Muuttuvien työelämätaitojen sisällyttäminen tekniikan alan koulutukseen: tapaustutkimus Aalto-yliopiston vesi- ja ympäristötekniikan maisteriohjelmasta

Digitalisation and sustainability challenges are changing the contemporary working life in a revolutionary way. The changes are reflected also to higher education, which needs to educate future professionals to solve wicked future challenges and to succeed in new kind of working life. In the field of water and environmental engineering, the global transformation is connected to well-being and also to generating business. In this article, we contemplate how higher education institutions could equip the students with adequate working-life skills, while also reinforcing students’ abilities to contribute to developing their field. As a case study, we present the new Master’s Programme in Water and Environmental Engineering at Aalto University. We carried out three separate surveys for the alumni, teachers and students of the programme, asking their views about the working-life skills and their role in the programme. Different roles of personal and cognitive abilities in different phases of career development emerged in the results as well as the effect that working-life connections in teaching have on students’ ability for career planning. The required future skills, which are needed in substantially changing working life, can only be solved through continuous dialogue with universities, students and working-life.