DOES A MASTER’S PROGRAM IN ENGINEERING REQUIRE A FINAL PROJECT?

Within engineering education frameworks worldwide, requirements for a master’s degree are diverse and very few graduate-level engineering courses are recommended for accredited programs. To ascertain how common the requirement for a final project at the master’s level is, an ad hoc review of international master’s programs was conducted. This review included several of the highest-ranking universities internationally and selected universities in Europe. From this review, it is established that the standard practice is to require students attempting a master’s degree in engineering to complete what we term a final project course, which may or may not be research-focused, and typically corresponding to one semester of work. This paper summarizes how the considered universities integrate a final project course into their programs and distinguishes how these might differ from traditional research-focused master’s dissertations. We discuss some practical difficulties of managing such projects. We conclude by providing a rubric for self-assessment and final project course integration that aligns with the criteria for continuous improvement in a graduate program quality framework.