Engineering education: Time to reform the fragmented, content-overloaded curricula context?

Technological, economic and social challenges are continuous, influencing higher education institutions to equip students with the necessary knowledge, skills and competences to work in such challenging context. Today, in engineering education a fragmented, content-overloaded engineering curriculum is not offering engineering students the career field that will bring together the technological problem-solving and practical skills of engineering along the leadership, teamwork and collaboration, organizational and planning capabilities of business. The current work is a theoretical framework that highlights the importance of preparing future engineers to work in a developing technological, economic and social business context in higher education. More specifically the authors propose the incorporation, in computer and electrical engineering curriculum at the University of Nicosia, three management courses as business electives. Significant comments from industry professionals and academics are collected and reported.