Perception and Reality

:good:

I agree with you Ralph. I am on old fashioned kind of surveyor. Some college, no degree and a phd from the School of Hard Knocks. When I obtained my first PLS education was not a requirement but college credits could apply towards the experience required.

I have come to believe that an education is worth more than the cost, and there is plenty of surveying knowledge to come out of university, not to mention the positive aspects of the basics, such as English, logic, and other classes. I do not have the knowledge to mentor on all the aspects of surveying. I can teach principles and practice and a ton of boundary law, but not GIS or GPS (except for use).

My middle son expressed an interest in taking over the company someday. he is currently on his second enlistment in the Marines and is taking advantage of his spare time to attend college. I suggested that he look into a GIS degree if he wanted to pursue land surveying as that is our future. Boundary decisions will be left to the PLS and that will be our niche, those of us hard headed surveyors like me... I enjoy this aspect and I don't want to learn scanning, not quite yet anyway.

Good Post, Ralph, keep on truckin'.

Don

Thanks Don,
Among the many avenues I pursued was completing the ICS course while in the Army. My job was surveying and I couldn't get enough. Maybe I need a life.:-)

BTW The first sentence should read "preconceived notion"

Ralph

Maybe if more surveyors were educated thru a college program, it would eliminate the $199 survey.

Well said, Ralph. As I mentioned the other day, no one who fully understands the issue would expect a fresh-out-of-college person to be able to sign a plat or to manage a project. Or even to run a crew for that matter. The goal of a college education is not to have learned the everday practicalities of the job, but rather to have learned the principles that underly those practicalities. The unchanging foundations of the art and science of surveying.

Stephen

Hey Ralph,

“You can have this going on for generations and what you'll have is a legacy of incompetence or the guy who's been doing that way for 50 years and nobody can tell him any different.”

Refusal to learn and accept new technology, field procedures and so forth is directly related to success and failure. I was a “book” surveyor working as an engineering technician for the developers of Palm Coast. Since I was so “book smart” I assumed field work was a piece of cake, and requested to be in the field. Needless to say I wasn’t welcomed with open arms by the crew I was assigned to. After a few days they finally accepted me, albeit with skepticism. In hindsight I learned more from those guys than can ever be taught in a class or learned from a book. This worked both ways, I taught them some “book learnt” stuff and they taught me what a surveyor really was.

Have a great week.

Bill

> Maybe if more surveyors were educated thru a college program, it would eliminate the $199 survey.

Being a full supporter of a 4 yr degree requirement for PLS licensure in any state, I believe that is a profound understatement. That degree may even teach them why they need to be eliminated.

One of our creeds is to protect the public. If you paid somebody only $200 for the protection we have vowed to provide, would you feel protected? Oh yea, lest we forget the "L" word - liability.

Maybe a solution is to take another look at the programs. Less gizmo teaching and more law & business. Yes, all that cadastral & high tech stuff is cool - but the money is in the liability. After all, surveying as many of us grew up with is not going to be around very much longer. So specialize it into the law areas.

$0.04 (I just doubled my rates - try it)

Since I was so “book smart” I assumed field work was a piece of cake, and requested to be in the field.

I'm not sure about the term "book smart". What it means and how it applies. You can get through school cramming for exams and not learn a dam thing. Like wise, you can take and pass the license exam and not really know a dam thing. I know, because I'm certified to teach people techniques on how to pass the test.
When I went back to school I was licensed with over 25 years field experience and so were many others. Being that NJ is a 4 year state some were there to fulfill their requirements for licensure, so most guys had more than enough field experience to become licensed and we all had the scars to prove it.

Just an aside, there were a couple of guys with SIT certificates from other States, one of them from Georgia. They wanted the NJ license and were therefore forced to get Degrees.

Ralph

Ralph

BTDT. Went to college for surveying and math courses while working for a surveying company. Never completed a degree though if they were stacked a little different I have enough for an A.S. degree.

Been doing this on and off for nearly 45 years and am still learning. Some I teach myself and some from others. Quite often from those younger than I. Often I am also able to pass on some knowledge to which they haven't yet been exposed.

To me this is the basic way it is supposed to work. Give and take on both sides.;-)

Ralph

> BTDT. Went to college for surveying and math courses while working for a surveying company. Never completed a degree though if they were stacked a little different I have enough for an A.S. degree.
>
> Been doing this on and off for nearly 45 years and am still learning. Some I teach myself and some from others. Quite often from those younger than I. Often I am also able to pass on some knowledge to which they haven't yet been exposed.
>
> To me this is the basic way it is supposed to work. Give and take on both sides.;-)

:good:

The day I stop learning I'll probably wake up with my elbows against wood.

BTW, I don't have the Degree, I'm 2 courses short. I have about 60 Surveying Specific credits, and a couple of Surveying Grad courses. All accumulated via different means. (online, correspondence, classroom etc.)

Ralph

I don't think you can teach surveying in a classroom. You can teach all of the other professions in a room. Doctors; lawyers; architects; engineers; will all spend %99 of their time in a room when they get out into the real world. A surveyor will be spending %60 of his time (as a professional) in the field and going through an internship, will most likely be spending all of it in the field. You can not teach searching for evidence; clearing line; setting a stake or monument; in a classroom.

Having said that, I do think you can teach surveying theory, law and math in a classroom. higher education is always a good thing and I think that we should constantly be learning new things.

It's all about the attitude of the individual. If you love what you do and are passionate about it, things will come easy for you. If you are not happy doing what you do and resist, it will be a difficult and laborious career.

Attitude is the perception and reality is in the dirt, they're not making any more of it....;-)

Douglas

But can you find it in a Zimmer?, er room.

