Based on personal experience, I don't see a four year civil engineering degree equates to anything in the surveying world.
Based on personal experience I don't see a four year university degree equating to anything in any realm of the professional world beyond what is performed by paraprofessionals in the first few years of their career prior to obtaining professional status.
Paradoxically this practical uselessness is that is the exact reason I value a university degree over technical training.
“If then a practical end must be assigned to a University course, I say it is that of training good members of society... It is the education which gives a man a clear, conscious view of their own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought to detect what is sophistical and to discard what is irrelevant.”
? John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University
Might be right, most university engineering programs expect trig to be completed in high school.
I have a 4 year civil engineering degree. I majored in geodesy. Hardly worthless.
> Might be right, most university engineering programs expect trig to be completed in high school.
😀 😀
Thanks Leon, you made my day!!
When I was in college they made it quite clear to us. "We are not here to teach you how to do anything. We are here to teach you how to think. Once you know how to think, you can teach yourself how to do anything you need to do. If you want to know how to do a particular task, go to a tech school. This is a university, not a tech school."
Larry P
> Based on personal experience, I don't see a four year civil engineering degree equates to anything in the surveying world.
Well, obviously you are overlooking something (excepting of course the basic trig). Aren't all civil engineers uniquely qualified to sit on licensing boards that write, interpret, and enforce the regulations, laws, and rules of professional land surveying? Keep looking, there must be something in their curriculum that makes them more of a expert than educated, licensed, and experienced land surveyors. If we could only identify the suspect courses, we should incorporate them into the surveying programs and then we would no longer have any valid excuses for not becoming a self-governed true profession.
" We are here to teach you how to think."
And that's why pre med stedents have to take calculus. I doubt a physician would ever have the opportunity to use calculus, but it sure does make you think. B-)
Probably depends a lot on the individual curriculum. I have a 4 year degree in Civil Engineering Technology that included about 5 courses that directly ties to surveying (along with actual field labs) and a few ancillary courses that helped get through some of the more advanced survey elements. I'm sure there are programs that show the students a picture of a total station and go through some outdated methods of survey that would follow your opinion.
> Based on personal experience, I don't see a four year civil engineering degree equates to anything in the surveying world.
Unless you take your 4 year degree from Oregon State and during that time you go through their survey courses which will allow the graduate enough surveying credits to apply to take their FS/LSIT exam. 🙂
I might be mistaken but I believe that in Colorado the surveyors got organized and took over their own board and separated from being combined with the engineers.
Utah has a combined engineers/surveyors board (some board members have dual licenses). I'm sure it's not easy to do because legislation is required, but surveyors could take control of their state boards. The question then would be whether they would properly regulate their members. Would it get better or worse?
I'm not really involved but I don't see the Utah board really doing that much for engineers or surveyors. It's really not that much more than just another trade license and operated about the same as having a drivers license (state agency that collects fees every two years). I'm a libertarian and would be OK with just doing away with licensing all together.
And I have been learning ever since!
> And that's why pre med stedents have to take calculus. I doubt a physician would ever have the opportunity to use calculus, but it sure does make you think. B-)
Perhaps they are suppose to understand how the MRI works. Therefore, they should also be forced to take some physics, electronics and computer science specializing in high-level digital image processing.
I'm guessing you mean that tongue-in-cheek.
However, I have oft wondered why on Earth they made this double-major, computer science and mathematics with a minor in physics, had to take a full semester (my college was on semesters, not quarters) of psychology and sociology each. (Nevermind having to also take finance and marketing - another semester each.)
Perhaps they felt I would better understand how a computing machine "felt" with its human counterpart and creator. Or perhaps I needed to understand societal impacts of any programs I wrote. It's not like I was dealing with a HAL 9000 who so stubbornly refused to open the pod-bay doors due to psychotic paranoia. However, I did use a super-computer for some time but it was far from anything like HAL.
Perhaps I was suppose reflect and what Pythagoras was thinking when trying to figure out the right triangle. Maybe I needed to understand why Newton was such a troubled child and a loner in society when he was inventing calculus and solving the mysteries of gravity and motions of planets.
Some of that I do mean tongue-in-cheek but some of it I am serious about. I would LOVE to have my tuition money back on some of those useless course I suffered through.
In general, I do however agree with Mr. P about teaching us to think. Except for physics and mathematics there is nothing I learned back then that I use today.
E.
