Activity Feed › Discussion Forums › Strictly Surveying › 4 year degree requirement
Just my opinion, but a lower pass rate in 2 year or experienced based applicants is a weak excuse for requiring a 4 year degree. The applicants who fail are not hurting the profession as they’re not practicing as a licensed surveyor. It sure doesn’t require a license to perform and produce quality field work under proper supervision. The ones who pass and obtain their license should produce as good of quality work as an individual with a bachelor degree. That’s why the exams exist. It sounds to me like the exams did their job regardless of the pass/fail rate.
Amazingly Greenfeld was tracking his graduates and how they did on the exam. I don’t know if Dr Potts has continued this. Not all the NJIT students have taken 7 or 8 years. A former employee of mine was able to finish in just over 2 years, coming into the program with a degree already. He just needed to complete the courses in surveying.
The census income data is the median of the average of all family/household members 15 years and older. So a family of 4 with two kids over 15 in school full time would need to earn $236,000 to have an average family income of $118,000. It’s not the average income in the county. You need to compare the statistics apples to apples. Morris County $130,808 Cumberland County $62,310.
PLS NJ & NY, PP NJSome good discussion here. I was just at the NYSAPLS Conference and this was a big topic in the Education focused portions as NYS just changed their requirements for licensure. They now do not have an experience only path. Not as stringent as NJ, as you can still have a path to an LS with an AAS in surveying plus experience or AAS in a related discipline and additional surveying credits plus experience.
I am a graduate of the NJIT program. Someone mentioned it is part-time. That is not correct as you can go full-time from freshman year and finish in 4 years with a BSET. Like all colleges, certain classes are only offered once a year or every few semesters. Colleges can’t offer every class every semester due to various reasons. The path is not necessarily a traditional college path but it provides opportunities for work/internships. The upper division classes being at night, allowed me to work while going to school. Getting a degree is very beneficial not just for preparation in surveying but for many other reasons. I found my non-surveying classes to be some of the best preparation for my career. Science, writing, business/economics, programming…
Most of today’s graduates have multiple offers upon graduation. While that is a testament to the surveying program, a Certified Surveying Technician (CST) with some experience would probably have multiple offers too. The CST program is a valuable way for technicians to advance in the industry.
Experience and education should both be required for licensure in my opinion. This better ensures the minimum qualifications are met for professional licensure.
I would rather Surveying as a Profession be compared with Engineering, Law, Medical…. than as a trade. Not requiring some form of education brings surveying closer to a trade.
- This reply was modified 3 months, 2 weeks ago by z138.
Just my opinion, but a lower pass rate in 2 year or experienced based
applicants is a weak excuse for requiring a 4 year degree. The
applicants who fail are not hurting the profession as they’re not
practicing as a licensed surveyor. It sure doesn’t require a license to
perform and produce quality field work under proper supervision. The
ones who pass and obtain their license should produce as good of quality
work as an individual with a bachelor degree. That’s why the exams
exist. It sounds to me like the exams did their job regardless of the
pass/fail rate.I totally agree.
I’m sure Chris is just as good a surveyor as me, and it has nothing to due with having a degree or not. My opinion is that Surveying has changed in the last 45 years. Long gone are the entry level positions where you could hire a High School Graduate and they could be productive working on a 3 or 4 man crew with a transit and tape. With Robotic Total Stations and GPS one and two man crews are the norm. Very few firms can take on new employees that won’t be productive for 6 months to a year at salaries comparable to other jobs employing High School Grads. Like it or not that leaves Colleges to educate future surveyors.
I wonder if other Professions had this discussion as they changed from experience only to a degree requirement ?
PLS NJ & NY, PP NJI totally agree with you that surveying has changed dramatically over the years. The problem that you mention as being one and two man crews is just that, a problem. My business model for future growth is much different to the norm in todays time. I run six crews, one two man crew, four three man crews and one four man crew. Junior crew member rotate between my two senior most PCs for training purposes that help them grow. They learn more than just to be proficient in the collection of data that way and if one or two of them call out, we always have a back up for them.
The advancement of technology from the 80’s to the present day is both a blessing and a curse at the same time. These days, crews consist of either one or two people for the purpose of optimizing profit, but at the same time, that diminishes professional growth. I am fortunate enough to work for a larger company that is diversified in the services that we offer on the Engineering, Surveying, Environmental and due diligence end. That diversification provides the funding for my model to work. Most others don’t have that luxury. It also helps that my CEO and COO are strong proponents of growth from within and support my model. Will any of these people become licensed? That’s anybody’s guess as to whether they will pursue the education. I like to think that that I am training my replacement and currently have two techs that have been working on their degree, part time, for a couple years. I’ve been working with them both closely for around four years, I send them out in the field often, to the courthouse for research and try to round them out. With the experiences and mentoring that they are getting, and will continue to get, they will be ready to sit for the exam before they finish their degree programs.
