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Kansas has changed the requirements for licensure
holy-cow replied 1 year, 5 months ago 16 Members · 59 Replies
@aliquot The debate is not over. Doctors are disgruntled with falling fees. Engineers do not serve the regular market, and most are much too expensive to for the normal run of people. Lawyers are seeing some back lash from their fees and in my area there is more and more pro se cases because of it.
The debate is certainly not over for Surveyors. For the degree requirement ilk to get their way would mean the death of the profession, the very thing we keep being told will happen if we don’t require 4 year degrees. Add in the lack of qualified professors in Land Surveying, and you get a situation no reasonable professional wants to see.
@i-ben-havin you said it well. I would just like to add that not only does the degree requirement allow us to earn a comfortable living through supply control it increases the average value of the services we provide.
In my experience deed stakers who claim every boundary decision is a “legal question” that needs an attorney to address are much more likely to lack a four year degree. License us like technicians and the public will get the services of technicians. They will be far less well served by engineers and attorneys when situations call for a proffesional.
@dougie
Go figure?
Apartment vs house, Toyota vs Porsche?
“The average Land Surveyor, Entry salary in the United States is $60,310.as of September 26, 2022.”
“The average salary for a mathematician is $103,612 per year in the United States as of November 10, 2022.”
????
@dougie
Go figure?
Apartment vs house, Toyota vs Porsche?
“The average Land Surveyor, Entry salary in the United States is $60,310.as of September 26, 2022.”
“The average salary for a mathematician is $103,612 per year in the United States as of November 10, 2022.”
????
I don’t know where you got those numbers from, but every attempt I have seen to present a mean or median salary for land surveyors fails to accurately capture who we think of as “land surevors”. They always seem to manage to capture unlicensed people who work for land surveyors, construction companies and engineers.
Care should also be taken with the number for mathaticians. This number doesn’t represent the salary of those with math degrees, because very few of them actually become mathaticians..a much greater percentage of land surveyor graduated become land surevors, and their average salaries are certainly higher than $60,310 (excluding their time pre-licence).
If we are throwing out estimates of land surveyors’ salaries here is one that claims the average is over $180,000. I don’t belive this one either.
https://www1.salary.com/Land-Surveyor-salaries.html
It was simply meant to be a monetary example for comparative purposes. (Joey has 3 apples and Jimmy has 2, if apples are $0.50 each, who has the financial advantage?)
It??s the SOS. Everybody bitchs about degrees, licensing, experience bla, bla, bla. No one ever mentions ambition, self-motivation, understanding the business world, and the inner feeling of being considered a successful professional.
There was a rough patch a few years ago (10?) where a lot of programs were struggling, but all the ones I know about have growing enrollment now (don’t know about Ohio).
I don’t know about Ohio in general, but I do know that Cincinnati State was able to work with the state higher education board and develop a 4-year program at a 2 year college due to demand. As far as I am aware, they have very good enrollment and students who have jobs lined up for as soon as they graduate.
Tom Bushelman will probably be able to comment more on that program.
There was a very good reason why the NC General Assembly rejected a 4 year degree requirement, and it was the people of the state that have to pay the freight. Tennessee saw the same thing and new they had change quickly.
Data. Where is the data that supports that claim?
When Tennessee backed off from degree requirement – from a Tennessee surveyor serving with TAPS, it was relayed that the main reason for the change was more political than fact based numbers. It was relayed that several people who could TRY to get licensed by the prior experience route had just the right people’s ears to get pressure to change.
When was the 4-year degree requirement put before the NC General Assembly? I would like to look up the proposed language and potentially the general assembly discussion/vote on the matter. Usually when a bill passes/fails, it is less to do with the actual language or outcomes and more to do with maneuvering.
@flga-2-2
I hope everyone has a great day; I know I will!If the profession comes to rely on the 4 year colleges and universities to supply new surveyors, the profession will die. In the states that have 4 year degree requirements the results have not fully shaken down. Ohio is the future for that model, and it isn’t going to be pretty. If you think people are going to put up with the sort of fees what you are pushing will require, you are deluded. The Kansas Model is workable, but the 4 year degree requirement model is not.
Aside from your statement, where is the hard data that has been developed to support this statement?
Again, I’m not strongly on one side or the other of the discussion, but just throwing out such hyperbole is not the same as studying the results.
