Yeah, the non-degreed attorney route requires multiple years of documented study - not work - under an attorney or a judge, with written examinations and reports that must be submitted twice a year. After the first year you have to take the "baby bar" along with folks attending unaccredited law school programs. Then you have three more years of study, exams, and documentation to prove that you actually did this.
Law Office Study program candidates comprise something like 1 percent of bar examinees.
I don't know of an experience-only route for surveyors that requires anything near as rigorous. I'd gladly support it, though. Instead we have the "yeah I worked for a guy for a few years and I also worked on boundary stuff" model.
I don’t believe the question is trade versus professional, but rather in which era of the profession did we earn our credentials.
This is what everyone seems to forget when discussing the evolution of licensure requirements.
No one is dismissing, or devaluing - or revoking - licenses.
No one is saying we should just hand out licenses to graduates. Experience and mentorship are just as critical as education.
Right now, higher education in the USA is a mixed bag at best - that goes for pretty much all professions - but of course it's going to be even worse without the support of the very people who stand to benefit from it. That's not a failure of higher education itself and doesn't invalidate it.
I only have 5 years experience, so I don’t really feel like I can chime in overall, but I’ll share my experience.
But I did a 3-4 year apprenticeship with local 12, and just started yesterday on a bachelors degree in survey engineering tech from U of Maine.
I don’t have a mentor here yet, and am thinking of moving out of state in the next few years. That state requires a bachelors to sit for the PS, so I figured I’d get started now.
Anyway, I don’t think there’s any one standard route to professionalism. OP, your experience sounds excellent, and you’ve made some smart decisions with proven success.
I think the proof is in the pudding, and I assume few would say “but he doesn’t have a degree”.
Myself, I want the insurance of having a bachelors degree for future stability and opportunity, and after enrolling in the program, I feel great about what it will offer me in terms of learning, mentorship, and opportunity.
Others I know of “chain out”, have great careers and never look back. I just can’t trust that it’ll hold up over time, and I’m looking for “more”
The issue is in government. State politicians want to ensure that all licensed professionals have the skills required to protect public health and safety. They don't know anything about our trade and practice, but they do know that engineers are required to have degrees. And that land surveyors are licensed by the same board.
"California (along with 3 other states, I think) provides a non-degree
route to the bar exam, similar to an apprenticeship. If it’s good enough
for lawyers, it’s good enough for surveyors, IMO."
I may be mistaken, but I think California is the only one with a non-degree route. The other 3 just allow for not having a law degree, but still require a bachelor's degree in something. And as rover states, there is a very formal training format for the individual following this method that is essentially a one on one degree with four years of 18 hours per week each six months. Hours wise that is the same as a four year degree. With one on one interaction with supervising attorney/judge, that is much more than someone in college will get.
What surveying companies are providing that level of training to their personnel? Notice that the supervising attorney (not some crew chief or draft person) must personally supervise at least 5 hours of this study. I know some folks who are doing a very good job of training surveying technicians, but it would not be close to the requirements set forth in the linked program.
Any state that requires a professional degree should provide a degree at a state institution that meets the requirement. Sadly that is clearly lacking for surveying.
That is not necessarily true. In NJ, the push for the degree requirement started with the full backing of the NJSPLS. The premise was that a degree would elevate revenue/pay to that of lawyers, engineers and other licensed professionals. In my opinion, that backfired and led to a shortage of licensed surveyors.
According to the microeconomics class I took in college, a shortage of licensed surveyors should result in higher fees (and pay) for those "widgets". Are the surveyors in NJ deliberately violating the laws of supply and demand?
Your class was exactly right.
From roughly 2013 to mid to late 2023, demand has far outweighed supply, even during the pandemic. With rising interest rates and increased material costs, demand has slowed. With six field crews and a full inhouse support staff, our que has had back logs that typically stretched out for at least a month, sometimes two.
The only surveyors benefiting from the supply/demand situation are those licensees amongst us being in a responsible charge position and having years of diversified experience. There are plenty of licensees out there who lack a desire to enter the office to fill leadership positions. Some people are not cut out for that and enjoy the role of running a field crew and not being confined to a four walled office. These people are not on the same pay scale of those assuming full responsibility.
I filed my application shortly before the four year degree requirement kicked in. I was licensed at the age of 28, which was almost unheard of back then. After the degree requirement kicked in, for some years I was tracking the number of surveyors licenses issued and, generally, there were less than a handful issued.
All of the people licensed pre early 1990's and became licensed qualified based on 10 years of progressive experience. They were baby boomers or born early in the next generation. We are either at, or rapidly approaching, retirement age. I could personally retire in 3 years from now, this situation could become a crisis as the number of new licensees will not keep pace with the number of licensees retiring. If what way is this protecting the public when access is restricted by the supply/demand economic issue?