Aside from the above, surveyors are not notorious for being great business people. You can take all of the business managements courses in the world to understand the financial end but practicing them and maintaining a profit seem to be a weak point for many. I’m willing to bet that if my proposal were circulated to ten surveyors, on a decent job, six out of ten of them will cut their margins to beat my price. The business end is equally important to the actual surveying end and that is something that is never stressed enough and few are exposed to it.
What I said is that most who are enrolled in the NJIT program are part time students as they have full time jobs. I did not say that the program was limited to part time students. I pose this question to you though, If an experienced based surveyor can pass the same exam as the degreed surveyor with far less experience, aside from having a piece of paper from the educational institution and, potentially, multiple thousands spent out of pocket, what if the difference? How are the required non surveying courses beneficial to somebody who is not going to use them? I am two courses short of an AA, my focus was on political science with programming courses added because I was interested in it back them. The poly sci education served me well through most of the 90’s because of my involvement in marketing and securing public contracts but I don’t use the programming at all because everything has changed since the end of the DOS era.
Combined household income is that of the married couple and does not include children, adult or not. Needless to say, it will vary from town to town in any county.
As a non degreed PLS, nobody has ever asked me what my education was except for my employers, and, even then, being licensed and having solid experience in the business related aspects, they did not care about a lack of a degree. I have many friends and acquaintances that have a BA or better, one of them having an MBA, and he works for a union concrete cutting business. Several others opted to get into trades, completely unrelated to their education. My point being, and as I have said, the BA or above statistic is very misleading unless you break it down to how many people with the degrees are actually working in the field that they majored in.
“Combined household income is that of the married couple and does not
include children, adult or not. Needless to say, it will vary from town
to town in any county.”Click the information button beside of the statistic and you can become informed as to what it means within the context of the data being supplied. Dan’s statement seems accurate and yours seems to be incorrect based on the definitions as provided by the data source (U.S. Census Bureau).
I’m not familiar with the NJIT program in surveying, so I do not know the composition of the student body. But in four years of teaching the surveying curriculum at a regional university, I only had 1 non-traditional student and he was just barely in that category, but was also taking classes full-time. It would be very interesting to know what the proportion of non-traditional versus traditional students and part-time versus full-time students taking surveying degrees is from both a national and regional perspective instead of just making assumptions based on local instances and perception.
It is great that you operate 3 and 4 person crews and rotate them in order to allow more mentoring. But the fact that you are so proud of that model indicates you are very well aware that it is not the norm now days. In general, the level of mentoring from even the 1980s and 1990s is not the same as current times. This is likely to offend a few people, but as crew size was decreasing in the 80s and 90s in my home area, (certainly not all, but enough that I noticed it when I went to the various exams) people were taking the exams for the second and third time. Based on their conversations, it was very clear they were studying to the exam instead of having the foundational knowledge needed to readily pass the exams. I would have to look this up, but it seems I recall that second time test taker rates for passing are even lower than the pass rate for first time takers. And in my home state, the pass rate was in the 32% range prior to the four year degree requirement. That is why passing the exam is not the sole proof of preparation for licensure. Individual states have decided that in addition to passing the exam there are certain levels of experience and/or education that they require for licensure. Bluntly, that is an individual state’s decision to make based on the input of the stake holders from that state and out of state gripes about it should carry no weight in the conversation.
I wish that I could see all that you wrote while replying one by one on your points. The fact of the matter is that there is no studying to the test and no conversations that are going to help you as, at least when I took the exam, there was a different packet for every surveyor taking the exam to eliminate cheating. There was also varying levels of difficulty with four different levels.
I don’t know how it works in the digital world these days but will be finding out soon, testing only on the State specific portion in another state, and that will be remotely administered through an electronic testing facility, semi local to my area.
Thanks for your reply. I misread your comment regarding njit being part-time. And in truth, I had an AAS and it took me 3 additional years to complete my BSET there while working full-time. The classes outside of surveying like computer science/programming didn’t directly benefit me from purely a surveying perspective but did help regarding other areas like photogrammetry, AEC software and GIS.
There are two different questions to look at, not mutually exclusive.
1. How does one best prepare for a career in surveying? There are so many different ways to approach this. What advice would I give someone just starting out in surveying. Generally, I would advise them to pursue some form of education and begin getting experience, either part-time or full-time as soon as possible. The education part might be my own inherent bias.
2. How does a state best ensure that the an individual is minimally qualified to practice land surveying? This is different state by state. State Board’s with input from professionals and professional orgs help develop these requirements. If education is part of the requirement, accreditation boards help ensure the programs meet technical education requirements. Having both an experience and education requirement best ensures that minimum qualifications are met.
An additional edit – I applaud everyone here who got there LS by either route and it can be argued, each path is very hard. There is no difference we are all LS, PLS… I’d also argue that being on this board shows passion for surveying as well as dedication! Keep up the good work.
- This reply was modified 3 months, 2 weeks ago by z138.
Chris
I wish that I could see all that you wrote while replying one by one on your points.
