Engineering education - finding the centre or 'back to the future'

In this paper I attempt to list the body of knowledge and skills which future young engineers will need and how such knowledge and skills can best be transferred to students during the engineering education process. The educational environment should stimulate students and encourage them to develop the capacity for lifelong learning as a preparation for tackling the unknown problems which will occur in future decades. The formation of an engineer should comprise both education and practice. Some of the problems facing higher education today are discussed and some ideas for cross-border harmonization of engineering education are given. Finally, there is a brief comparison of today's current ideas on engineering study programmes and the course that I followed more than 50 years ago.