Range of number of classes required for the same (ABET) major at different schools

College Majors Engineering Majors
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S24 and I have been looking at the requirements for majors he is interested in at different colleges he is thinking of applying to. We were surprised at the wide range of the number of classes in the major required at different (but all ABET accredited) schools. That also correlates with a range in the number of classes a student needs to take each semester to graduate on time.

We’re wondering–do the schools that require fewer classes pack more into each class? That would make the workload similar across schools for the same major. If that isn’t generally the case, schools that require you to take 3-4 engineering classes per semester as well as a couple of non-engineering classes are going to be a lot more challenging than schools that require fewer classes.

For reference here is the data on some schools he is considering for Computer Engineering.

School Classes for major Classes per term to meet total credit reqs.
UT Dallas 37 ~6
Tulsa 35 5.5
U Maine 34 5
UMass Amherst 32 ~5
Lehigh 26 4.5
Brown 21 4
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I don’t know the answer - but I wonder if this statement does or doesn’t impact the question…from Tulsa, for example. In other words, are you including these in required?? Maybe not all GEs are the same…??

Humanities and Social Sciences Electives (18 hours). Selections are limited to courses that qualify as humanities or social sciences electives as defined by ABET accreditation and the Tulsa curriculum.

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It’s probably worth adding a column for whether the school is on a semester or trimester system. Packing X number of courses into 8 semesters may be a different exercise than packing X into 12 trimesters. Or did you adjust for this in your Classes per term column?

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These are all schools with a 2-semester/ year system.

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I would take each schools 4 year curriculum and see it side by side. They should all be relatively close for the same major . Students in engineering taking 16-18 credits a semester is more the norm then unusual. I am leaving AP classes for credit out of this equation. My son took 18 credits like the first 2 years easily. The engineering departments say this is what they can handle. Some classes can be smaller labs etc also. I am interested in what you find out.

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I agree with @knowsstuff that the required classes should be relatively close. Where we saw differences was in the course sequencing and how quickly students jumped into their engineering classes.

My D took 5 classes/semester. Typically 4 classes for her major and 1 elective.

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My engineering major (with a double major in biology) took a lot of courses per quarter. I’m guessing some of these schools include required math and sciences that are not only for engineering…and some only include the courses declared majors must take.

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My theory is that it is all about signaling.

Colleges like UT Dallas that have relatively lax admissions require an extensive curriculum in order to signal that their graduates really know their stuff. At the other extreme, Brown can get away with 4 classes because the signal is that the incoming students to Brown are smart coming in.

But I think that’s a bit flawed. The issue with a place like Brown though is that GPAs are uniformly high, so you can’t really screen upon that. You can have a 3.7 GPA Brown grad who is absolutely brilliant, and you can have a 3.8 GPA Brown grad who can get good grades but is really not cut out for engineering.

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Thanks so much for starting this thread; it’s a really interesting topic!

I have no particular knowledge about different ABET-accredited programs, but I will say that there are schools that generally do 4 courses per semester (i.e. 4 4-credit classes for 16 hours/semester) while others are based more on 5 courses per semester (i.e. 5 3-credit classes for 15 hours/semester). I usually found the former system more common in private schools that tended to be more academically-known, while the latter system seemed more prevalent everywhere else. Because I was so interested in taking many diverse classes in college, once I learned about the difference, I eliminated most of the 4 classes/semester schools, so I can’t say whether the depth is that different between the same types of classes. But that difference may be playing into the number of different classes required by ABET-accredited programs.

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I have 2 kids who graduated with degrees in mechanical engineering. One went to a highly selective school… that school did not require as many engineering classes as his sister’s state school; but did require more humanities and an extra math course. ABET accreditation is standardized, but each university/college has different priorities for their graduates. I do not think it has anything to do with “Brown” has smarter kids and can get away with less classes.

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THIS. As long as the college meets the accreditation standard, it is then up to the college what they do in addition.

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Is it possible that some of the schools break the labs out into separate classes while others include it in the course? When I was in college, some departments had a 3 hour class plus a one hour lab, while others had a 4 hour class that was the usual lecture for a 3-credit class plus a lab.

Spouse was an engineering major while I was a science major. Spouse had lots of 3 credit classes, with some 4 credit courses and some 1 credit courses. I had lots of 4 credit classes, some 3+1, and 2 courses that paired a 3 hour lecture with a 2 credit lab. I could easily imagine colleges breaking up the same content in different ways.

