Civil engineering is the type of engineering where (working toward) PE licensing is expected, and therefore ABET accreditation is necessary or at least very helpful. So even those schools that think that ABET accreditation is not worth the bother for other types of engineering (because few or none of their graduates will go for PE licensing) will retain ABET accreditation for civil engineering (assuming that they have civil engineering).
However, separate from the PE licensing issue, ABET accreditation is important for lesser known schools to assure employers that the program meets a relatively high minimum standard.
@momofthreeboys Your siblings may not have had PE’s (most common with civil) , but I’ll bet their mechanical, electrical programs were ABET accredited at the time. These are different issues.
@engineer80 I used to hold a government job where ABET was REQUIRED, and with a stroke of a pen I could waive it. The government is the only organization that will ever REQUIRE ABET and the government will be the first to waive it for any top school. Period. Heck I use to waive it for some pretty mediocre schools.
Another consideration for students: most (if not all) of the engineering scholarship applications I’ve seen require students to be attending an ABET-accredited program in order to be eligible to apply.
@sevmom Thanks for the article:
“In a similar situation, the Stanford chemical engineering program was using a chemistry course to teach some engineering fundamentals. The ABET examiners disallowed it because it wasn’t taught by an engineer. “They doubted whether a chemist could provide the engineering fundamentals for our program,” Shaqfeh says.”
We noticed that Penn had ‘engineering sections’ in CAS co-taught my CAS and a SEAS professor. This seemed to work well, giving students both a deep theoretical and a practical core. It sounded like implementing good teaching practices to me but may have been developed to appease, ABET board, CAS and SEAS.
It is difficult to add in biology courses to the full CBE curriculum, requiring overloading for students concentrating in Pharma or Bio Tech. Chem eng majors are resilient. This is one of the few majors/fields requiring a PHD for advancement in the Pharma industry, requires more rigor . A solid core foundation is still very valuable for any long career plan.
One school was moving away from ABET and adding liberal arts concentrations instead for a more well rounded student. Once my son understood that included eliminating a physics course in the ME curriculum, he decided to end his tour.
Our children would have had to advocate for a school without an ABET program in their major. I’m not saying that we would say no, but there would definitely be a discussion with course planning guides.
RE #60 “Civil engineering is the type of engineering where (working toward) PE licensing is expected, and therefore ABET accreditation is necessary or at least very helpful.”
just one modification:
What I saw was firms that did civil engineering projects required engineers to be working towards PE licensing.
But that did not just include their civil engineers. Virtually all of these projects involved engineers in more than one of the major disciplines, not just civil engineers. And there were big projects, undertaken by big engineering firms, and involved a lot of engineers. Including a lot of electrical engineers, a lot of mechanical engineers. All these non-civil engineers also needed to be working towards PE. There were a lot of them.
My daughter wants to start out in engineering, specifically civil engineering. I have not heard of ABET or PE and don’t know what PE is. Any suggestions for getting me up to speed on this topic? Also, my nephew is looking into engineering at Dartmouth, so I took a look and Dartmouth is only ABET accredited in engineering. What would that mean? He’s interested in biomedical engineering. Is it OK for him to attend a college that is ABET certified in engineering only and not biomedical engineering? I hope that it is OK to bring up my nephew as well. I’m doing research to cover both kids. Thanks.
PE means Professional Engineer license. The pathway to a PE license is helped by having an ABET accredited engineering degree. In civil engineering, (working toward) a PE license is expected; in other types of engineering, it depends on the type of work.
When a school has only a general engineering program, it is necessary to check its offerings to see if they include the areas of engineering that are of the student’s interest.
Regarding Dartmouth specifically, note that the ABET-accredited BE program takes more than 12 quarters (4 academic years). Dartmouth also has a 12 quarter (4 academic year) AB program for those who want an engineering background but want to go into Wall Street, consulting, or medical school, rather than work in engineering.
Engineering students typically take their FE (fundamentals of engineering) their senior year of college or right after. It’s a state board exam and it typically about 6 hours long (used to be 8 hours!) An ABET accredited undergrad will prepare your child very well for the FE exam.
With an FE, you aren’t quite an engineer yet. In many (most?) states you have to work for 4 years under the supervision of a PE before being eligible to take the PE. The exam is 8 hours long. When you pass your PE, you’re officially an engineer.
Some disciplines are more likely to require a PE to really get promotions and make any sort of money. Civil is one of those.
You can check your state’s rules for PE exams and the eligibility for applying. In our state, the most direct route to eligibility is to graduate from an ABET accredited program and work for 4 years but it isn’t the only path. Just the easiest.