The Role of National Professional Engineering Associations between the Education System and the Labour Market

The world is constantly changing and developing, and society must adapt to this change to respond to emerging challenges. It is possible to see a certain inflexibility in changing the educational system, resulting in methodologies and strategies that are outdated and poorly adjusted to the present day, which has the potential risk of the learning process becoming unimpressive and inefficient. Although the content of educational programmes in educational institutions is up-to-date, it is not capable of equipping students with qualities and tools that are highly valued in the job market, such as multidisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, the capacity for resilience and the autonomy to develop attitudes towards objectives. This results in students not feeling prepared to enter the labour market and often questioning whether they have made the right career decision. Another relevant aspect is that the practical component of the curricular units does not develop the appropriate skills to deal with the complexity of the challenges at the start of professional activity, resulting in greater difficulty for the students, consequently leading to demoralization and abandonment of jobs. In this aspect, National Professional Associations must present themselves as potential solutions to this problem, starting a connection with students still in high school so that students can understand which professional area interests them most. Concerning engineering, an area quite intrinsic to mathematics, science, and technology, and with different specialities, many students are reluctant to know whether this aspect will fulfil them. This study aims to present the work carried out by the National Professional Engineering Association among its members, in Portugal, as well as how the strategy developed impacts students' choices for a professional future in this scientific area.