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There is a belief on CC that engineering taught everywhere is similar as long as the programs are ABET-accredited. It is not. Saying a program is ABET-accredited is like saying a gymnast can do a back handspring on the floor. Two gymnasts capable of doing that can be of very different caliber, ranging from barely completing one to easily completing a much more complex routine with flair. Same with ABET-accredited engineering programs.

Every 6 years, ABET evaluators come to the college of engineering at my university to evaluate our programs. Two evaluators per department in the most recent visit. They look at our degree plans, including flowcharts of courses, minimum hours for 3000/4000-level courses, minimum hours in each core area, what types of electives are offered, gen ed requirements, etc. For each course, they want to see the syllabus, homework, exams, projects, copies of student work with lowest, median, and highest scores (with student names redacted, of course), and what is called “student outcomes” where instructors align some of the assignments with designated objectives. In addition, they want to see that we uphold the pre-requisites we set ourselves (can’t give enrollment overrides per our whim and fancy).

Most of the evaluation is procedural and box-checking in nature. The evaluators aren’t interested in distinguishing between the fluid mechanics class taught at MIT/Caltech and the one taught at my Xyz State University. The former isn’t necessarily going to grade out higher than the latter, despite undeniable differences in their level of difficulty. The evaluators aren’t there to rank programs. They are there to ensure a program’s quality and the way it is run are above certain minimum thresholds.

As an instructor of a 2000-level mandatory class, I could double the difficulty level of my exams and double the amount of homework, or cut both in half, or cover two more or two fewer chapters in the textbook, and won’t put my department’s accreditation in jeopardy. Nor win my department any accolade (e.g., we are 5-star ABET-accredited, our rival school is only a 3-star :smile:).

Is graduating from an ABET-accredited program good enough? Sure, if a student’s goal is solely to get hired as an engineer. But to say that engineering taught at all ABET-accredited programs are similar (and thus one should focus on cost and other fit criteria when choosing a college) is to downplay the significant differences in academic training one receives at different ABET-accredited engineering programs.

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Great points!!

This should be stickied…

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Good point that labs could be handled differently.

Labs were generally part of the classes for my D but those classes were for more credit hours.

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We saw that first hand this year with senior design requirements amongst my D’s friends. All schools had a capstone/design but the depth of that project was highly, highly variable.

Also lots of differences between schools that are more hands on vs theoretical.

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Exactly that. Having ABET accreditation means that a graduating student is moderately well prepared. That is why I say the rest is signaling.

Here’s another example of signaling. CalTech is no longer ABET accredited for Chemical Engineering. Stanford is only ABET accredited for Civil Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. Those programs are strong enough they don’t need ABET’s blessing.

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I did what @Knowsstuff recommended and pulled Computer Engineering major requirements for each of the schools and listed them side-by-side. As @Clemsondana suggested, some of the difference was that the schools with more requirements had more 1 and 2 credit classes.

After adjusting for that (combining the small classes to make 3 or 4 credit groups in my count), all the schools were very close in the number of Engineering/CS courses they required for the major, with Brown being a significant outlier. They did have a somewhat surprising variance on the number of math & science classes they required, though! (I classified a course as math if it was clearly math even if it was in the Eng. department, eg. “Prob & States for Engineers.”)

Adjusted Major Classes Eng/CS Math Science Other Gen Ed
Tulsa 33 23 6 4 8
Lehigh 29 21 5 3 6
UT Dallas 33 24 7 2 8
UMass Amherst 29 24 3 2 6
U Maine 31 23 6 2 7
Brown 21 15 5 1 4
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I think it would require a closer look at the definition of “required courses”. I look at my daughter’s MechE program at Purdue, and there are 42 “required courses”. This includes 5 “General Education Rquirements”, basic Freshman requirements (Calc, Physics, Written Communications), etc. After the “Requirements”, there is exactly one course allocated as “Elective”.

But many of those “Requirements” have lists of dozens/hundreds of courses to choose from, across the university. My daughter earned her Entrepreneurship and Innovation certificate with courses that fit into these “Engineering Requirements”.

Brown’s MechE program, by contrast, has a Gen Ed “requirement” that says at least 4 courses “must be taken” but adds nothing to the 21 total. If these 4 are required, in addition to 21 others, then it seems more than 21 courses are required.

Brown also seems to require at least 30 courses, “writing competence”, and 8 semesters of study, so taking 21 or 25 doesn’t mean you can graduate.

So again, it requires a deeper look than just a list or count.

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I don’t think one can just compare the numbers of classes without listing all those classes that are required at each school. For a more meaningful comparison, list all the required classes at the school with the most classes and at the school with the least number of classes.

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