Study of the Effectiveness of the Implementation of Washington Accord in Malaysia's Engineering Undergraduate Programme Using SEM

Transformation of engineering undergraduate programs towards global practice of outcomes based accreditation (OBA) entails a huge challenge to universities as there is mounting pressure for infusion of desirable and yet measurable graduate competencies into its offered programs in order to fulfil professional bodies accreditation criteria. Hence, in view of providing a sense of direction to the local engineering education community, Washington Accord (WA) ensures that accredited programmes synonymously mean that its graduates are equipped with 12 professional abilities obtained through an innovative outcomes-based engineering programme. However, further complication unfolds as industries are continuously evolving to meet rapid global demand and practice; hence defining set of competencies that can accurately map attributes outlined by industry with the aim of addressing “skill-gap” will continue to be a challenging endeavour for higher education sector. This paper intends to investigate the effectiveness of the OBA criteria outlined by WA in terms of attainment of graduate attributes which would enable graduates to take on challenging careers in the industry. Hence, the study will focus on identifying the relationship between the five outcome-based accredited criteria and the attainment of twelve graduate attributes outlined by WA in view of producing a conceptual framework which are then tested using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM).