Engineering graduates’ perceptions of how well they were prepared for work in industry

TLDR: In this article, sixteen interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of recent University of Cape Town chemical engineering graduates to investigate how well they perceived they were prepared for work in industry and identified the following areas of weakness: work in multi-disciplinary teams, leadership, practical preparation and management skills.

Abstract: This study investigated how well chemical engineering graduates perceive they were prepared for work in industry. To this end, sixteen interviews were carried out with a purposive sample of recent University of Cape Town chemical engineering graduates. Qualitative analysis of the interview data showed that graduates felt that overall, they were well prepared for work in industry. They perceived their strengths to be their technical background, problem solving skills, formal communication skills and life-long learning abilities. The following areas of weakness were also identified: work in multi-disciplinary teams, leadership, practical preparation and management skills. The use of interviews for data collection is a significant departure from the methods used in other studies in this area. The rich and contextual data gathered from the interviews justified this choice and contributed to the identification of issues not previously mentioned in the literature. For example, an unexpected finding of the study...