Global competence has become a popular concept for engineering institutions around the world. Despite its recent emergence and still vague characteristics, it has been widely adopted by institutions aiming to prepare globally minded graduates. However, the concept’s elusive and complex nature requires careful consideration in order to lead to impactful learning. This study provides a comprehensive overview of engineering institutions’ practical efforts to foster global competence learning. Guided by a systematic literature review covering the last two decades, it provides a comprehensive account of work related to the concept. The study first explores institutions’ practical efforts to promote global competence development, highlighting the most popular institutional approaches, including intercultural collaborations, mobility experiences, internationalization at home activities, and virtual collaborations. Furthermore, it critically analyzes how the concept is translated into practice, showing that practical efforts often lack guiding conceptualizations or reliable outcome assessments. To provide a thorough overview of institutional engagement with global competence, the study also highlights the geographical contexts of the universities involved in such efforts, as well as related chronological trends and developments, before concluding with reflections on the future of global competence education.

The field of engineering evolves rapidly and universities face the challenge of preparing graduates with the competencies needed for the profession. To guide these efforts, clear, broadly applicable, and practical competence frameworks are needed. While numerous frameworks exist, no widely accepted model has emerged. Given the varying quality of these frameworks, which can overwhelm universities that aim to address this issue, this study provides an in-depth examination of non-technical competence frameworks for engineers. A systematic literature review of the most frequently cited peer-reviewed competence frameworks was conducted, and a total of 40 publications were thematically analysed. Four broad types of competence frameworks emerged – global, professional, generic, and sustainability competence. While there were differences between them, similarities also became apparent, such as an emphasis on social intelligence and information literacy. However, many frameworks also shared problems that could hinder their impact, such as a lack of contextual adaptability or practical indicators. Based on these findings, the study proposes core attributes for an ideal framework to guide educational efforts to integrate non-technical competencies into engineering education.

Upon graduation, engineering graduates will find themselves in diverse, interconnected, and fast-paced work environments. Global competence, which encompasses different types of knowledge, skills and attitudes, is what will help them navigate successfully through the variety of situations they may encounter. Accordingly, its development should be an integrated core aspect of today’s engineering education. Acknowledging the problems with current approaches to doing so – in particular, the vagueness of the concept and the issues of prioritizing learning content in already crowded curricula - this paper compares the perceived need and value of specific competencies according to key stakeholders. Based on a previous literature review, a survey focusing on a set of 15 frequently mentioned competences was developed and distributed internationally. The perspectives of three types of stakeholders - engineering professionals (n=339), educators (n=200), and students (n=331) – were collected and broadly analyzed according to the perceived importance of the competencies. Overall, we found agreement among the stakeholder groups, and the majority of our proposed competences were perceived as either important or very important by the respondents. Among the competences, teamwork and collaboration and English language skills stood out, while other language skills were perceived as less important. Comparing the groups, we found that professionals tended to value several social competences more highly and subject-specific competences less highly than academic stakeholders. In our discussion, we offer possible explanations for these findings, which allow inferences for educational change towards a more globally competent higher engineering education.

Engineering curricula need to integrate global competence learning to ensure that graduates can succeed in globalised labour markets. In this context, this study examines disciplinary engineering courses, focusing on the key characteristics of globally competent educators and teaching approaches in terms of learning environments and course activities from the students’ perspective. We conducted focus group discussions with 28 students from different engineering disciplines to learn more about their perceptions and experiences. The results suggest that they felt that integrated global competence learning would require educators to demonstrate open-mindedness, a global mindset, and strong social skills. In addition, global competence teaching approaches were associated with learning environments that were described as engaging, inclusive, and student-centered, and with course activities that were related to real-world situations, included collaborative elements, and were facilitated and supported by the instructor. This study contextualises the idea of global competence in engineering education and provides valuable insights into students’ perspectives and experiences with its integration during their studies. It also critically examines students’ ideas and suggestions about opportunities for such learning in relation to educational science, and suggests a way forward for global competence in engineering education.

Higher engineering institutions strive towards educating globally competent students, and this article examines curricular approaches to global competence education. Based on qualitative interviews, it explores engineering educators’ perspectives on student preparedness, their experiences with global competence integration, and their attributions of responsibility for such learning. In its findings, the article highlights educators’ doubts about engineering graduates’ preparedness for global workplaces. Moreover, it retraces a variety of educators’ approaches to integrating global competence learning and highlights the challenges they face in this endeavour. The article further shows how engineering educators perceived global competence education as important and acknowledged their own role in supporting it, but attributed the main responsibility for ensuring students’ competence development to institutional management. The article concludes with a discussion on the potential consequences of the educators’ perceptions and examines possibilities for a strategic institutional approach to global competence education.