<p>"ABET Accreditation Plans Go Global</p>
<p>ABET, the organization that accredits college programs in applied science, computing, engineering, and technology, is moving forward with a plan to accredit technical programs in foreign countries. One motive for ABETs plan, approved by the ABET board in November, is the high demand for ABET accreditation from foreign programs. </p>
<p>We get many, many requests to do that, says ABET Executive Director George Peterson. Until recently, ABET declined to accredit foreign programs because it did not want to appear to be encroaching on other countries accreditation systems. But ABET plans to avoid that problem by obtaining permission from accreditation officials in a foreign country before evaluating any of its programs. </p>
<p>The next step in ABETs planning process will be to conduct a pilot study using three institutions outside of the U.S. The study will help the organization determine the cost of conducting international accreditation and the possible need for more training and personnel, Peterson says. The pilot study will also look at cultural considerations related to the program.</p>
<p>Read more about ABET's plans in the May issue of PE magazine."</p>
<p>ABET is a member of the "Washington</a> Accord". This means that ABET already recognizes accredited engineering degrees from Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, NZ, South Africa, Hong Kong, and Japan as "ABET-equivalent". </p>
<p>Furthermore, ABET already evaluates engineering programs in non-"Washington Accord" countries to determine if they are "substantially equivalent" to ABET programs. ABET publishes a list each year of the "substantially equivalent" foreign degrees; the latest list is [url=<a href="http://www.abet.org/Linked%20Documents-UPDATE/International/05%20Substantially%20Equivalent.pdf%5Dhere%5B/url">http://www.abet.org/Linked%20Documents-UPDATE/International/05%20Substantially%20Equivalent.pdf]here[/url</a>]. In practice, there may not be a big difference between ABET "accrediting" a foreign program vs. ABET listing a foreign program as "substantially equivalent". </p>
<p>The 22 schools with "substantially equivalent" programs for 2005 are in Europe (Germany, Netherlands, Russia, Spain), Latin America (Chile, Mexico), and the Middle East (Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey). About half are in either Mexico or Turkey.</p>
<p>I was aware of ABET's accredidation practices but this is deffinitely a broad expansion. I'm wondering what kind of impact such a decision will that have on engineering in the U.S. in terms of foreign enrollment (which makes up a large part of U.S. engineerng undergrad and especially grad students) and licensure? </p>
<p>Another of my primary concerns is how the decision will effect/shape accredidation standards for U.S. institutions in the future. Many foreign institutions require a lot more coursework in math and science than U.S. institutions (and fewer humanities and writing). Over here, we argue about which school is the best based on reputation, name, etc. . Realistically though, whether you go to MIT or Wyoming State, you'll essentially be taking the same amount of material (more or less) even though one place may be more competitive than the other. </p>
<p>However, if one were to rank all accredited programs (imagining that programs like the Indian Institute of Technology were accredited) on the shear amount of coursework that had to be completed to get a degree, no U.S. institution could compete simply becuase there are a lot of foreign institutions that have a higher coursework requirement than the ABET standard. Right now, there aren't enough schools that ABET directly accredits to warrent a U.S. accredidation vs. country-X accredidation review, but if ABET starts accrediting lots of programs outside the U.S. ...</p>