Curriculum development: The whole and its parts

This text is based on a lecture held at the 29th IGIP Symposium (annual conference) in Biel (Switzerland). This conference took place at the HTA Biel (University for applied sciences) under the title 'Unique and Excellent'. The paper takes up the old question: What should be present in an engineering curriculum, and who should decide? The author tries an overview based on the contributed lectures he had to handle while assembling the proceedings of the symposium. He also includes current tendencies in general and attitudes of students. In particular, he deals with the current trend for direct utility in engineering education.