Ditto
I studied electrical engineering, not civil, but I would expect there would be a fair amount of information covered by civil engineering (even if there isn't a course with a title that relates to the useful information).
probability and statistics
engineering economics
computer-aided drafting
computer programming
advanced use of spreadsheets
a sense of the space occupied by various buildings and infrastructure
soils
flood awareness
Can I get an Amen?
The real shame (and disgrace for CE programs, in my opinion) is that many (most?) CE programs do not require their students to take a semester of surveying, and many do not even offer any course relating to surveying.
The purpose of a course in surveying for CE's should NOT be to enable them to survey, but to at least make sure they have an understanding of what surveying is and how it relates to civil engineering. I am sure we can all relate stories about the lack of understanding that civil engineers have about surveying. Almost all CE's have to deal with surveying, mostly using data from surveys (topo, hydro, as-builts) but also requesting data to be collected. Like engineers who say you need to locate manholes to the nearest 0.01 ft, or others not having an understanding about grid systems and the effect of elevation on distances, etc. I could go on and on...
My father was an EE (PhD). He, like all engineering students at his school, had to take a basic surveying course. Only CE's had to take an extra course(s?) and to go to summer survey camp. He would NEVER have claimed to be a surveyor, but he understood about measurements. My first survey book was from his survey class circa 1946, Breed and Hosmer, Vol 1, eight edition (still have it). He was a professor of electrical engineering for 20+ years, and when I told him I was going to take a job as a survey tech (federal government), he tried to talk me out of it, saying that is CE buddies at the university said there was no future in it (without a degree). Well, I then changed my major to CE, got a degree, and have been surveying ever since (32+ years now). No regrets at all doing it that way (CE degree). I spent my senior year at Purdue, taking all the survey and geodesy courses they had.
Probably many will disagree, but I say bring back the basic survey course for CE students.
Be careful what you wish for...you may get it.
Some Florida surveyors clamored for years to have their own Board.
We finally got one.
Attended a continuing education class where the teacher asked if anyone present had a dual license, where the stamp had a combined PE/PLS seal. He advised they purchase two separate seals. Reason? He strongly advised they only use the PLS seal when it was absolutely required. Everything else he advised using the PE seal. He then went on to describe how a surveyor spent $5000 on attorney fees trying to save his license, due to the fact that a north arrow was inadvertently left off a map. No one had noticed the lack of the north arrow, much less filed a complaint with the Board because of the forgotten north arrow. What did happen was that someone did not like where the surveyor a placed a monument, and the Board asked for a copy of the map. Only when someone from the Board noticed the north arrow missing did this rise to the level of "negligence in the practice of surveying". So, the Board charged him with a violation. Never had anything to do with the client's complaint. However, when the client gets the letter from the Board stating that they have found violations with the surveyor the client believes his suspicions were right, and that the corner was wrong. The public is so baffled by this process that all they know is the survey was wrong, and they go around feeling justified.
The continuing education teacher let the dual license attendees know they would never have such problems due to inconsequential inadvertent omissions from the PE Board. After all, no one had been harmed in any way, and the client was totally unaffected.
In the case cited above, supposedly the Board demanded the surveyor to come before the Board with his lawyer. When the surveyor appeared -- without his attorney -- he told the Board he was broke and they would just have to do whatever they had to do.
After Florida surveyors got their Board, and Minimum Technical Standards became law, investigators would go around the state looking for maps to catch violators. I was in attendance at one Board meeting when a Board member made the following statement: "You could put any map before this Board for review, and it is extremely likely we would find a violation."
Another interesting thread amongst us surveyor types.
I'm going with John Hamilton on most parts. I attended one of his seminars in AZ a few yrs back. Good guy, so listen to him.
Then again I'm one of those weirdo people with a BS in Forestry, who happened to like surveying better. Trees & fungus are cool, but surveying tends to pay a bit more.
40 yrs later I wish I was a forester so I don't have to pound hubs in the ground as a bulldozer is pushing my behind faster than I want to move.
No discredit to any PE in any of their disciplines. One of my good friends is a "crash test" engineer for Ford. Good guy with some almost funny stories. My son is a PE for Chrysler and drives trucks on test tracks all over the country. (I drive a Tundra and a Jeep)
Do either of them know where their respective property lines are? Doubtful to say the least. Doesn't make them dumb, just a bit ignorant of their whereabouts. Besides, I like working for PE's who realize they need a surveyor to reach an end goal.
$0.02
> I might be mistaken but I believe that in Colorado the surveyors got organized and took over their own board and separated from being combined with the engineers.
You are mistaken.
Actually Colorado added Architects to the common board. (Architects, Engineers, and Surveyors)