2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The departments of mechanical engineering at UNIVERSITY1 (USA) and UNIVERSITY2 (COUNTRY2) developed two independent education-abroad programs where the final year of engineering coursework in each program was completed abroad in a foreign language. At the completion of each program, the student would receive two degrees at the same level in mechanical engineering, one from each university. The dual MSME degree program was approved in 2006, and the dual BSME degree program graduated its first cohort in May 2009. After transferring more than 13,000 semester credit hours, the dual BSME degree program was suspended in June 2018 due to a disagreement on how to compute credit transfers. This paper analyses the design of these programs, looking what makes them attractive to students, and reviews the challenges of course credit transfers. It then proposes how to design a full-immersion education abroad program with a self-sustainable support infrastructure.