Resumen de Comparison of civil engineering curricula in the arab world
Sami W. Tabsh, Akmal Abdelfatah, Mohammad Alhamaydeh, Sherif Yehia
The Arab World countries are facing major challenges in Civil Engineering professional registration standardization due to thesignificant differences in the undergraduate curricula in these countries. This paper compared undergraduate civil engineeringcurricula in Arab countries. A review of the course requirements at 31 universities located in 19 countries was presented. Onlyuniversities that follow the American credit hour system are included in the study. Specifically, the study addressed degreerequirements related to science, mathematics, general education, free electives, English language, engineering fundamentals,computer proficiency, required civil engineering courses, and technical electives. The study showed that the considered curriculatook either 4 or 5 years to complete. The number of credit hours was found to be as little as 131 and as large as 204 credits. Thehumanities, social science and foreign language requirements at traditional universities were usually very low, whereas the samerequirements were almost a full-year of study at Western-style universities located in the same region. Some universities followed atrack system, which provided for specialization in one of the various civil engineering disciplines. As a result, the curricula of suchuniversities were loaded with a large number of obligatory technical courses. The Western style universities, on the other hand,were heavy on fundamentals, but gave the student more choices with regard to technical and free elective courses.
