ABET, the American-based Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, recently announced that it has officially accredited the DTU Electrical and Electronic Engineering program.
Accreditation team inspecting practice facilities for electrical engineering majors
DTU is the second Vietnamese university to have programs meet the ABET accreditation criteria, after the University of Technology of the National University Ho Chi Minh City (in 2014), and it is one of the four Vietnamese educational institutions to obtain this accreditation if also counting Cao Thang Technical College (in 2018, the second institution if including both colleges and universities) and the International University of the National University Ho Chi Minh City (in 2019). So far, DTU is the school-level educational institution with most (three) programs enjoying ABET quality accreditation at the highest level of six years.
Standing DTU Vice Provost Dr Vo Thanh Hai gave an interview on the value schools, students, and society get out of ABET accreditation.
* Can you tell us about how universities currently realize training program quality accreditation, and in particular ABET accreditation for training programs in Engineering, Technology, Informatics, and Applied Sciences?
Standing DTU Vice Provost Dr Vo Thanh Hai
- Nowadays, quality accreditation of educational institutions and of training programs is an urgent and basic requirement for universities to implement autonomy following the revised Law on Higher Education. In addition, once a university is accredited at the level of the educational institution or of the training program, this also has the meaning of a public guarantee of training quality towards society. This helps students, their parents, and especially businesses to check the quality of the training programs provided by that university.
Training program quality accreditation at a school can be realized through domestic accreditation or through an international organization recognized by the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET), including the American ABET, an accreditation board for training programs in engineering, technology, informatics, and applied sciences. Basically, training program quality accreditation by any accreditation organization at all has the meaning of a public guarantee of output quality and standards on a national, domestic level or else further on a regional or global level.
Obviously, when schools undergo training program quality accreditation by a prestigious international accreditation organization, the value of the recognition will have an impact of wider scope, transcending the national boundaries and, in particular, lead to recognition from multinational corporations and companies.
Training program quality accreditation by ABET is considered the world’s “gold standard” in engineering and technology training and is testimony for such international recognition.
In addition to ABET, which accredits programs in Engineering, Technology, Informatics, and Applied Sciences, there are many other prestigious international accreditation organizations enjoying the wide recognition of the MoET and of the international labor market, such as:
- AACSB, ACBSP, and FIBAA, which accredit schools and training programs in economics, accounting, and management;
- ACPHA, which accredits schools and programs in management and management of tourism, hotels, and restaurants;
- WFME, which accredits accreditation organizations for programs in the health sciences;
- KAAB of the Canberra Accord, which accredits programs in architecture; and so on.
When a university undergoes accreditation by one of these organizations, this contributes to the improvement of training in the region and in the world. It reduces the gap in training between domestic universities and prestigious universities around the world.
* What can you tell us about the importance of ABET accreditation?
- Our country is deeply and widely integrated internationally in a huge lot of fields. Among these, its integration in the international economy is proceeding in a very lively way. An increasing number of businesses and economic corporation invest in commercial activities on Vietnamese soil. The need for high-quality human resources is going up and human resource quality is one of the important factors impacting the effectiveness of investments by these businesses. This is why the fact of universities undergoing prestigious international accreditation by widely recognized organizations like ABET will be hugely advantageous for integration with international education and the global labor market. This will provide students with many benefits after they graduate and prepare to enter the high-quality labor market.
* What benefits does ABET accreditation provide to students?
- The US ABET accreditation council is an accreditation organization of global prestige, considered first-class by businesses and universities. This is why, for any university at all, a training program that is accredited to meet the quality standards of the ABET organization will be very beneficial for the students. Students can study under conditions of guaranteed high quality, from output standards, infrastructure, lecturers, program management capacity, up-to-date textbooks, and proactive teaching methods, which helps students develop their capabilities and meet the ever increasing recruitment standards at businesses. This is why students will reap a lot of benefit when job-hunting and when integrating into the international job market.
* How did the fact that DTU was accredited and judged to meet ABET’s international accreditation standards for these training programs affirm DTU’s training quality?
- For the university, the training programs that were accredited for quality by ABET, US, clearly show that the university’s training quality has been gradually integrated with the world’s training standards.
Training quality in the university’s majors that received ABET accreditation - Network Engineering, Management Information Systems, and Electrical & Electronic Engineering - enjoys regional and worldwide recognition, which brings prestige to people studying at DTU.
Graduating from a training programs with ABET accreditation is also an important basis on which businesses and economic corporations search for candidates when they look to recruit fresh graduates.
DTU applied for and obtained ABET quality accreditation for training programs in Informatics (Network Engineering and Management Information Systems) and in Engineering (Electrical &Electronic Engineering).
In December 2020, ABET’s external inspection team will continue with the evaluation of the training quality of the university’s major in Software Engineering.
The fact that the school has been undergoing accreditation in a variety of majors in engineering, technology, informatics, and applied sciences, proves that DTU’s training quality in these fields has become prestigious in society and enjoys regional and global recognition.
(Media Center)