New challenges in Engineering higher education

Higher education in engineering must cope with rapidly changing industrial environment. Activities of engineers in lifecycle product management projects are being integrated in increasingly sophisticated virtual systems where product model is built and applied for coordinated simulations and equipment control. Knowledge is being moved into product models for simple development and product information change. The authors of this paper tracked development of this engineering technology during the past decade and produced new and new evaluations for practical application of always recent virtual technology in higher education. In this paper, they report their recent results in concepts and approaches for higher education of engineers considering knowledge driven engineering technology. New challenges and possibilities are surveyed and the expected trend in characteristics and programs of higher education courses are outlined. Following this, concept is introduced for joining of higher engineering course programs to engineering systems. Finally, expected characteristics of course models and their implementations to cope with new demands are analyzed.