ASHRAE Insights

Problems or Opportunities for ASHRAE?

By Ronald Howell, P.E, PhD, Fellow ASHRAE; Edward Clancy, P.E., PhD, Member ASHRAE; and David Meredith, Member ASHRAE

The United States engineering and engineering technology degree accrediting organization, ABET, is beginning an international accreditation program.

Should we as ASHRAE members be concerned about possible affects this activity will have on the HVAC&R industry in the USA? Will it provide us with information about international engineers and engineering technologists who potentially would be employed in our industry? Will these international engineers and technologists be employed in the US or overseas? Will it cause more outsourcing of technical design to take place?

These are some of the questions that are being raised by ASHRAE members as universities and education become more global.

For years, ABET has visited selected international institutions and granted compliance statements through various international agreements for some countries.

Several programs were visited in fall 2006 on a trial international accreditation process. ABET is rolling out the international accreditation program by visiting 38 programs at six international institutions this fall. This will be at no additional cost to the existing U.S. accredited programs nor to the technical societies of ABET.

ASHRAE is an international organization that is becoming more involved in the international arena. Its Annual and Winter meetings continually focus more on the global workforce and the future of technological education.

ASHRAE plays an important role in accrediting engineering programs by being one of the 27 technical societies that make up ABET. ASHRAE sets the criteria and outcomes that ABET uses to accredit HVAC engineering technology programs here in the U.nited States.

As ASHRAE’s representatives to ABET, we feel that ABET’s international accreditation program will be a great benefit to the HVAC&R industry. International accreditattion will provide consistent and uniform assessment of engineering and engineering technology degrees for not only U.S. schools but international schools as well. Outsourcing is going on now and will continue to grow in the future.

An ABET-accredited degree recipient should be required for the engineering and design work so as to set the minimum educational standards for this global industry.

According to the National Academy of Science (NAS) “the U.S. is the most productive and competitive nation in the world.” The U.S. leads the world in reducing trade barriers. This has fostered a more competitive economic environment in the U.S. that has sped up advances in technology, productivity and education.

National bodies like ABET have served our nation well, but in the global economy, we need global conformity of assessment systems in products, test laboratories, product certification and technical education. Globalization is not something to fear but rather it is something that can provide many advantages.