Hello. I am an American high schooler (from NY) who wants to do a B.Sc in Software Systems from Simon Fraser University, and the reason I considered this school was because it is regionally accredited. Jobs on lndeed say that they want a regionally accredited degree, but do they want a degree from within the US, or any regionally accredited college (including foreign ones)? In case I go to SFU, I want to be able to easily find employment in a software company in the U.S, and will my FOREIGN degree be accepted, or will they see it as another random bachelor’s from another country? I don’t want this to happen, and I think that Vancouver-SFU (Surrey in particular) is a great place. Will my SFU Software degree be looked at indifferently from a Cal Poly SLO or Stevens Institute of Tech software degree? Stevens and SFU software programs aren’t ABET accredited, but they are both regionally accredited. I hope that employers won’t look down at my degree. Thanks.
Also, I don’t think this will be a problem, but will American CS grad schools be looking positively at an SFU Software degree?
Stevens is ABET accredited for the computer science program (in fact, the second school in the US to be so accredited, when ABET began computer science accreditation in 1986). If you were to attend Stevens for the BS in Computer Science - which would certainly qualify you to do software development and engineering, as many computer science graduates of Stevens (and those of many other schools) do - you will have an ABET accredited degree at the outset.
The BE degree in the specific Software Engineering major is a new program that graduated its first class in 2018. It is a candidate for ABET accreditation specifically as a software engineering major. ABET requires at least two graduating classes in the major prior to accreditation, so one can expect the accreditation in the upcoming year. When ABET accredits new programs, all degrees awarded by the program prior to accreditation are considered retroactively accredited.
All of the other Stevens engineering majors are ABET accredited. You didn’t mention what specific major you wanted, however, there are graduates of all the engineering majors at Stevens who are doing software development and software engineering. Mathematics and physics majors do software engineering too. The computer engineering and electrical engineering majors - which are ABET accredited as standalone majors - have many alumni doing software engineering. My S graduated from Stevens in EE for example, and is a software engineer on spacecraft flight control systems for a major aerospace manufacturer.
The Software Engineering program is probably the closest (at least in name) to what you refer to as software systems, but at Stevens - and many others - there are a wide range of majors that are relevant to software development (aforementioned CS, EE, CompE, math, physics, operations research, management, financial engineering, etc.).
I cannot speak for SFU or the other schools. I suspect a degree from a reputed Canadian university such as SFU would still be respected in the United States. I know one of Stevens’ EE professors for example earned her doctorate from Simon Fraser University.
Industrial and SyE isn’t ABET accredited too. Is it a new program like Software Eng?
I wanted SyE at Stevens (I actually like that program more than EM), but since it isn’t ABET accredited, I’ve turned my sights to George Washington Uni’s (in D.C) SyE major. It seems to have a lot of business in the curriculum (along with engineering), so this program seems especially appealing to me.
The Industrial and Systems Engineering program at Stevens was also new as a major with that title. It graduated its first class in 2018, therefore, as with the software engineering program, it will be eligible for ABET accreditation in 2020. Stevens has introduced a number of new engineering programs in the last decade prior to the ISE and SWE programs and all were ABET accredited after the prerequisite time since the first graduating classes in them.
You could start in the EM program taking elective classes in ISE, or possibly transfer to the ISE program when ABET accreditation is received. It is quite probable that by the time you are ready to start your freshman year, ABET will have rendered the accreditation. By way of note, Stevens was one of the pioneers in industrial and systems engineering, scientific management methods (Frederick Winslow Taylor and Henry Gantt, among others), operations research, and related areas. It had since its inception undergraduate and graduate programs in these areas, though they were not titled “Industrial and Systems Engineering” (the legacy programs were called Management Science). The current School of Business programs incorporate these subjects into most of its majors.
@SUNYMAN - This was the ISE program director’s response regarding accreditation:
“Stevens is planning to get the Industrial and Systems Engineering program accredited with ABET on the next ABET cycle which will be year of record 2020-2021 with formal notification of accreditation in January of 2022. Given that all engineering programs at Stevens run under the same assessment system and all the other engineering programs are ABET accredited, Stevens sees no reason that the Industrial and Systems Engineering program will not gain accreditation at that time. Once the Industrial and Systems Engineering program is ABET accredited any past graduates are grandfathered into the ABET accredited program status.”
@SUNYMAN - If you were to enter Stevens for example starting in the ISE or SWE program with the Fall 2020 freshman class (assuming you are currently a senior in high school), the program will have received ABET accreditation by the time you graduate (Spring 2023).
I was also considering some of the business programs at Stevens, and I’m thinking Econ vs. IS vs. QFin (mainly InfoSystems and QFin). I realize that w/ QFin, I’ll end up in IB (if I work hard), and with IS, I’ll end up in IT/computing fields.