Research On The Institutional Change Of Professional Accreditation System Of Engineering Education In America

Nowadays,engineering accreditation has become one of the important means to guarantee the quality of engineering talents around the world,and it is a powerful baseline for the quality of engineering education.The engineering education accreditation system is the system expression of engineering education accreditation activities,which provides guidance for engineering accreditation activities.Engineering education in the United States is at the forefront of the world under the assurance of the ABET engineering education professional accreditation system.As a world-recognized engineering accreditation system,It is of great theoretical and practical significance to study ABET engineering education accreditation system systematically.ABET accreditation system has a history of nearly 90 years.Such a long history of development provides sufficient historical conditions for the study of " institutional change".This study attempts to re-examine the ABET accreditation system with the literature research method,historical research method,and institutional analysis method using an analysis framework constructed by historical institutionalism.The main contents of this study include: First,review the history of the ABET accreditation system,which has gone through five stages: system beginning,system expansion,system standardization,system reform,and system improvement.Second,analyze the characteristics,motivations,the mechanism of system change of ABET accreditation system.The conclusion of this study is that the emergence of the ABET accreditation system is the product of historical development to a certain stage.it is found that the characteristics of its system change are: mainly the bottom-up induced system change,the gradual system change and the drastic system change coexistence.The power structure of the actors of system change is not balanced,and the system change shows obvious path dependence.The motivations of the system change are,on the one hand,the deep structure of the American political system,economic system,and cultural values;on the other hand,driven by the actors behind the system,such as professional societies/institutes,universities,industries,and governments,the public.The change mechanism of the ABET accreditation system is the interaction change mechanism between the system,the environment,and the actors pursuit of quality.Specifically,the system,the environment,and actors jointly promote system change under the regulation coordination mechanism,the market competition mechanism,the demand-supply mechanism and the idea-benefits integration mechanism.The characteristics,motivations and mechanism of the system change of the ABET accreditation system in America have some inspirations for improving the engineering education professional accreditation system in China.At the macro level,we must examine ourselves and clarify the development stage of our professional accreditation system;we must improve the mechanism and cultivate an accreditation quality culture.At the micro level,we must provide internal and external guarantees for continuous quality improvement;we must strengthen the network construction of volunteers and experts of accreditation;we must implant "diversified" thinking and implement "diversified" actions.