Finland drives at educating world-class engineers
Sustainable development needs to be a part of every engineer’s competence

Globally about one million engineers graduate every year, while the corresponding figure in Finland is 8 000. This means that Finland cannot compete quantitatively. And actually, this is the case for the whole Europe in global sense. The primary focus must be on improving the quality of education, research and development in the field of technology.

Finland endeavours to create the world’s best innovation environment. A prerequisite for this is that Finnish engineers are the most competent. Moreover, technology has a central role in ensuring national emergency supply of Finland and securing the sustainable well-being of the people and the environment. Therefore, Finland has decided to define national strategy of engineering education and define concrete actions for development.

The National Cooperation Group for Engineering Education (www.tek.fi/engineeringstrategy)   coordinated by the Finnish Association of Graduate Engineers TEK published the national strategy for the Finnish engineering education in January 2008. As the next step it was seen necessary to move forward  in three specific areas that were finalized in April 2009:

1) to define how education (contents and pedagogy) must be developed in order to meet the strategic objective set by the National Cooperation Group for the Finnish Engineering Education: The best engineering education in the world is provided in Finland. Read more Engineering competences
2) to find out what kind of learning objectives do the challenges associated with sustainable development impose on the Finnish engineering education and how have the units providing engineering education responded to these challenges. Read more: Sustainable development
3) to compile a national profile map of the Finnish universities and polytechnics providing engineering education with the aim of improving quality through specialization and structural reform Read more: Profile map

More information about the Coordination Group and profile map kati.korhonen@tek.fi, development of teaching and curriculum ida.mielityinen@tek.fi and how to meet challenges of sustainable development annina.takala@tek.fi .