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Education and
Training

Building the Systems Engineering Workforce for 2025 and Beyond

FR OM TO
The worldwide demand for systems engineering The worldwide demand for systems engineer-
in all application domains is increasing the need ing is well understood, and an educational,
for high quality systems engineering education training, and mentoring life-long learning
and training. A growing number of academic pipeline is in place to support it with individu-
institutions are offering graduate-level programs als and teams of the required quantity and
in systems engineering. multi-disciplinary capabilities.

There are increasing numbers of universities that Systems thinking is formally introduced in
teach systems engineering at the graduate level, early education. Systems engineering is a part
although the total number is still small relative to of every engineer’s curriculum and systems
other engineering disciplines. The Graduate Refer- engineering at the university level is grounded
ence Curriculum for Systems Engineering (GRCSE) in the theoretical foundations that spans the
has recently been defined as part of an interna- hard sciences, engineering, mathematics, and
tional effort to standardize the requirements for a human and social sciences.
systems engineering curriculum at the graduate
level. Many practicing systems engineers have not
had formal systems engineering education, but
have learned systems engineering “on the job”.

The Systems Engineering Curriculum

Educational and training programs will provide to Systems engineering skills cannot be limited to
the systems engineers of 2025 the broad compe- a small number of systems engineers, but will be
tencies described previously. These include the embraced by numerous discipline-centric practi-
socio-technical, leadership, and domain-specific tioners. As a result, systems engineering education
knowledge to engineer complex systems that and training will be integrated into discipline-spe-
span a broad range of application domains. cific engineering curriculums. Systems engineering
Systems engineering will be seen as a meaningful will be widely recognized as an important comple-
career, one which affects people broadly and has ment to domain specific education and taught for
positive impact on addressing the most criti- awareness in most other fields of engineering and
cal of society’s challenges. As such, the systems social/economic/policy educational areas.
engineering curriculum will expand to include
socio-political learning (e.g., economics, sociology, To have impact, systems engineers will have lead-
public policy, law). ership enabling skills which include a wide range

44 • The Future State Copyright 2014 International Council on Systems Engineering