Educating mechanical engineers in the 21st century

Abstract

In a three-step study, we try to answer the question of where and what changes in the education system of mechanical engineering students will help them to better meet the expectations of the labor market after graduation. In the first step of the research, we define the framework of the “playing field” in which we examine the possibilities of adapting higher education to the needs of customers. We give an overview of the changes in the concept of engineer and mechanical engineer, based on the articles on the defining lexicons of the given era. In addition to the official wording, we were also interested in how the professional community involved in the training defines the identity of the engineer and the mechanical engineer. Among the mechanical engineering students, we asked for an explanation of the concepts and related activities in an explanatory association questionnaire. In the third step, from the period of the strong development of the Hungarian industry, from the beginning of the 1970s, we examined the training of mechanical engineers, its changes in time, and its content. The training documents of the Technical University of Miskolc were used for the study. The change of the officially defined concepts over time indicates the expansion of the content elements, which can be traced back to the technical and technological development.