Quality Assurance in engineering education: An all-round perspective

This chapter discusses Quality Assurance in engineering education from an overall perspective. It advocates that engineering curricula should be revised to nurture all-round engineering designers, so that they can meet new social, industrial and educational needs. The chapter reviews the limitations of current engineering education practices, and argues that they are biased either toward the acquisition of engineering and technological knowledge and skills at the expense of critical thinking skills or toward the nurturing of creative thinking, while ignoring the ability to conduct in-depth investigations. This chapter uses Hong Kong as a case study to further identify new social, industrial and educational needs. To meet these needs, the chapter proposes Eight Cs as evaluative criteria for all-around engineering curricula. They are: competent, comprehensive, critical, creative, curious, continuous, collaborative, and compulsory.