Analysis Approach of How University Automotive Competitions Help Students to Accelerate their Automotive Engineer Profile

Abstract

Today, the world’s leading universities in the world not only are concerned about the importance of enhancing student's personal and professional skills, but most of them are modifying their study’s programs to adapt them to these new requirements (Aparicio et al., 2005), (Bowen et al., 2005) and (Chadha & Nicholls, 2006). Eeven though different definition can be found, skills are “a combination of knowledge, abilities and attitudes that are suited to particular circumstances” (European Parliament, 2006). On the other hand, skills can be understood as “the set of knowledge, abilities, behaviour and attitudes that favour work being done properly and which the organisation is interested in developing or recognising in its co-workers when it comes to achieving the company’s strategic goals” (De Miguel et al., 2006). Many years before the major of these universities became fully aware of the importance of promoting personal and professional skills among their students, companies in different sectors recognised the gap existing between university and business, and on some occasions proposed activities to try to narrow it. For instance, in 1982 engineers from Ford, DaimlerChrysler and General Motors, grouped together in the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers), in the United States, being aware of how little newly graduated engineers were adapted to automotive companies, designed a competition for universities throughout the world, which involved conceiving, designing, manufacturing and competing with a single seat formula-type vehicle under some strict rules. This competition was called Formula SAE. These pioneers were of the opinion that this challenge would serve to accelerate engineering students’ professional profiles, forcing them to work as part of a team, with high levels of communication, responsibility and motivation, forcing them to use in their work a large part of the knowledge acquired in their degree. Today, more than 200 universities of five continents compete at some of the tests that Formula SAE has round the world. Since then, some other automotive competitions for engineering universities have come up, each of them with their specific objectives and rules. Shell Eco-marathon consists on the development of a vehicle able to cover the maximum distance with a litre of petrol. At Baja SAE, engineering students are tasked to design and build an off-road vehicle that must