European bid to standardise recognition of engineering degrees

Launch of Eurace L-R Project Treasurer Phillippe Wauters (FEANI); Project Chairman Alan Pugh (ECUK); Ruard Wallis de Vries (Commission); Project Coordinator Guiliano Augusti (La Sapienza University)

The European Commission has embarked on a project to standardise the recognition of engineer ing degrees across Europe .   Ruard Wallis De Vries, European Commission, speaking on 3 September at the launch of EUR-ACE, a project on accreditation of engineer ing degree programmes, said the Commission looked forward to the delivery of a Europe wide system which defined the equivalence of nationally accredited engineer ing programmes.

Commenting on the project, Andrew Ramsay (Executive Director ECUK ) said, "Engineering education underpins professional competence and is thus a major interest for a regulatory authority, particularly as legislation governing professional mobility in the EU tends to be defined in educational terms. ECUK is providing the Project Chairman, Prof Alan Pugh, and Steering Committee member, Prof Ian Freeston.   This reflects ECUK's longstanding expertise in this area and our desire to have in Europe an equivalence system which operates as successfully as the Washington Accord, which ECUK has developed with non-European regulatory authorities".

The European Commission have awarded €300,000 of SOCRATES-TEMPUS funds for the project.   The EURACE consortium has 14 members, including Russia , all of whom are engineer ing education organisations and professional engineer ing accreditation agencies. The European professional engineer s association, FEANI is the main contractor.

The objectives of EUR-ACE are:

• to provide an appropriate European "label" for accredited educational programmes and their graduates,
• to improve the quality of educational programmes in engineering,
• to facilitate trans-national recognition by programme validation and certification,
• to facilitate recognition by competent authorities, eg under EU directives,
• to facilitate mutual recognition agreements.