Creating The Competent Engineer? An Evaluation of Integrated Graduate Development In Northern Ireland*

A key to economic success is that organisations provide the conditions in which the engineering graduate can contribute meaningfully to the organisation. This paper describes an Integrated Graduate Development Scheme (IGDS) which was designed to facilitate these conditions. Its novel design was the result of collaboration between the two universities in N. Ireland, organisations and the State. The paper reports on the results of a comprehensive quantitative evaluation of an IGDS, which will be of interest to those academics and organisations who wish to design or use such a programme. The implications for integrated graduate development are that the N. Ireland IGDS meets the needs of all stakeholders and is a successful model for graduate development and the areas for improvement are the need for a more focused needs analysis of participants and the continued adjustment of the balance between the technical content and managerial content. Participants appear to value more the novel managerial inputs.