hadsed

Gobaltraveler, I thought you majored in Math and IT? I'm under the impression that ABET isn't as important in these areas as engineering is.

GLOBALTRAVELER

"Globaltraveler, I thought you majored in Math and IT? I'm under the impression that ABET isn't as important in these areas as engineering is."

I was engineering in grad school but ABET only certifies a handful of M.S. Engineering programs. Still you may be right, I don't hear recruiters asking for computer science (for software engineering) or computer engineering majors (for networks) to have a ABET degrees. For instance, I know that a local college here in Maryland called Capitol College that offers a CS, Comp E and Soft E degrees and none of them are ABET certified (their EE, EE Tech and CompE Tech degrees are) but there are Capitol College grads working all over the area.

bigtrees

The recruiters may not ask about ABET accreditation but the HR departments do check before extending employment offers. So you may be recruited and then not eligible to be hired for that particular position.

My employer is one of those that checks.

sakky

I doubt that. Let's face it: the uninformed, by definition, don't know the rankings. All they know are generic brand names, of which Harvard clearly possesses the most famous of all of higher education.

As a case in point, I know one girl who graduated from MIT then took as a job at Harley Davidson. She would on occasion wear MIT insignia'd clothing that would receive not a glimmer of recognition from the line workers, who are regular people most of whom never graduated from college at all. Because the company in headquartered in Milwaukee, she would constantly field questions about whether MIT stood for the "Milwaukee Institute of Technology", and her remonstrations that M actually stood for Massachusetts would be met with blank stares. Many regular people think that MIT is of the same caliber as low-level vocational colleges such as ITT Technical Institute or DeVry Institute.

Now, perhaps one could argue that the running joke is on those uninformed people that they would believe that Harvard is a better engineering school than it is because of its blindingly powerful brand name. But that's not the same as saying that Harvard engineering is itself the running joke.

As I said before, it's still better than the vast majority of other engineering programs out there.

sakky

I agree - I have never once heard of a software company caring about ABET accreditation. In fact, many of the best computer science programs, such as the BA CS program at Berkeley and the 'pure' CS program at MIT (as opposed to the hybrid EECS engineering degree) are not accredited. It hardly seems to have hurt them, indeed the pure MIT CS students actually earn higher starting salaries than do the EECS students, although in fairness, that may be due to the fact that some EECS students take relatively lower-paying hardware engineering positions.

Furthermore, software engineering is one of those fields where you don't even need a technical degree at all. One of the most successful software engineers that I know actually majored in English in high school, yet has had a stellar career as a developer and now a project manager, and even went to MIT for grad school. Heck, some of the best software engineers never even graduated from high school. Janus Friis, cofounder and technical architect of Skype, is a high school dropout.

saraleigh117

"If they've already gone through ABET-EAC accreditation of other programs"

They've only been ABET-TAC accredited because up until now the only programs that they offered were engineering technology programs. I realize that TAC and EAC are different, but will that make a difference??

toblin

"IT" and "Software" are two general terms for a field/industry that do not require a college degree to achieve the title of Engineer. All that is required is experience and expertise.

G.P.Burdell

Hmm. I thought Southern Poly had some EAC, but apparently not. Plenty of TAC, some CAC, and one ASAC.

I would be more comfortable with a school that had ABET-EAC accreditation in Mechanical Engineering and applying for Electrical Engineering (for example), but I wouldn't worry too much. If you're a CE, I would be more worried than if you are a ChE.

saraleigh117

Don't get me wrong, my plan is still to apply to Tech at the end of summer semester. I was just curious. As far as EAC goes, I don't think there are any programs. From my understanding the technology degrees are TAC, and if you go to spsu.edu/engineering, those six programs are yet to be accredited by ABET. I'm assuming they are aiming for the EAC.