Hi,
not easy to help you without more information, but my experience tells me that it's not possible to do a "universal check" of car engines.
There are so many different coded chips, also within the same modell series (i.e. after facelifting).
Next thing is to get the status codes. They are often crypted, in more often case not public, a lot of work to read CAN/MOST-Codes (as I said, if its possible at all).
But I can imagine that your prof (who thought about projects students can realize) alluds to the OBDII-protocol?
Here's a great list of cars which supports ODBII, of course it's not a full list, but on the other hand it's really hard to find such an "index" where also compatible OBDII-USB-Readers are listened (ELM323,ELM327,...). The Link is german, but you just need a look into car models.
http://www.blafusel.de/obd/obd2_scanned.php[
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http://burakalakusen.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/to-get-obd2-data-via-elm327-c/[
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With Best Regards