Comparison of AUN-QA and ABET accreditation

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a political and economic organization made up of ten Southeast-Asian countries. Within that organization, the ASEAN University Network (AUN) works towards educational capacity building by conducting programs and activities for institutions of higher education/learning, with a goal of working to achieve global standards. One primary mechanism to achieve this goal is AUN's Quality Assurance activity, referred to as AUN-QA. AUN-QA has implemented a regional style accreditation system spanning the ten ASEAN countries, with significant influence from European organizations. A number of countries within the ASEAN now have institutions with academic programs accredited by AUN-QA.^1,2 This paper provides a partial review of the similarities and differences of accreditation as implemented by ASEAN University Network (AUN-QA) and ABET Inc. The philosophical differences of ABET and AUN-QA accreditation, including constituency involvement, will be identified as well as the similarities and differences between ABET's assessment and evaluation requirements and the AUN-QA model for program accreditation. The authors have not seen a similar analysis published in the engineering education literature. Discussion of some similarities and differences of AUN-QA and ABET accreditation is presented from both a philosophical viewpoint and a pragmatic viewpoint. ABET's approach is significantly different from that of AUN-QA and the comparison of the two can lead to complementation about the purpose of accreditation, perceived difficulties of attaining it and the perceived value of attaining different accreditations. It becomes evident that the two approaches are not duplicative and one or the other, or both, may be useful to a program within the ASEAN.