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Comparing Engineering Practice in South Asia with Australia

Abstract This paper presents empirical evidence confirming that engineering practice is significantly different between South Asia and Australia. These differences seem to explain large productivity differences. Low productivity in South Asia results in very high end user costs for essential services such as electricity supplies and drinking water. Engineering education, however, is remarkably similar in content with minor differences in course delivery, and graduates emerge with little understanding of engineering practice. While industry employers in industrialized countries complain that engineering graduates lack practical skills, this gap between education and practice is even more extreme in South Asia. Interviews and field studies in manufacturing plants have identified several dimensions of difference in practice. These studies and other evidence reveal an alarming picture in which engineering graduates emerge with inappropriate skills and knowledge and are therefore ill-equipped to provide real value for their employers. India and the rest of the developing world need huge improvements in energy efficiency and conservation to provide improved living standards at the same time as achieving large reductions in harmful atmospheric emissions. This paper argues that fundamental changes in engineering education will be needed to achieve these goals.

Introduction There are extensive and continuing debates on engineering education at relevant conferences and also in several journals. These debates focus mainly on pedagogy and performance assessment: the objectives are mostly taken for granted in the form of the ABET criteria or similar outcome definitions1-4.

At the same time, however, there have been many concerns expressed by employers on the apparent gap between engineering education and professional practice5-7. These concerns continue even after fundamental changes to accreditation criteria have been introduced worldwide. In a survey to assess the effects of these changes, only about 50% of American employers thought that engineering graduates understood the context and constraints that govern engineering, and there was a majority assessment that graduate understanding had declined in the last decade8. This agrees with persistent feedback from employers in Australia that graduates lack appreciation of fundamental knowledge and engineering courses are misaligned with industry needs. Graduates themselves have acknowledged these weaknesses9. A survey of industry requirements for engineering education in Britain found evidence of skill deficits and concern that “the grade of degree awarded can be a poor indicator of a graduate’s actual abilities”10. Employers expressed “a need for enhancing courses in terms of their development of practical skills but not at the cost of losing a strong theoretical base”.

There are other signs pointing to the need to rethink the objectives of engineering education.

In a recent visit to a representative sample of leading engineering education institutions in India I learned that very few of their graduates enter engineering careers: most are employed by IT firms producing software (and associated services). The apparent driver is salary levels: IT firms pay 50,000 Indian rupees/month. (~US$16,000/yr). In engineering companies graduates earn about one third as much. Labor market theory tells us that salary levels are typically related to the marginal product created by a worker. This suggests that Indian

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Domal, V. K., & Trevelyan, J. (2008, June), Comparing Engineering Practice In South Asia With Australia Paper presented at 2008 Annual Conference & Exposition, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 10.18260/1-2--3320