Abstract:

According to the Croatian Qualifications Framework (CKO), employers define occupational standards (what an expert should do), based on which faculties develop qualification standards (what a student should learn). Without their mutual cooperation, a student's diploma has no real market value. The role of electrical engineers in Croatia is rapidly expanding due to digitalization, automation, green transition and the growth of energy and IT sectors. Data from current studies, reports and market analyses show that the demand for electrical engineers is stable, with an increasingly pronounced shortage of qualified personnel, which indicates that there is a certain discrepancy in Croatia between what students learn and what employers need. For this reason, since the academic year 2021/2022, the Zagreb University of Applied Sciences (TVZ) in the process of creating the study program (curriculum) include the attitudes and expectations of employers in order to ensure that its students have the opportunity to acquire additional competences based on the expectations and needs of the labour market.

Although TVZ has always strategically focused on a large share of practical teaching, employers want to further intensify the existing share of practical teaching. Employers want students who have the ability to read circuit diagrams, recognize different possibilities of machines using and find additional information about machines, as well as good knowledge of English which enable them to be active participant in professional and business communication. In addition, employers expect from their employees to have the ability to create technical documentation, basic knowledge of IT infrastructure, as well as knowledge of programming languages that are in line with the specific requirements of their companies. According employers attitudes an electrical engineer must be able to deal with crisis situations, move away from the everyone known theory and their narrow profession and solve the problem in a new and creative way. In this sense, employers offer cooperation to TVZ through guest lectures by their experts and ensuring longer student internships during which students will really gain some concrete experience.

After reviewing existing learning outcomes at the Electrical Engineering Department, employers conclude that they are mostly over ambitiously defined and need to be set more realistically. Employers base this view on their experience that after graduating, a student is, for example, not capable for independently developing solutions or managing and supervising a production facility without at least 3-5 years of work experience. The Committee of Electrical Engineering Department has incorporated the greatest possible extent opinions of employers into process of creation of new curriculum for their undergraduate and graduate study for the next academic year and corrected majority of unrealistically set learning outcomes. Whether employers will recognize entered changes introduced in the curriculum also as an improvement in the study quality and students acquired competencies will be tested in the next wave of research, which is planned to be conducted in the academic year 2026/2027.

Keywords:

Practical classes, reading circuit diagrams, creating technical documentation, guest lecturers, relevance of the study program, connection between economy and education.