Quality assurance of engineering education worldwide: The QUEECA TEMPUS project for Central Asia

The QUEECA (Quality of Engineering Education in Central Asia) TEMPUS project main aim is to set up and to implement a system of quality assurance (QA) of engineering education in Central Asia (CA), finalised to the accreditation of engineering programmes by the award of the EUR-ACE quality label on the basis of the EUR-ACE Framework Standards and related quality requirements and procedures. The project also takes advantage of experience in the European Higher Education Area Education (EHEA) through ENAEE and current efforts in Central Asia countries. At the present moment (June 2014) the project has arrived to the mid project milestone and time has come for a thorough internal evaluation taking into account the encouraging results so far obtained, such as the creation of the Kyrgyz (October 2013) and Uzbek (May 2014) Societies for Engineering Education and the rising expectations from the concerned parties. The paper, shortly, introduces the QUEECA TEMPUS project and reports about the achieved results and the activities scheduled for the next months. Finally it will be shown why the project is to be considered as a pioneer one, introducing the EUR-ACE system outside the European Union but still in “Bologna EHEA countries” with an easy replicable model.