Quality Assurance of Engineering Education through Accreditation: The Impact of Engineering Criteria 2000 and Its Global Influence

Journal of Engineering Education, Jan 2005 by Prados, John W, Peterson, George D, Lattuca, Lisa R

ABSTRACT

For more than 70 years, accreditation has provided quality control for engineering education in the United States, seeking to assure that graduates of accredited programs are prepared for professional practice. However, by the 1980s, the accreditation criteria had become increasingly prescriptive, inhibiting development of innovative programs to reflect changing needs of practice. In response, ABET (formerly Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) and its stakeholders developed revised criteria, Engineering Criteria 2000 (EC2000), which emphasize learning outcomes, assessment, and continuous improvement rather than detailed curricular specifications. These criteria, together with international agreements among engineering accrediting bodies, facilitate mobility of an increasingly global profession. To assess the utility of the new criteria, ABET has commissioned a multiyear study of the impact of EC2000 on U.S. engineering education. Initial results from the study are encouraging and, as more results emerge, should support continuous improvement of the accreditation process, itself.

Keywords: accreditation, Engineering Criteria 2000, global profession

I. INTRODUCTION

The continued globalization of manufacturing and service delivery has led to a concomitant globalization of the engineering profession. Engineers increasingly engage in international projects, including service on multinational teams at different points around the globe, collaborating on a common project through real-time, electronic communication. Effective collaboration requires not only the ability of participants to communicate in a common language, but also the assurance of a common level of technical understanding. Such issues are not trivial, given the global diversity of systems for educating engineers, for quality control of their education, and for regulating their professional practice.

In the United States, systems of engineering education have evolved over the past 200 years, those for the regulation of engineering practice over the past 100 and those for educational quality control over the past eighty. These systems are interdependent and interact in various ways. However, our principal concern in this paper is with educational quality control and its implementation through the process of accreditation. Three principal subjects arc considered: the development and reform of engineering education and accreditation in the United State (section IV), the impact to date of new accreditation criteria on U.S. engineering education (section III), and the role of accreditation in facilitating global professional mobility of engineers (section IV). The paper concludes with a brief outline of future research needs and issues facing accreditation.

II. ENGINEERING ACCREDITATION IN THE UNITED STATES

A. Accreditation

Accreditation may be defined as a process, based on professional judgment, for evaluating whether or not an educational institution or program meets specified standards of educational quality. Its purpose is to assure prospective students and the public that graduates of an accredited institution or program have achieved a minimum level of competence in their chosen fields of study, thus serving as a form of consumer protection. In many countries, accreditation is the legal responsibility of a ministry of education or other governmental agency. However, in the United States, accreditation is a voluntary, peer-review process conducted by non-governmental organizations, usually associations of educational institutions or professional societies.

Accreditation may be institutional or specialized. Institutional accreditation seeks to evaluate the overall operation of a college or university from a broad perspective. It is conducted by six independent associations of the educational institutions in a given geographical region [1]. Specialized accreditation focuses in detail on programs that prepare graduates for the professions. It is conducted by a multitude of organizations that include individual professional societies, associations of professional schools, and associations of professional societies [1, pp. 6-10].

B. Early Evolution of Engineering Education

Many of today's accreditation issues have their roots in the historical development of engineering education in the United States, which evolved in the nineteenth century from two stems: the formal mathematical-scientific, school-based system developed in France, as exemplified in the �cole Polytechnique, and the apprenticeship system prevalent in England. The tension between these two approaches influenced the development of U.S. engineering schools, with some emphasizing the former and others the latter [2]. By the early 1900s, these two approaches had been blended into a somewhat uncomfortable compromise at most institutions. However, well into the twentieth century, apprenticeship, rather than formal education, also provided a recognized avenue for entering the engineering profession, and as late as 1934, all state registration laws allowed the award of an engineering license on the basis of specified experience without the requirement of graduation from an engineering school [3].