I do this by copying and pasting the post to a text editor. Then click reply and then click show formatting button. Click the blockquote button. Cut and paste the point that you are responding to into the block next to the quote. Now add your response below the quote block. Wendell may know a better way, but this is the best way I’ve come up with.
PLS NJ & NY, PP NJI wish that I could see all that you wrote while replying one by one on your points.
I do this by copying and pasting the post to a text editor. Then click reply and then click show formatting button. Click the blockquote button. Cut and paste the point that you are responding to into the block next to the quote. Now add your response below the quote block. Wendell may know a better way, but this is the best way I’ve come up with.
Well now. I just learned something new they didn’t teach me in college. 😃
“The fact of the matter is that there is no studying to the test and no conversations that are going to help you…”
I did not state that the conversations were helping individuals. I pointing out there were individuals standing around discussing (having conversations) their past failed attempts (sometimes more than one) and how, since their last attempt, they had studied just enough in a specific subject area because it covered X percent of the exam and their previous attempt on the exam failed by X/3 percent and they thought that was the area they needed to gain points in. They were hoping this action might get them just into a passing score. Since the percentages for various sections were published in the front of the study prep guides, people were in fact worrying about the larger percentage sections more than the lower percentage sections and then finding out they actually needed to concentrate at least some energy into understanding the areas that offered fewer percent of the exam content. The approach of trying to gain a passing score based on the percentages of various content areas is studying to the exam
and occurs on any general knowledge, multiple choice exam which has
pre-determined percentages for each content area for various subjects. I am not faulting
anyone for using this approach. To some extent, it seems sensible. But, it only works if the test taker is lucky and in the smaller percentage subject area that they did not study for or already know well, they just happen to know or can guess correctly the very few questions posed on the exam in that content area. In my opinion, this method comes across as playing the odds instead of knowing the subject.Studying to the exam is not the same as failing and then honing areas where you found you needed to know more. In one case people have the specific purpose of minimizing the knowledge they have to gain and in the other case people are finding that they need to know more about an area and studying to gain that knowledge.
I see where you are going with studying to the exam and I see that as a dangerous approach for both the candidate and the profession. My approach to being prepared for the exam was completely different.
As I have stated time and time again, I do not have any degree in land surveying but I can assure you that I put in the same or more study time as anybody with a four year degree. My daily routine consisted of getting up at 4 AM, grabbing a cup of coffee and studying until 7 AM, seven days a week, when possible. This worked out well as when I went to work, I could bounce things off of my two licensed mentors.
Taking the exam based only on ten years of experience is not going to prepare anybody for the exam, especially in a Colonial state when questions arise on issues in PLSS states. My goal was to be well rounded in as many areas as I could so that, to a high extent, I would be prepared to have the best answer for any question that popped up.
Some are making the argument that being degreed leads to a higher passing rate but I take an opposing view on that. If you want to pass the exam, no matter who you are, you have to spend the time in the books. The structured educational environment is not for everybody, just like the office environment isn’t.
Some are making the argument that being degreed leads to a higher passing rate but I take an opposing view on that.
You certainly have a right to take an opposing view, but the statistics published by NCEES a few years ago indicate that nationally there is around a 20% higher pass rate for first time bachelor’s degree (EAC/ETAC/ANSAC-ABET programs) holders in the FS exam and about a 13% higher pass rate on the PS for bachelor’s degree holders in relation to all other test takers.
All other test takers lumps other bachelor degree holders, associates degree holders, and experience based applicants together. Unfortunately there was no direct comparison between bachelor’s (engineering and tech accredited degrees) versus bachelor’s (all others) versus associate’s versus experience based applicants’ pass rates. I wonder if NCEES has that data, because it would be interesting to see.
The degree showing a higher pass rate seems pretty well established. The question then becomes is the higher pass rate worth the implementation of the requirement – which should be a state’s decision to make within their own borders.
I do not disagree with you that individual drive is an important part of success, but arguing that obtaining a degree does not lead to a higher passing rate runs contrary to the evidence.
Anecdotally, in my home state we have gone from a low 30% pass rate to a low 70% pass rate since the four year degree requirement was enacted – with similar applicant numbers. A 40% increase in pass rate seems pretty high to be just chance that all of the current applicants are super motivated to self study instead of that the degree they earned made a vast difference in being prepared for the exam.
It varies individually whether self-study or a degree in surveying best prepares one for the exam. Having a degree requirement, experience and passing NCEES/State exams better ensures minimum qualifications are met than leaving out one of them. Most professions have added degree requirements for licensing, not because they help the students to pass tests, but to add another factor of ensuring minimum qualifications through a formal education.
Speaking just for me, when I started surveying I read every survey book, literally word for word. The other guys would go in for coffee and there I was in the truck studying. Took me four years to go from rodman to RLS, and I passed first time. Later I realized a degree in accounting would be a good backup plan if surveying folded, so I surveyed during the day and went to university in the evening.
I realize the discussion is about a surveying or related degree, but my business would not be where it is without all of the finance, law, economics, and marketing I learned at night. A degree does make a difference.
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