ABET accreditation issues in international education

ABET 2000 accreditation criteria have substantially changed the philosophy of establishing the equivalency of programs within engineering education, and in particular, equivalency between programs offered in different nations. Under the old (pre-2000) system, course equivalencies might be established by simply showing that the same textbook was used in each course. However, with the newer guidelines, the standard of accreditation is based on "outcomes assessment" and now includes many more "soft" measures than was previously the case. The procedure for establishing some equivalency for a student who spends a semester or longer abroad as part of an accredited US engineering program, is now more ambiguous. In this paper, a review of the ABET 2000 criteria as they relate to international exchange agreements is given. In particular, a student who shows the independence and motivation to participate in a study abroad program actually strengthens the satisfaction of many of the softer ABET 2000 criteria by virtue of the demands he/she must meet in order to successfully complete the study abroad program.