Benchmarking of Polymer Engineering Education in Iran and the World

In previous years, various studies have been carried out on engineering education and training. Based on the results and world transforms, developed strategies have been offered in academic or industrial world, which start from preparation for information technology era to focusing on sustainable developments and global engineering in current age. On the other side, education from research universities that is founded in Germany is fading in most areas of world and it is oriented mostly to train students who are capable of solving real-world problems while they learn to be flexible to adopt problems in the industries. This is how the issue Problem Based Learning has been considered as a fruitful strategy of education. Meanwhile, changes in different areas have led to introducing new fields of study (inter-disciplinary fields) which sometimes need re-designing the curriculum. Here, the situation of polymer engineering education in Iran and seven other universities worldwide has been studied according to the issues noted above. The studied foreign universities are Technical University of Denmark (Denmark), ETH of Zurich (Switzerland), Loughborough University (England), University of Massachusetts Lowell (USA), Insa de Lyon (France), Shang hay Jiao tang (China) and Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan). The main point in selecting these universities is their educational level in polymer engineering. In these universities, the method and type of educational programs in polymer engineering such as the level (undergraduate, graduate) and the offering department (material, chemistry,…) has been studied. Besides, the curriculum, methods of offering the courses, level of cooperation with industry, level of engineering globalization … has been also evaluated and compared with those of Iranian universities which offer polymer engineering. These all lead to reconsideration and re-evaluation of current educational trend in polymer engineering in Iran and offering some fruitful and new approaches in fortifying this trend.