Mostly, it looks like adding details and clarifications.
However, a potentially significant change is in the requirement for general education: “a broad education component that includes humanities and social sciences, complements the technical content of the curriculum and is consistent with the program educational objectives.” I.e. humanities and social sciences is not explicitly specified in the new version, although it is hard to think of how general education for engineering majors would not be in the area of humanities and social studies.
It’s more likely that this change was made due to pressure from programs already accredited. My department went up for accreditation review this past year and I got to see the process first hand for the first time. It can be really tough to meet the requirements while still confirming to the ever popular state legislatures’ requirements of not going over some set number of total hours.
What state legislative requirement would cause a university to have difficulty with having humanities and social science general education requirements for engineering majors?
There are a number of states who set limits such as “no degree can require more than 120 credit hours.” Many engineering programs used to go beyond that in order to get more technical content as well as the general education requirements squeezed in before those policies were in place. Now, as they become more common and more strict, engineering programs have to find ways to trim fat without missing any of the ABET requirements since they still need humanities.
So, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some push by accredited programs to drop that requirement from ABET. Then those programs would have their own leeway to negotiate with their own boards of regents/trustees/administration about loosening up humanities requirements if they so desire.
In any case, the programs in question can also use credit deflation, which is probably already the case (engineering courses are often claimed to be higher workload per credit than many others courses), to keep the total number of credits within any legislated or administrative limit.
Most undergrad programs have distribution requirements or core requirements outside of the engineering requirements (thought many have less demanding cores for engineering student). This seems like a non-issue.
I know Texas and Arizona both have such laws and their programs struggled to meet all of the ABET requirements sometimes and still squeeze it into the credit limit. I know at least one prominent engineering department in Texas that is forced to not require linear algebra because of this and has to try to fold it into other classes, for example.
There is absolutely credit deflation going on in these cases but even that isn’t a fix all. ABET requires a certain number of units of different things, so you can’t simply deflate your way to accreditation. It’s a challenge, though not an insurmountable one.
I was wondering which states you were referring to also. I looked at the schools my kids went to in Virginia and their two different programs they were in are still at 128 and 133 credits needed for a degree. Surprised to hear there is a push to keep things at 120 credits. Especially with something like engineering Maybe that push is on in Virginia as well, but if so, I’m not aware of it.
The Cal State system has moved mostly to semesters and limited hours to 120. Cal Poly engineering programs are all roughly 200 quarter hours (the typical non-CENG degree is 180). They’ve strongly resisted both semesters and the reduction in hours.
Colorado School of Mines (a state school) programs require a lot of credits. (When I last looked, some majors were 140+ credits). Unfortunately a lot of students get overwhelmed, especially if they are attempting to stay on a 4 year schedule.