A worldwide shift has occurred towards outcomes-based approaches in higher education. Most universities now explicitly specify the attributes that they expect their graduates to achieve. This is driven, in part, by demands from employers that graduates should have a broad range of transferable skills in addition to discipline-specific knowledge.

In this paper we assess stakeholder perceptions of the attributes of chemical engineering graduates from the University of Adelaide. We investigated the perceptions of practicing engineers and of students in regards to the competence of our graduates with respect to a defined list of 14 graduate attributes and in regards to the importance of these same attributes. A survey instrument was prepared and distributed to ~65 graduates and 56 final-year undergraduates, with 27 and 40 responses, respectively. A subsequent and separate survey was also distributed to each graduate’s manager, however with only 6 responses.

Key findings of the study relate to the perceptions by managers of the graduates’ ability to communicate effectively with clients, engineers and the community at large. On average, managers agreed that this was an attribute of “major” importance but that graduates’ competence in this attribute was only rated “minor” to “moderate”. Further research capturing a higher response rate of managers is required. Also, discrepancies were observed between the self-perceived competence of graduates and their actual competence (as rated by managers) with respect to 3 graduate attributes relating to communication, understanding of the business environment and, awareness of current affairs relating to engineering in society.