Engineer's degree

An engineer's degree is an advanced academic degree in engineering which is conferred in Europe, some countries of Latin America, North Africa and a few institutions in the United States. The degree may require a thesis but always requires a non-abstract project. Through the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB), Engineers Canada accredits Canadian undergraduate engineering programs that meet the standards of the profession. Graduates of those programs are deemed by the profession to have the required academic qualifications to pursue further training towards becoming a licensed professional engineer in Canada. In Canada, a CEAB-accredited engineer degree is the minimum academic requirement for registration as a P.Eng (professional engineer) anywhere in Canada and the standard against which all other engineering academic qualifications are measured. A graduate of a non-CEAB-accredited program must demonstrate that his or her education is at least equivalent to that of a graduate of a CEAB-accredited program. In the United States, the engineer's degree requires a year of study beyond a master's degree or two years from a bachelor's degree and often includes a requirement for a research thesis. At the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School the thesis is required to be "more extensive and complete in problem scope and solution than a master's thesis", although "not necessarily meeting the test of original research and contribution to fundamental knowledge that is applied to PhD dissertations." At UCLA, the engineer degree is explicitly set at the level of the preliminary PhD examination, i.e. not including the contribution to fundamental knowledge. The engineer's degree was originally a first degree at the same level as a bachelor's degree. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute was empowered by its 1824 charter to award Civil Engineer and Topographical Engineer degrees alongside the Bachelor in Science, and awarded the first Civil Engineer degrees in 1835.