COMPARISON OF THE ABET AND AQU/ANECA QUALITY ASSURANCE SYSTEMS: A CASE STUDY FROM IQS SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING (UNIVERSITY RAMON LLULL)

Quality assurance systems have become a regular part of the higher education system, mostly upon the implementation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). In this regard, a good process definition within these systems will allow obtaining good results both from a title and institution perspective. Among the different existing systems, these processes rely on similar principles, although they might not be exactly equivalent.

For instance, ABET (USA accreditation) considers eight quality criteria:
(1) Students,
(2) Program educational objectives,
(3) Student outcomes,
(4) Continuous improvement,
(5) Curriculum,
(6) Faculty,
(7) Facilities and
(8) Institutional support. In parallel, AQU/ANECA (Catalan and Spanish accreditation, respectively) consider six quality standards:
(1) Program quality,
(2) Public information,
(3) Quality assurance system,
(4) Faculty,
(5) Learning support and
(6) Program results.

This work aims to compare both quality assurance systems (i.e. ABET and AQU/ANECA), after their implementation in IQS School of Engineering (University Ramon Llull); in particular, we shall focus on the presently accredited titles of Chemical Engineering (BSc and MSc) and Industrial Engineering (BSc and MSc).