Evaluation Procedures of the University Graduates' Readiness for Railway Professional Activities in the English-speaking Countries

This article presents an analysis of the system of engineering education in general and railway engineering training, particularly in the USA, Great Britain, Australia and Singapore. These countries were chosen to be the most advanced in the sphere of introducing professional standards and qualification requirements into the process of engineering education that are carried out on the principles of a competency-based approach. The objective of this article is to single out the most effective procedures of evaluation of engineering competences as well as the algorithm of setting correspondence between educational programmes and national professional standards. On the basis of examining a broad range of governmental, cooperative and educational documents, the authors investigated some issues in technical higher education, assessment practices of graduates’ vocational readiness, and ideological concepts towards learning outcomes. Currently, there are various schemes of organising engineering education, however, all of them are directed at enhancing the quality of training, introducing competency-oriented methods and technologies, and searching for the most effective ways to make engineering education competitive on the world market. The review presented in this article is of a certain interest for the scientific community, researchers of this problem, and bodies of higher vocational education in the sphere of railway transport.