Internationalization as a topic in higher engineering education: A quantitative content analysis examining the engineering curricula from ten German technical universities

2016 
Within the last years the demand for intercultural awareness and intercultural competences among the working force in engineering grows significantly. Even if engineers more than other professions have always been working in international settings, the situations of international collaboration in engineering work increased. Moreover, strategy papers on European and national levels endorse the rising demand by industry for such graduates and claim development of internationalization within the German landscape of higher education institutions (HEIs) for several years now. However, if these topics are important for successful engineering careers, the question is "If at all, in how far are these topics addressed in current engineering curricula?". In order to answer this question mechanical engineering curricula of 10 German technical universities have been examined by performing a quantitative content analysis and searching for respective keywords. The underlying assumption is, that if these topics are addressed in engineering study programs this must be visible in the official documents, too. The results of the conducted content analysis presented in this paper are in a way disappointing. Based on the found keywords, the amount of modules that tackle international awareness and international topics in engineering is by far smaller than anticipated. It is in particular even smaller than the significance of these topics in business may suggest. Hence, from our perspective this area still offers substantial untapped potential.
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