Association of Technology, Management, and Applied Engineering Accreditation: A Viable Option for 2-Year Programs and their Pursuit of Excellence

Accreditation by the Association of Technology, Management, and Applied Engineering is a viable option for 2-year technology programs seeking to inspire employer confidence, facilitate the transfer of course and program credit, provide access to federal funds, and to in general assure quality. A descriptive study of all 2-year technology programs accredited by ATMAE was undertaken to ascertain the appropriateness of the pursuit of accreditation by this body. Rather than examining just the titles of the programs accredited by ATMAE, a system developed to support the accurate tracking, assessment, and reporting of fields of study and program completion activity was used—Classification of Instruction Program codes. According to the Association and the institutions housing those programs, all the 2-year technology programs accredited by ATMAE were aligned with one of ten two-digit series CIP codes with the majority reporting that their programs were aligned with the Engineering Technologies and EngineeringRelated Fields CIP codes. All these Engineering Technologies and Engineering-Related Fields programs were also aligned with one of eleven different 4-digit series CIP codes with over a quarter of those programs being aligned with the Industrial Production Technologies/Technicians CIP codes and almost as many being aligned with the Drafting/Design Engineering Technologies/Technician CIP codes. While all the 2-year technology programs accredited by ATMAE are not coded as Engineering Technologies and Engineering-Related Fields programs, a compelling argument can still be made by other 2-year technology programs to pursue ATMAE accreditation as they seek to up the ante in their pursuit of excellence.