New Report Provides Recommendations to Strengthen the Link Between Higher Education and Recent Graduate Workforce Preparedness

The Manufacturing USA Institute, LIFT, recently released its report detailing the findings from its Advancing University Engineering and Manufacturing Education: The New Innovative, and Re-Imagined World of Employer-Engaged “Work-and-Learn” workshop that was held in Washington, DC earlier this year.

The workshop looked at relationship between higher education institutions and the tools with which they equip their students to enter the workforce. “A quick scan of university programs in the U.S. would likely find that most universities offer some level of work-and-learn experiences to students as part of, or as a supplement to, their engineering education. If work-and-learn models are indeed already reasonably prevalent in engineering education, then why do industry leaders and students alike report concern over recent engineering graduates’ lack of preparedness for the workplace?”

The report examines this question, but also presents four imperatives to ensure students are entering the workforce prepared for the task ahead. These include:

• Engineering graduates should have deeper understanding of how their role intersects with other processes and individuals in the workplace.
• All engineering students should participate in high-quality and innovative work-and-learn experiences during their undergraduate and graduate programs
• Engineering curriculum must be responsive to evolving industry needs, including the needs of small, medium, and large employers
• Work-and-learn models should be more widely implemented in university engineering programs and not reliant on a small group of “champion” professors or administrators

To view the report in full, click here: https://lift.technology/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/2-Engineering-Work-and-Learn-Imperatives-for-Innovation-1.pdf