Graduate attributes are qualities, skills and understandings a university community agrees its students should develop during their time within the institution.

Graduate attributes form a set of individually assessable outcomes that are components indicative of the graduate’s potential to acquire competence to practice at the appropriate level. The graduate attributes are exemplars (models) of the attributes expected of a graduate from an accredited program. Graduate attributes are clear, brief statements of the expected capability, qualified if necessary, by a range indication appropriate to the type of program. Graduate attributes are defined for educational qualifications in the engineer. The graduate attributes serve to identify the distinctive characteristics as well as areas of commonality between the expected outcomes of different types of programs.

The graduate attributes are organized using 12 headings each of which identifies the differentiating characteristics that allow the distinctive roles of engineers to be distinguished by range information. For each attribute, statements are formulated for engineers using a common stem, with ranging information appropriate to each educational track.