Ralph

In Georgia we have twice gotten a Bachelor's degree requirment passed through the Legislature. Twice the Governor vetoed it (GRRRRRR). He is now out of office so we're going to try it again. I am in full support of a degree being reuired for licensure. That being said I ALSO am in full support of requiring REAL experience for licensure also.

Andy

I consider my education to be the framework on which to store my professional experience. I would never discount a college degree nor would I discount several decades of surveying experience. Different lessons learned different ways. Every surveyor should be a lifelong learner through all available means. Book learnin' and dirt learning' both hold merit.

Good post Ralph.

In my experience, at least half of the students were guys & gals (mostly guys) who had been surveying for several years and had decided to get their degree as part of the next step in their advancement. Sometimes the degree was a requirement (as when I lived in MI and attended Ferris), and sometimes the students with a few years' experience behind them just felt that a degree was an important element in making the step to being in the professional end of the business.

In more than a few instances, students were people who had already worked most of a career in some other field and were looking to surveying as a new career.

A little less than half were "kids", more or less right out of high school (or maybe a couple years out, having worked some menial cash register/fast food/etc. jobs before finally deciding to find an adult career).

Some students hit the survey job market with the idea that they are more valuable and more knowledgeable than they actually are. But those are typically among those who went straight from HS to college and graduated with getting very little experience along the way. But they are probably in the minority.

On the other side of the perception coin are those who have worked in surveying but have never pursued any formal education to enhance their experience. They seem to have the impression that a degree in surveying is designed to crank out a well rounded and fully prepared professional who knows all there is to know about all aspects of surveying. And many of them seem to think it is their duty to prove that the school failed whenever they work with a student or recent graduate.

A student with little field experience is going to make most of the same mistakes that any inexperienced field hand will make. Given a student with a year behind him (incl. 9 mo school + 3 mo actual experience), the student may have more exposure to running a TS or other instrumentation, but is likely to be no more or less competent than the non-student when it comes to the menial tasks of chopping line, pounding hubs, looking for irons, or shooting topo.

The advantage to a degree in surveying is that it gives one exposure to a broader scope of surveying than one would typically get working for one company. It also exposes one to the theories and math behind good field procedure and good data handling (analysis and adjustments). A 4 year degree cannot provide one with the knowledge and experience to be expert at any particular aspect of surveying by the time one graduates. Nor are the degrees designed or intended to do that.

For the student who has several years of surveying experience, a lot of things will fall into place as he progresses through the classes ("Oh, that's why we do that", along with the occasional "Oh shxt! I can't believe we used to do ______"). But largely, he will get a better sense of what he doesn't know and has yet to learn.

In one of those other threads, Jim Luke made a post that made it sound as if recent college grads are all whiz kids who will take your company in a whole new, exciting and successful high tech direction if you would only let them. And then Don B responded with a post that seemed to come from the opposite end of the perception spectrum.

The fact is, most graduates with a 4 yr degree in surveying know that they have a lot to learn before they retire, but also know that they have more knowledge of some important aspects of surveying that most others they work with won't have. They don't want to flaunt their knowledge to one up anyone, but do want to have the opportunity to use it for the benefit of their company, and in turn be recognized and rewarded for the value they bring to the organization.

Some will be strutting peacocks with over inflated egos and an outsized sense of worth, but they are the exception rather than the rule. And most of them only need to be humbled by a good mentor once or twice before they gain more realistic perspective.

Oh, and I'll take the opportunity to address this "school of hard knocks" thing that some who went the experience only route use sometimes. When I coonsider the effort to work and save for school, then having little to no income while attending school, the periods of being separated from family while I went to some out of the way town to attend school, and compare that to the relatively steady incomes of others as the attended this supposed "school of hard knocks", watching as their pay rates rose faster than mine (me: "Why did he get a $1/hr raise while I'm getting the same as I did last year?", boss: "He was here working 9 months straight and you were only here a couple weeks here and there"), as I experienced the relationship difficulties that come with periods of separation, as I chose to pass up good job opportunities in order to finish my education, I wonder what "hard knocks" those guys are talking about.

Having worked for several years while not going to school, having worked in order to save for school, and having worked while going to school, I can personally attest to the fact that the knocks were a lot harder during the times I was pursuing my formal education than they were before or since.

In one of those other threads, Jim Luke made a post that made it sound as if recent college grads are all whiz kids who will take your company in a whole new, exciting and successful high tech direction if you would only let them. And then Don B responded with a post that seemed to come from the opposite end of the perception spectrum.

We'll meet in the middle. That's where the truth lies, as always.
Thoughtful post, Evan.

Don

As usual Evan, you've provided some excellent insight and perspective on the issue. What triggered my post in the first place was what appeared like a genuine contempt for enlightenment and the generalizations made by some posters. Like everything else it's just not black and white.

I don't discredit the mentoring/apprenticeship route, I was blessed to have spent 3 years working under Thomas McGrath. We were doing a very complicated ROW job which entailed taking by eminent domain and all sorts of other out of the ordinary scenarios. Anybody who knows Thomas can only imagine what that was like. I give him credit because he always had the courage to stand by his convictions even if it cost him his job. And I've worked under countless other very good Surveyors whose brains I picked constantly. In most cases I had to stay late or come in early or on a Saturday, which I gladly did. But I've also experienced the other side of the spectrum. That's why I say the apprenticeship route is no guarantee.
BTW Thomas taught at NJIT in those days (about 20 years ago), I worked under him and took classes at night.

Cheers,
Ralph

> I consider my education to be the framework on which to store my professional experience. I would never discount a college degree nor would I discount several decades of surveying experience. Different lessons learned different ways. Every surveyor should be a lifelong learner through all available means. Book learnin' and dirt learning' both hold merit.

:good:

Ralph

a masters requirement would enhance the profession