Toward Competency-Based Professional Accreditation in Computing

Program accreditation in medical or religious professions has existed since the 1800s while accreditation of business and engineering programs started in the early twentieth century. With this long history, these disciplines have focused on ensuring the competence of their graduates, as modern society demands appropriate expertise from doctors and engineers before letting them practice their profession. In computing, however, professional accreditation started in the last decades of the twentieth century only after computer science, informatics, and information systems programs became widespread. At the same time, although competency-based learning has existed for centuries, its growth in computing is relatively new, resulting from recent curricular reports such as Computing Curricula 2020, which have defined competency comprising knowledge, skills, and dispositions. In addition, demands are being placed on university programs to ensure their graduates are ready to enter and sustain employment in the computing profession. This work explores the role of accreditation in forming and developing professional competency in non-computing disciplines worldwide, building on this understanding to see how computing accreditation bodies could play a similar role in computing. This work explores the role of accreditation in forming and developing professional competency in non-computing disciplines worldwide, building on this understanding to see how computing accreditation bodies could play a similar role in computing. Its recommendations are to incorporate competencies in all computing programs and future curricular guidelines; create competency-based models for computing programs; involve industry in identifying workplace competencies, and ensure accreditation bodies include competencies and the assessment in their standards.