Amir Jahanbakhsh - Research Institute of PetroleumIndustry
Maysam Pournik - Texas A&M University, Texas, USA
Ali Nakhaee
Ali Sadighi

While all societies around the World have developed some kind of educational system to help themselves grow and develop, there are major differences among the systems. Education in Engineering, which is a major component of development in a society, has wide array of components within it which makes it more diverse among societies. A study of differences in engineering education among different societies can help to promote deeper understanding among societies in addition to helping one develop a more efficient educational system by combining the different positive aspects of each system studied The following paper is a report comparing engineering education system in high ranked engineering schools in Iran and USA. The report is based on a pool of different views of some Iranian graduate students in engineering fields at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. We define an education system as: students, professors, technology and facilities (hardware) and rules and regulations (software). The study focuses on four different aspects of engineering education. The first part deals with the purpose of an educational system with emphasis placed on need for industry collaboration. Then the two major components of an educational system which are the faculty and students are discussed. The need for recruitment and retainment of faculty and students are covered in addition to studying the motivations leading students to join a specific field of study. Teaching philosophy and methodology which is another important issue with some major differences between the two systems is studied. The teaching philosophy deals with teaching focus, offered courses, and course materials. Lastly we discuss the differences between facilities, technologies, and services offered for both teaching and learning purposes. The experiences of having attended both educational systems has enabled us to find out the major differences among the system and more importantly, be able to state the methodology that has worked the best in our engineering education. In the conclusion, the presented information is used to provide some suggestions that may help planners in improving the Iranian engineering education system.