, is that we tend to treat readiness as though it were a fixed destination.
Engineering is changing rapidly. Artificial intelligence, automation, digital technologies and sustainability are reshaping both professional practice and employer expectations. At the same time, industry continues to emphasise the importance of broader capabilities such as judgement, adaptability, collaboration and communication alongside technical expertise (Wood & Knight, 2026).
In that context, “industry-ready” becomes a moving target. Yet our educational systems often behave as though the destination is stable. Degree programmes are designed, approved and reviewed over multi-year timescales. That’s not necessarily a flaw in the system; it’s part of how universities assure quality and maintain standards (Gibbs, et al, 2024). By the time we have updated a programme in response to external change, the environment has often shifted again.
This leads me to a conclusion that sits at the heart of our paper: The challenge is not to keep engineering education perfectly aligned with industry. The challenge is to develop graduates who can remain effective as industry continues to evolve.
That distinction matters, because if we frame the problem as curriculum alignment alone, our response is often predictable. We add more content. We incorporate artificial intelligence. We introduce sustainability. We create data analytics modules. We add cyber security.
Each change is individually defensible. But an obvious question follows: what are we removing? Too often, the answer is very little.
The result can be increasingly crowded programmes that leave less space for the development of the very capabilities employers frequently tell us they value most: judgement, decision-making, problem framing, teamwork and professional agency (Passow & Passow, 2017).
This is why one of the provocations in our paper argues that content accumulation may be crowding out competence. Not because knowledge is unimportant – it remains fundamental – but because capability develops through application, reflection and experience, not simply through exposure to ever more material.
There is a second challenge that, in my view, receives less attention than it deserves. Many conversations about educational reform focus on curriculum design, learning outcomes and assessment frameworks. Those things matter. But ultimately, curricula do not teach students; educators do.
Developing graduates who can work comfortably with ambiguity, collaborate effectively, and navigate complex socio-technical challenges requires different approaches to learning and teaching. It requires educators who are confident facilitating learning, not simply transmitting knowledge, and institutions willing to invest in staff development and create environments where those approaches can flourish. Without that investment, even the most ambitious curriculum reforms risk remaining aspirations on paper rather than realities in practice.
Perhaps the most important conclusion we reach in the paper, however, is that alignment itself may be the wrong way to think about the challenge. Alignment sounds like a destination: a state that can eventually be achieved and then maintained. I don’t think it works like that.
Engineering practice evolves. Industry needs change. Society’s expectations shift. Technologies emerge and disappear. Educational priorities adapt. In that environment, alignment is not something we achieve once and then tick off a list; it is a continual process of negotiation.
That, ultimately, is the argument Bertie and I are making in the paper. The future of (engineering) education will not be determined by how quickly we update content. It will depend on how effectively we create graduates, educators and institutions that can adapt to a world in which change itself has become the norm.
Today’s workshop is intended to explore that challenge with colleagues from across the sector. Our underpinning paper explores these issues through six provocations designed to stimulate discussion amongst engineering educators and leaders. In this blog post I’ve highlighted only a small selection of them. The full paper develops all six provocations in more detail and proposes a conceptual framework for thinking about alignment in engineering education.
And it leaves us with one final question: If we were designing engineering education from scratch today, with full awareness of the challenges and opportunities ahead, what would we choose to do differently – and what would we choose to leave behind?
References
Gibbs, B., Bond, K., Harris, G., Lewis, E., Pate, A., Renyard, J., Wint, N. and Wood, G.C. (2024) When Quality Assurance Meets Innovation in Higher Education. QAA Collaborative Enhancement Project Report, May 2024.
Passow, H.J. and Passow, C.H. (2017) ‘What competencies should undergraduate engineering programs emphasise? A systematic review’, Journal of Engineering Education, 106(3), pp. 475–526.
Wood, G.C. and Knight, B. (2026) Bridging the Gap: Realigning Engineering Education with an Evolving Industry Landscape. In: Proceedings of the UK & Ireland Engineering Education Research Network Annual Symposium. Sheffield, UK.
