QUALITY ASSURANCE STANDARDS OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION IN IRAN: A GLOBAL APPROACH

This article explores the effects of academic discipline on risk perception of technologies. The importance of this topic is that decision making about technologies depends on decision maker’s perception of technologies. In this study, risk perception of students of different academic disciplines including civil engineering, electrical engineering, computer engineering, mechanical engineering and MBA will be analyzed. Our actual aim is to find if there is any relation between these fields of studies and risk perception of technologies in terms of health, environment and society. In the next step, according to the growth in number of engineering and technical students who choose to continue their studies in MBA, we will discuss whether this field of study does have effect on risk perception of people or not. Four technologies compared in this study are renewable energies, genetic engineering, nanotechnologies and information and communication technologies (ICT). Results show that students in all fields of study have the highest risk perception in genetic engineering and lowest in renewable energies. Students from different fields of study differ on risk perception in the process of socialization and self-selection. Students of MBA have the highest risk perception of social threats in the four groups of technologies.