As a group, we (surveyors) have been discussing falling numbers and super high ages for the average surveyor since I was licensed decades ago. We were supposedly dying before the degree requirements started to be enacted. Were actual numbers looked at in the states that walked back their degree requirements or was that something that was politically expedient? Just this year, there was an attempt to do so in Kentucky, but the actual numbers do not support the claim that the degree requirement is the problem as we are right on par with the average licenses issued in years before the degree requirement.
I’ve crunched some numbers for Kentucky and we appear to be very near a steady state of about ?ñ20 licensees per year (some years higher some years lower). As to the 4-year degree matter, since enactment, Kentucky has moved from 30% pass rate to +70% pass rate on the PS exam. While the number of applicants has fallen, the pass rate made it such that the over all new licensee numbers are very much on par with pre-degree requirement times. We’ve got four universities I can quickly think of that offer a path to licensure (not including online options). While I’m not strongly on one side or the other of the argument, I have a hard time accepting an argument without data showing it is so.
“If you think people are going to put up with the sort of fees what you are pushing will require, you are deluded.”
The purpose of the degree requirement should not be the fee structure or the control of numbers in order to allow fee control. However,
What sort of fees are you envisioning would be so extreme that people are not going to put up with it just because a licensee has to have a 4-year degree? In a poll through Kentucky Association of Professional Surveyors (KAPS), the percentage of surveyors with degrees was already pretty high. So at the top end of the “food chain”, there wouldn’t be a huge change. An employer could certainly still retain lower paid employees if that fits better in their business model.
I believe the “degree or nothing” requirement instituted by many licensing boards when “approved” surveying programs are few and far between is a major contributor to the declining numbers of applications
I couldn’t agree more.
last year I was doing some research on the numbers of license applications for approved Surveyors versus Engineers was looking like for new Mexico.
I was absolutely gobstruck. Not quite 200 engineers, and less than 10 surveyors. This was supplied by NMBPEPLS.
that pretty much summed it up.
Goes in line with why survey still needs its own board not overseen by Engineering.
great discussion. I’m glad you’re having it too!
But how does that relate to years prior? Especially prior to a degree requirement (not sure when that came about in NM).
@jon-payne
it’s getting wider(the gap) and less surveyors every year.i only looked at the past 5 years because I was attending a national meeting and wanted to make the discussion topic a point of interest.
The arbitrary nature of the NM board is why I was shedding light on it at the time, and still.
In fact all three states of NM CO And Arizona have ridiculous wording and conditional language that attempts to forbid you from taking and being recognized for taking the FS without their permission or recognition.
It’s been discussed before and will continue to be a discussion.
it’s getting wider(the gap) and less surveyors every year.
Do you have this in terms of real numbers? And again especially in relation to the degree requirement time frame for surveying (i.e. did the degree requirement widen that gap more so than it was already widening?).
@jitterboogie I had a look at the engineer numbers back when I crunched some of the Kentucky surveyor numbers. I did not weed out for out of state licensees since those numbers were much higher than for surveying. Here is what I found:
1990-2021 +3 licenses growth trend per year
2000-2021 +3 licenses growth trend per year
2010-2021 flat lined, no growth
@jon-payne
scary isn’t it…. ????
@jon-payne
scary isn’t it…. ????
Not really. If we look at actual numbers, then we can try to see what is actually going on instead of imitating chicken little and saying the sky is falling.
If we know that historically there was a +3 growth trend for engineering and a basically flat trend for surveying, then we know there is a discrepancy and how large it is. So the key now is to see if there is some underlying reason for the difference. This could range from exposure (as Rover83 has already pointed out) to even something as simple as breaking down the engineer licenses to see if there is a difference in practice area as civil should be the most comparable to surveying numbers.
I think those engineering numbers would be more interesting if I were to break out the Kentucky and nearby counties from neighboring states (like I did with surveying) as those people are more likely to be the ones doing more work in the state while the others may just be license collectors.
@jon-payne
I grabbed it from the previous years meeting minutes etc.
From the website and the way back machine too.
I’ll try to revisit it and get it to you.
LESS FILLING
TASTES GREAT
LESS FILLING
TASTES GREAT
That commercial was developed for the survey profession first, then switched over to sell beer.
A lot of semi-famous people in this one. Including Big Ben Davidson from the Oakland Raiders (before they abandoned Oakland, came back to Oakland, then abandoned Oakland again).
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