The study discusses the roles and tasks of the liberal-arts education to come up with the era of the Accreditation Board for Engineering Education Korea (ABEEK) It has always been aroused the problem of engineering education when industrial leaders get together and talk on the low-competency power of the industry in Korea. To solve this problem some representatives of the industry, higher education institutions, and other technical education institutions established ABEEK to bring The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) from the United States in 1998.
After 2-years preparation period, the assessment started from the year of 2000. As a result of the assessment, 11 programs of two universities were approved in 2001, 23 programs of 3 institutions in 2002, 30 programs of 4 universities in 2003, and 10 institutions of higher educations are tested by ABEEK in 2004. By assessing such a high speed, many problems have been appeared in the field of higher education institutions. One of them is the conflict between ABEEK and liberal-arts education. ABEEK tries control the curriculum of the liberal-arts courses with name change to engineering attainments, but professors who have been taught liberal-art courses want to keep its independent management.
The paper outlines three ways to implement the liberal-arts courses within the ABEEK system. The first one is that engineering attainment courses should be established under the name of ‘general elective courses’. It is most favorable because each has its independence but subject-matter courses should be reduced under 80 credit hours. The second one is that liberal-arts courses are utilized by ABEEK as engineering attainment courses. If there is a cooperative relationships are formed between liberal-arts and engineering departments, it will work without much problem like Han Bat National University. The last one is that all liberal-arts courses forced to change to engineering attainments. The last one is the most problematic and many liberal-arts professors tend to worry. |