Engineering education in the era of global markets

The authors present brief overview of various systems of engineering education with emphasis on identifying their common features and differences. Educational systems in several countries, including France, Germany, Japan, Russia, UK, and the USA, were reviewed. Regardless of the country examined, there was always an intricate relationship between engineering, education, the national educational hierarchy, the economy, the level of development, history, social makeup, and international alliances. However, engineering´s core as a profession is not a function of the country it is practiced in, and, hence, educational systems in various parts of the world share common features. It is concluded that the globalization of markets and the information explosion in the last decade have been driving engineering education systems worldwide closer to each other as never before