What should they learn? A short comparison between different areas of competence and accreditation boards´ criteria for engineering education

The question “What should engineering students learn for being successful engineers?” is and always was a driver for intense discussions about curriculum development in engineering education. Contributions to this question differ between various types of education institutions and organizations, various fields of specialization, and even various countries. Such differences make it necessary, that a framework, which describes the students´ intended learning outcomes in engineering education programs, must be designed openly to represent engineering education in general and in the same way accurately enough to answer the question above. Therefore this work-in-progress-paper firstly discusses a general model of areas of competence, secondly looks at different accreditation boards´ criteria for engineering education, thirdly combines the boards´ criteria with the general areas of competences and fourthly derives conclusions for engineering education in laboratories.