Is the ABET Accreditation important?

I am curious to know why some schools have engineering programs that are not ABET accredited. Why would any students choose to go to a school that isn’t accredited by ABET? So, is the ABET accreditation really that important?

Some programs are working on accreditation. Some schools attract students who can’t get into accredited schools.

ABET accreditation is specifically important for those who want to eventually get a Professional Engineer license or take the patent exam. PE licensing is most common for civil engineers, but may also be useful for other engineers in some cases.

In other situations, particularly with the more traditional engineering majors (e.g. chemical, civil, electrical, industrial, materials, mechanical, nuclear), it is seen as a marker of meeting a relatively high minimum quality standard, particularly if the school is not that well known for engineering. While a school like Stanford can get away with having some non-civil engineering majors not have ABET accreditation, that is less likely to be true for an unknown school. At some schools, many engineering graduates go to Wall Street or other non-engineering employment, so they may offer a non-ABET-accredited version and an ABET-accredited version of their engineering majors (e.g. Dartmouth, Brown).

Some types of engineering, like bioengineering or biomedical engineering and other engineering science, may be less likely to be ABET accredited programs. Computer science and computer engineering also fall into this category.

At lesser known schools, non-ABET-accredited engineering programs are often new ones in the process of seeking ABET accreditation, which requires that some students graduate before accreditation is granted (but accreditation is retroactive to those students’ degrees). But check the school to be sure.

Usually, it is important.

The exceptions are that a few top schools have certain programs that are not accredited by ABET.

I believe MiIT, Carnegie Melon, and Penn have a few. In that case, it really isn’t an issue. If it is an obscure school, it is an important issue.

Note that various engineering scholarships may require the student to be in a program with ABET accreditation. Also, some employers may prefer to recruit from accredited programs, especially at lower tier colleges and universities. I’m sure many very good programs lack accreditation if only because some schools just don’t want to commit resources to obtain accreditation for certain majors.

For example, I had my son contact a professor at University of Michigan about their Engineering Physics program that does not have ABET accreditation. Other than 3rd party scholarships, my son was not all that concerned about it after talking to the professor. We had the impression that they route more people into their top rated and accredited Nuclear Engineering program, though. I’m sure their EP major is an excellent program despite the lack of accreditation. Guessing it has to be, since they only offered a waitlist for a student with 36 ACT, 4.0UW GPA, 800 SAT2 in Physics/Math and a boatload of AP credit. So, I wouldn’t be too worried about ABET at a top tier university or highly regarding Engineering program;-)

Here’s how to search: http://main.abet.org/aps/accreditedprogramsearch.aspx