A Comparative Study On Engineering Education Professional Accreditation System Between China And America

Engineering education is an important part of higher education. Around the world, the scale of our country’s engineering education is the biggest. In the domestic, engineering school enrollments in colleges and universities accounted for one third of the total number, improving the quality of engineering education, enhancing the comprehensive quality of engineering talent has an important significance. Higher engineering education professional accreditation is one of the methods to promote the quality of higher education. Establishing and improving professional accreditation system plays an important role in promoting the quality of engineering education and international competitiveness.By analyzing relevant literatures, the author describes the study of accreditation criteria, subject, procedure and performance. Then define the related concept of professional accreditation. On this basis, combine the generation and development of professional accreditation system in China and America. Clear the political, economic and cultural background which the professional accreditation system has based on. After clarifying the background of the two countries’professional accreditation system, the author has carried out a comparative study on the professional accreditation system from the aspects of accreditation criteria, accreditation subject, and accreditation procedure and accreditation performance. Combined with the survey data, we analysis the reasons of the differences. By comparing the two accreditation system found that the deficiencies of current professional accreditation system in our country, and puts forward some suggestions to improve and perfect our accreditation system.Through the analysis we can find that American accreditation criteria has a accurate target, accreditation subject has a strong color of unofficial intermediary, the performance of accreditation has a clear implementation plan. But the accreditation criteria of our country are relatively single and there are not enough intermediary organizations participate in the accreditation, and we also have not undertaken a performance study. Through comparing with the professional accreditation system of America we can find many shortages of our system. The author suggests that in order to perfect the accreditation of our country we should set more accreditations which are scientific and target clearly according to different types of universities and different characteristics of majors. We also need to transform government’s function, let the intermediary organizations play an important role in the professional accreditation. At last it is also significant to develop a practical performance play; by studying the performance of professional accreditation we can find shortages of the system which can promote us to improve the accreditation system instantly.