Never before has Engineering needed more from the support of society and society needed more from the advances of Engineering than now. However, there is a feeling of demotivation among the students to pursue Engineering programs, thus other careers are more desirable such as Administration, Economics, Journalism, Law and Humanities. In the first place, this occurs partially because technology is generally available to everyone, that is, everyone is a regular user of it, thus confusing its daily use (connect and use solutions) with the background complexity for creating and implementing it. In the second place, potential engineering students expect education in technology with immediate practical activities and with the minimum of formal theory, because in summary everything is so easy to use that they think it is not necessary to make things difficult with a thoroughly understanding of how to conceive, manufacture, operate and perform the final disposition of a device or technical system. Finally, the frequent outcome of studying an Engineering career could be another reason, since recent graduates often do not have the skills and knowledge demanded by the labor market and are received with unattractive salaries, in addition to the discovery that graduates of other careers with little technical and engineering preparation use technologies and turn them into highly profitable businesses.

The disparity between the knowledge taught in the university and the one required by the companies is a palpable fact (^{Becker, 2010}). In general, some skills that companies consider highly important are not sufficiently taught by universities, with the exception of theoretical knowledge, as shown in Figure 1. Therefore, some approaching and coupling work is required in the contents and educational objectives formulated in the current Engineering curricula, considering the future and current scope of the engineers.

Source: Adapted from ^{Becker (2010)}

Figure 1 Disparity between knowledge taught at the universities and the one required by the companies. 

Technology generated through science and engineering has continuously and increasingly improved the living conditions of billions of people worldwide. Currently, the global indicators of life expectancy, basic services, welfare, safety and health, among others, are much higher than, for example, those registered just 50 years ago. However, it should be noted that improvement in the quality of life with the use of more and better technology has not reached the entire population, especially due to poor political and economic decisions. Moreover, decision-makers have neglected the environment and have not always chosen the best existing technologies based on general welfare, but those that report immediate economic benefit without considering the medium-and long-term environmental cost. For this reason, it is imperative to educate competent engineers that care for the environment and with a high ethical commitment, who can mitigate or completely eliminate the environmental impacts of the use of different technologies throughout their life cycle. The assessment of environmental impacts and environmentally-friendly decision-making is one of the major pending subjects in many of the Engineering curricula.

The tools of Computer Aided Engineering (CAE), virtual teaching platforms and social networks have facilitated the teaching-learning processes of Engineering. However, sometimes the use of a poor approach has caused students to compete for the facileness and neglect substantive matters, which are their competence and that only well-trained engineers can anticipate. The engineer must have an arsenal of soft and specific skills that facilitate their functions, as well as effective communication, but their essence must be the understanding and deep expertise in a technological field, which can be exploited in favor of satisfying the needs of the real society.

Engineering education is at a crossroads: it is between holding on to traditional school and resisting or embarking on experimentation with new forms of teaching - learning. Many universities have already taken the great step of reinventing, innovating and dynamically transforming their curricula in an attempt to adapt to changing times. The medium-term effects of these changes are not clear, and many questions still remain unanswered. Are engineers trained under these new teaching-learning environments better than those trained three or four decades ago? If that is the case, are they better than what? How to anticipate a future that is unknown and educate the future engineer effectively? What would an ideal curriculum design be like for an Engineering program, if such a thing exists? Something obvious is that the challenges and demands in the current and future Engineering practice will never be the same as 30 years ago. It is also perceived that new emerging professions and other traditional ones, but that have been reinvented, are much more striking for young people than engineering, which is not perceived as an ideal profession in terms of a set of desired qualities, as shown in Figure 2.

Source: Adapted from ^{Acatech and VDI (2009)}

Figure 2 Comparison of the desired features for an ideal job with those perceived for a job in technology. 

There is also a paradox between the revolution regarding the availability of information and the emergence of an apparent knowledge society. The former has not necessarily led to the latter in all cases. A knowledge society requires being able to make a critical, therefore, selective appropriation of the accumulation of information generated. The free and virtually unlimited access to information is no longer a privilege, as today there is abundant quality information online in a few milliseconds, just by entering a handful of keywords in a web browser. However, the paradox is evident: access is immeasurably easier, but the human ability to choose it seems to deteriorate. Therefore, this general competence that an engineer must have to find accurate and representative information should be strengthened during professional education.

In the last curricular reform of the area of Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, students were asked about the academic activities with which they learned more and better (National University of Colombia, 2008). Their answers indicated that the best rated activities were the resolution of problem situations in class and the design and construction of projects. In second place, with the highest qualifications, there were technical visits to the industry and laboratory practices. This result reinforces the idea that students prefer activities where they learn by doing and being (know how to do and how to be), and not with a single predominant theoretical and conceptual component. This idea is also considered in the ACOFI Strategic Plan 2013-2020 (^{García, 2012}).

In relation to the curricular design of an Engineering program, it must contemplate spaces for working with real Engineering problems in a collaborative, interdisciplinary work environment that generates a real experience for an engineer. This vision is related to the learning factory (LF), where "multidisciplinary student teams develop Engineering leadership skills by working with industry to solve real-world problems" (^{Lamancusa et al., 2008}). For this purpose, in our context certain aspects must be guaranteed:

Engineering is a true factor of change in society. Therefore, it is rational and valid to question the certainty of traditional engineering education systems in favor of their innovation and continuous improvement. If the rapid advance of the Colombian society towards a society of well-being and knowledge is intended, it is necessary to rethink the role played by the curricular programs of Engineering and universities, in terms of what, how and what for of the knowledge contemplated, and the relevance and effectiveness of the teaching-learning processes. The above should place the student in the center and how they achieve motivation in their own training. A reconceptualization of student learning, how do they learn better and how do they become autonomous in its intellectual development, is required to form critical thinking. Besides, a curriculum that facilitates the acquisition of management skills by the student and the analysis and evaluation of meaningful information for their education should be guaranteed. It is everyone's task, so we wish you a lot of success in such noble and difficult purpose.

Once again, we thank the authors, reviewers and readers for their important contributions and interest. The ingeniería e investigación Journal continues to make the best efforts with the support of the Faculty of Engineering of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia to disseminate scientific and technological knowledge.