I was interested in industrial engineering at Northwestern, and saw that their IE degree will no longer be accredited for the Fall 2017 class and any future classes. Is ABET accreditation important for IE?
anyone?
Most graduates from IE@NU are going into consulting, finance, or data analytics/software. Neither of these industries care about accreditation. For core engineering jobs accreditation tends to be more important.
This is a good question, wish I could answer it.
Stanford stopped being accredited for EE in 2013. Our basic requirement for finding schools for my son to apply to is Abet accreditation in the degree he is seeking. I’m really interested to hear how others answer your question.
http://main.abet.org/aps/AccreditedProgramsHistoricallyDetails.aspx?OrganizationID=420
I think in order to become a PE (professional engineer) you need the 4 year program to be accredited?
https://www.nspe.org/resources/licensure/what-pe
Anybody know the answer to OP’s question?
I know of no state that requires a ABET accredited degree, almost all will have some alternative method.
(e.g. evaluation of transcript which won’t be a problem if you graduated from Northwestern or Stanford)
Personally I wouldn’t give up an acceptance at Stanford or Northwestern over ABET accreditation.
In general, what are the requirements for licensure as a professional engineer?
The language and specific provisions of state engineering licensure laws vary from state to state, but virtually every state law outlines a four-step process under which an applicant who has (1) a four-year engineering degree in a program approved by the state engineering licensure board, (2) four years of qualifying engineering experience, and who successfully completes (3) the eight-hour Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) Examination, and (4) the eight- hour Principles and Practice of Engineering (PE) Examination will be licensed as a professional engineer.
Who accredits the engineering progam?
State licensing boards typically approve engineering programs accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc. (ABET), and the Canadian Accreditation Board (CAD), but may approve others as having equal standing. State board approval of an engineering educational program is often based on ABET accreditation.
I wouldn’t give up an acceptance either, but I might be inclined to switch my major. 
- ABET-accredited degrees are preferred (and in some states may be required) for PE licensure. States often offer ways to get a PE license without an ABET degree, but typically more work experience is required. The ABET degree is always the “fast track”.
- However, most engineers never pursue PE licensure. This would include most IEs. For example, I would guess that most or all of the IE faculty at Northwestern lack PE licenses. The Illinois engineering board probably has a website where you could look up licensees and check this.
- PE licensure (and therefore ABET degrees) are typically important for work on infrastructure or environmental issues. This includes virtually all civil engineers (including geotechnical, structural, transportation, traffic, or environmental), some mechanical engineers (HVAC), and some electrical engineers (power systems).
Most EEs don’t need PE licenses. If an EE is designing something that plugs into the power grid, or that runs on batteries off the grid, it is unlikely that licensure will be an issue.
EEs generally do need PE licenses if they are are tinkering with the power grid itself (i.e. power systems engineering). But most EEs never do this. Stanford, interestingly, has apparently moved their power systems engineers into the Civil department. So power systems engineers – the EEs who most need ABET degrees – can still get them from Stanford. But their degrees will technically be in Civil.
The bottom line is that I wouldn’t dismiss Stanford for EE or Northwestern for IE just because they have dropped ABET accreditation. These are fields where most engineers will never seek PE licensure.
You would definitely want an ABET degree if you planned to work with infrastructure. I believe ABET degrees are also valuable if you want to work at the intersection of engineering and law. Without an ABET degree, it might be harder to qualify for the patent bar or to provide expert witness testimony, for example. I’m not really familiar with that aspect of engineering though.
Thanks for all of the help and info! I’m planning on applying Early Decision and when I found out about them dropping the accreditation I had some hesitation but it sounds like it is pretty insignificant to my scenario. Now I just gotta get accepted…
Thank you Corbett. My son does have an interest working with the power grid and most of the engineers he’s met that work at the power company are civil engineers. Now I know why. He may need to revise his future plans. Thanks again.
The power systems guy at Stanford is officially a Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering, although he is also “by courtesy” a Professor of Electrical Engineering, and all of his degrees are from EE departments.
https://profiles.stanford.edu/ram-rajagopal
I don’t think this is the norm though. I think you would typically study power systems in an EE dept., and typically your EE degree would be ABET accredited. But apparently Civil departments (which are basically guaranteed to be ABET accredited) handle power systems at some schools.
Other than civil engineering, the only other area I may worry about is Federal jobs like those in Patent and Trademark Office. In general, licensure matters only in fields that relates to public works/safety (civil/environmental engineering). You absolutely don’t need ABET for IE. It is inherently multidisciplinary and the best schools out there want the flexibility to design and innovate.
@corbett your post is copied from the ABET website, but I haven’t been able to find a state where there was no alternative way to get a PE with a non ABET accredited degree. All of them have alternative methods so that info from the ABET is wrong.
@CU123 To my knowledge, there is no convenient way to review all the PE licensing rules in all 50+ US states and territories. So it’s hard to make definitive, comprehensive statements. For example, have you checked Kentucky?
https://kyboels.ky.gov/Getting-Licensed/Pages/Engineering-License-Process.aspx
The only apparent exception listed on the Kentucky Board’s website is for foreign degrees, such as degrees accredited by CAEB, which is the Canadian equivalent of ABET. So you could argue that Kentucky doesn’t strictly require an ABET degree, because they accept equivalently accredited foreign degrees. But that still seems in keeping with the spirit of the ABET requirement.
I haven’t tried to dig into the details of Kentucky’s state regulations. But based on the Board’s public web page on licensing requirements, there is no apparent way for a non-ABET Stanford EE or Northwestern IE degree to qualify for PE licensure in Kentucky. Is this is a significant limitation? In practice, probably not.
For the record, I did not copy anything from the ABET website. If I had, I would have linked to it. My posts in this thread reflect my understanding and experience, which (legal disclaimer) I believe to be reliable, but which I do not guarantee to be authoritative.