2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Accredited civil engineering programs use a variety of methods to meet the EAC-ABET General Criteria and the Civil Engineering Program Criteria (CEPC). Since the authors conducted a program study in 2018, three external changes have affected civil engineering programs [1]. This includes an updated version of the ASCE Body of Knowledge (BOK3), changes to the NCEES Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) Civil Engineering exam, and changes to the CEPC that will become effective during the 2024-2025 ABET accreditation cycle. Data for this study were gathered during the 2023-2024 academic year. This is an optimum time to review civil engineering curriculum changes that have occurred since the first phase of this longitudinal study in 2018 and provide a benchmark prior to the upcoming CEPC changes.

Civil engineering curriculums at 87 EAC-ABET accredited civil engineering programs were evaluated. This constitutes a 32.2% sample of the 270 EAC-ABET accredited civil engineering programs in the United States [2]. The study included both research and teaching focused public and private programs from all 50 states. To ensure the sample was evaluated uniformly, only programs with semester credit hours were analyzed. A database of course requirements was created and indexed to categories in the CEPC. Included in the database were over 50 different course subjects from 7 categories: mathematics and science; engineering mechanics; engineering science; technical skills; civil engineering courses; engineering electives; and general education.

Changes to civil engineering curriculums were investigated by comparing 2024 data to benchmark civil engineering program studies conducted in 2002 and 2018. Since 2018, the average number of credit hours required for a civil engineering degree decreased by 0.8 credit hours to 127.8 and the number of elective engineering credit hours decreased by 0.1 credit hours to 18.9. The study concluded that civil engineering programs continue to move toward a cafeteria approach by allowing students to craft a specialized curriculum, leaving out many traditional core classes such as reinforced concrete design, steel design, foundations, hydrology, and water and wastewater design. In addition, the following classes were only required in fewer than 60% of the programs: surveying, engineering economics, construction/project management, and hydraulics. The 2024-2025 CEPC includes new material science, numerical methods, engineering economics, risk and resilience, and diversity, equity, and inclusion curriculum requirements. The study results indicate that fewer than 23% of civil engineering programs currently require classes on any of these topics except engineering economics. In conclusion, there is no uniform curriculum in civil engineering, a pattern consistently seen in the past six years.