Education of potential professional engineers should take account of the type of employment that they will eventually obtain. The quality of an engineering degree course can be judged by assessing whether the correct balance of "essential attributes" has been effectively obtained. This case study is concerned with assessing the balance of "essential attributes" on an existing Bachelor of Engineering degree course in the Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Department, Cork Institute of Technology, Ireland. To frame the research, the concepts of "fitness for purpose", "standards of excellence" and a "sustainable world" are used. Improvement of course quality and the development of a model of course effectiveness evaluation that can be applied to most higher education courses is the aim. (Contains 5 figures and 1 table.)