Another thing to keep in mind is that most of those currently pursuing a degree are working full time, a lot of them having family responsibilities too. They are pursuing their degrees on a part time basis with the express route taking 7 years or more, on top of how long they have already been surveying. Many employers do not have a tuition reimbursement program, leading to more hardship.
The way that I see the whole situation is that this is not beneficial to the public in any way. Do I profit from it? I don't know for certain because I am compensated very well and have not felt the need to shop myself around to find out but, I also have 40 years of well rounded experience that is factored into my compensation and new degreed licensees will not have the benefit of having that under their belt.
Please read my follow up post and let me know what you think of it.
Chris,
Part of what you are saying seems to imply the degree requirement is contributing to the shortage of licensess. If that's the case the experience only States should be in better shape than degree States. They aren't. I took a deep look at this when I worked for our Board and the shortage is fairly consistent. Bottom line is, degree and shortage are two different issues.
I believe the degree requirement needs to be coupled with policies that recognize alternative education. Our Board accepts military transcripts (AARTS, JST, AFCC, etc.) and our local program has a process for transcripting experience. You can get your degree without ever stepping foot on campus. We also allow comity licensure with eight years practice and no education. There are numerous pathways. They are narrow but very doable. As Ron White says, "I've seen me do it".
My opinion is simple. We stopped making new surveyors with the one-man crew model. Until recently most markets offered crap pay (degree or not). The pay issue is improving. We are the only ones who can help with mentoring. If you want a surveyor you have to build (and pay) one.
IMO, it’s the crap pay/benefits at all levels that is the problem. That was bad enough, and then the entry level was cut off completely c.2008, and has never recovered.
I agree with some aspects of what you are saying but not others. When it comes to the one man crew model, I've been clear on that in the past in that safety is a paramount issue, and as you have said, it is of no value in "building" a surveyor without proper mentoring.
I am unaware of any experience only states, but that just means that I have not investigated the subject, military experience, I believe, in most states, is transcriptive, but I've never heard of experience being transcriptive, but again, that is something that I have not looked into.
If you think about the pay improving amongst our field people, I don't believe that is because of any particular state requirement, I believe that it is because of the current economic conditions where corporations like McDonalds are offering $18/hour to flip burgers and Amazon is paying in the area of $20/hour for pickers and packers, neither of them skilled positions. As an industry/profession, we need to meet or exceed that pay scale, not because of any professional aspect, simply to fill needed positions and offer competitive wages.
When it comes to crew size, minimizing the number of crew members lead to maximizing profit and that's not helping the situation. I take a different approach to that, with 6 crews, four are three man and two are two man. I have 2 Chiefs with the Title "Sr. Chief", both of them extremely seasoned and we rotate crew members through them for mentoring and educational purposes.
The bottom line is that the degree requirement needs to go, and as you have pointed out, alternate methods being offered nationally. There also needs to be a national standardization in the whole approach. I can sit for the exam in FLA based on the year that I was licensed and without a degree, the same is true in PA but PA requires you to know their drainage design methods that differ from all of their surrounding states. Let's leave drainage design to the Engineers, that's not our function.
The education model going forward will help, there isn't the same path with mentoring there was. One man crews can't mentor anyone. It's a different world.
2008 was the perfect economic storm and is yet another reason that our profession lost a lot of people to unemployment and many companies did not survive the storm. I was a victim of that storm and lost my job but was fortunate to have had the foresight to have kept an updated client contact list. Keeping that list was my saving grace as it provided me with enough work to start my own small shop and pull talent that I had worked with in the past off of unemployment. That worked for four years, the business grew to the point that, four years later, I was burned out, things were rolling again and I sold my business for a profit and kept my equipment.
That era did not create crappy benefits and the one man crew. Mostly, cautious business decisions did that as those who survived the storm were strapped for cash and RTK and robots enabled the companies looking to maximize profits to go to one man crews. In my mind, those were, and continue to be, flawed business decisions with the approach being instant gratification from profit over the better good of the profession.
In the 2008 era, this whole "livable wage" nonsense did not exist, McDonalds was not paying anywhere near $18/hour to flip burgers. Flash forward to today, a kid that just graduated HS and walks in my door wants me to pay him $25/hour with absolutely no experience.
I am forced to pay a new hire $20/hour minimum, after 90 days they get health insurance, 75% paid, holidays paid, accrued personal/sick and vacation time and the ability to participate in our $401K program with matching funds. That's what it takes to attract and retain people and I wouldn't at all call the benefits crappy.
