Abstract
This study analyzed and compared the curriculum of 12 arbitrarily selected Colleges of Engineering for their professional general education. Since the Korean Accreditation of Engineering Education has existed for the last 10 years a growing need for improvements was identified and thus this study shall provide a basis for future curriculum developments of the professional general education. For this purpose the educational objectives, the syllabus, the self-assessment reports and catalogues of the 12 Colleges were reviewed and the relevance between the educational objectives of each engineering school and the learning outcomes in the professional general education were analyzed. Furthermore, by analyzing the area of subject that each College of Engineering's mechanical engineering program's professional general education focuses on, the current trend can be examined. Finally, the credit requirements and their allocation and the distribution of the professional general education over the semesters were analyzed. The results of this study were as followed; these capabilities such as creativity, professionalism, globalization, ethics, humanism, design ability, management ability, responsibility and communication are suggested as educational objectives of 12 engineering schools. But courses related to globalization, ethics & responsibility and communication skills were much more often taught. Not only do the allocated credits for the courses of professional general education differ from university to university but the distribution over the semesters vary as well.