ACCREDITATION AND ITS ROLE IN QUALITY ASSURANCE IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of accreditation in quality assurance of engineering education. Accreditation of academic curricula is a process carried out by the professional bodies to provide benchmarking against international standards. This process assures that high standards are maintained; assures consistency amongst diverse academic institutions, assures uniform, high standard learning outcomes and guarantees graduates with high standard skills. In this paper, by using a descriptive – analytical method, the appearance of external quality assurance programs is examined, and the accreditation and its role in quality in higher education, especially in engineering education, are analyzed. Results showed that the quality assurance programs changed their focus from content of higher education programs to students learning and from output measures to outcome ones. Also, accreditation is based on a core group of values such as institutional mission, institutional autonomy, academic freedom that assures threshold quality and assists students to recognition the abilities of higher education institutions. The examination of accreditation in engineering education showed that this process is based on standards such as academic and institutional criteria, and engineering ethics criteria. Herein criteria such as students program educational objectives, student outcomes, continuous improvement, curriculum, faculty, facilities, institutional support, ethics leadership, visible ethics and ethics behavior have specific situation in accreditation and quality assurance program of engineering education.