Information Systems programs accredited by ABET's Computing Accreditation Commission (CAC) will be reviewed under revised program criteria starting in fall 2027. CSAB, the lead ABET member society for computing programs, reported on November 8, 2026, that ABET's Computing Area Delegation gave the changes final approval at its November 6 meeting. The revisions tighten what counts toward the IS environment requirement in the curriculum and restate the faculty degree requirement. For IS department chairs and accreditation coordinators planning reviews in the 2027-28 cycle and later, the curriculum change is the one that bears directly on existing course lists. Credentials Wave is an independent publication that reports on ABET's criteria & standards; it does not speak for ABET or CSAB.

What changes in the curriculum requirement

IS program criteria already require an IS environment component of at least 15 semester credit hours, or the equivalent, beyond the core IS coursework. The current 2026-27 wording describes those hours as a unified set of topics that shows students how information systems operate within a particular field of activity.

The approved revision, under Criterion 5 (Curriculum), keeps the 15-hour floor and adds two conditions:

  • The topics must be distinct from computing topics, so the hours cannot be filled with further computing courses.
  • The topics must form a single domain in which information systems support that domain's goals.

CSAB's summary lists business, health care, government, not-for-profit organizations and scientific disciplines as examples of such domains. The practical effect is that a program counting a mix of unrelated electives, or additional technical courses, toward the IS environment would need to reorganize those hours around one non-computing field.

What changes in the faculty requirement

Under Criterion 6 (Faculty), the current IS program criteria require some full-time faculty, including those responsible for developing the IS curriculum, to hold a terminal degree in information systems. CSAB's summary of the approved version states that, in addition to the General Criteria faculty requirements, some full-time faculty members must hold a terminal degree with a program of study in information systems. CSAB lists this as one of the two approved changes. Programs comparing the old and new wording line by line can find the full approved text in CSAB's 2026-2027 Approved Criteria Changes document, pages 2 and 3.

How the change moved through ABET's criteria & standards process

The changes followed ABET's two-stage process for criteria revisions:

  1. October 24, 2025. The Computing Area Delegation released proposed IS program criteria, along with proposed criteria for artificial intelligence, machine learning and similarly named programs, for public comment. ABET's computing criteria document for 2026-27 printed the IS proposal in its section on proposed changes, with comments accepted until June 15, 2026.
  2. July 2026. At ABET's summer commission meetings, the CAC approved the IS changes for implementation.
  3. November 6, 2026. The Computing Area Delegation gave final approval, according to CSAB's November 8 post.

CSAB had described the November vote in July as the expected final step. As of November 12, ABET's own proposed changes page still lists the IS criteria among the items released for comment and has not posted a separate notice of the final vote. CSAB reported the same November 6 approval for the new AI and machine learning program criteria, which are also set for fall 2027 implementation.

What programs can do now

For programs with a review scheduled for fall 2027 or later, the first step is to compare the courses counted toward the IS environment against the single-domain, non-computing test. A program whose IS environment already sits inside one field, such as a business or health care concentration, may need only to document that alignment. A program that draws the 15 hours from a range of departments has more work to do, and any curriculum change would need to be in place, and documented, before the self-study report is due on July 1 of the review year.

The second step is a faculty review against the restated degree requirement. ABET publishes a criteria document for each review cycle, and its computing criteria for 2027-28 are where the approved wording would appear in ABET's own publications. CSAB's accreditation news page and ABET's criteria pages are the places to follow further criteria & standards updates for computing programs.

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