Status of Environmental Engineering Education in Various Countries in Comparison with the Situation in Iran

Improving engineering education is an essential task for development, production, cultural and economic progress, and social services in the future for the most of developing countries. Today, universities can provide the necessary skills and technical progress by proper education and research programs. These programs have a dynamic state in developed countries. In these countries, besides proper education of theoretical and special courses, academic programs and laboratory works are as well considered to further participation of students in industry such that most units passed by students are in the form of laboratory or real time projects. In this paper, efficient environmental engineering educational programs and systems in different countries has been comprehensively investigated and compared with the situation in Iran. Then, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of different educational programs have been analyzed and strategies to make improvement in educational system in Iran in the field of civil and environmental engineering are proposed.