Engineering graduates for industry - Royal Academy of Engineering

Table 1: Summary of case study institutions
Pilot case studies were first conducted at Loughborough and Coventry before the data collection method was finalised
for the remaining four universities. Desk-based research was done at the same time as the collection of the interview
data.
Part way through the data collection, a symposium for engineering academics entitled ‘Meeting the Needs of Industry
in Higher Education’ was held on 10th June 2009. This event enabled validation of initial findings and also identified
additional material, especially from seven presenters from further universities across England, Northern Ireland and
Australia. University College London, who discussed the radical curriculum changes implemented for undergraduate
programmes in their Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering Department, was subsequently invited to provide
an additional mini case study. All symposium abstracts are available at www.engsc.ac.uk/nef/events/meeting-the-needsof-industry.asp.
2.3. Data analysis
The resulting six case studies are snapshots of what was observed during the study and as such do not cover all of the
respective universities’ activities in the areas of interest. The case studies were analysed by identifying cross-cutting
themes and then systematically going through each case study to find evidence to support these themes. The findings
from the case studies were triangulated together with the other materials collected and the results used to prepare the
final report.
8 The Royal Academy of Engineering