Engineering education accreditation: A look at communication and language

Engineering education accreditation bodies that advocate on international and national scales provide formal recognition programs that meet or exceed certain criteria. These bodies and their memberships are summarized for the purposes of understanding their function, scale and interrelatedness. Then, for comparison´s sake, the single graduate attribute/criterion of communication and its explanations are analyzed and discussed for the purpose of clarifying differences and areas of confusion to allow international and national accreditation bodies to better formulate agreements on criteria related to communication and language. Results indicate that two of the main international accreditation bodies, the International Engineering Alliance accords and the EUR-ACE Framework Standards have similar communication criteria; however, specifics in regard to international outlook, multicultural understanding, and languages are areas which could be clarified. This could facilitate understanding and cooperation between internationally accredited universities and provide more opportunities for collaboration and improvement of engineering education programs.