UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION AND THE CAREER ORIENTATION OF PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERS - COMPARISON BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS FROM ENHANCED ENGINEERING COURSES AND THOSE FROM CONVENTIONAL ENGINEERING COURSES

Previous research has distinguished between professional engineers who have a managerial career orientation and those who have a technical orientation. One of the aims of the Dainton enhanced engineering courses was to produce engineers who are managerially, rather than technically, oriented. As part of a large-scale evaluation of these courses, the career orientations of 744 students and 220 graduates from these programmes were compared with those of a control group of 1424 students from conventional engineering courses. Data were collected for all years of the courses, and, in the case of the enhanced group, from respondents with up to five years' work experience following graduation. There was evidence of self-selection on to the courses based on pre-existing attitudes, with respondents embarking on enhanced courses equally oriented towards managerial and technical work, while those starting conventional courses showed an initial preference for technical work. Technical orientation declined in both groups as the courses progressed, but this was significantly greater in the case of those on enhanced courses. Those on enhanced courses were more management orientated in later years of the courses, unlike those on conventional courses. The data from the graduates suggested that the changes observed in the undergraduate groups were maintained over the first five years following graduation. The results were interpreted as indicating that the greater management orientation of graduates from enhanced engineering courses compared with those from conventional courses was due to the combined influence of self-selection at the outset of the programmes and attitude change induced by the programmes themselves.