Industry-academia Cooperation to Empower Automotive Engineering Designers

Abstract European Automotive Industry is suffering from a skill gap between engineering graduates and industry practices. This paper introduces a collaborative research aiming at establishing a certified automotive engineering design curriculum which shall serve as a springboard to highly qualified engineering design jobs in the automotive industry. Based on the European AQUA sector skills alliance, this research brings together major players from industry and higher education. Integrated design education with a clear ECTS-ECVET evaluation scheme plays a key role in this curriculum, since most of the modern skill challenges in automotive are related to interdisciplinary design optimization of quality and costs.