"I’m just guessing when I say, the average PLS is not as good of a mentor
as the average college survey instructor. Note I that I said average.
If we were able to assess the mentorship ability of all PLSs who have
signed an experience verification form for an employee, I’m doubtful
we’d find that the average PLS compared well against professors or the
folks posting on this thread."
That may be so. In addition, the average PLS has to dedicated to mentoring versus the average college survey instructor's time to mentor may factor in. When jobs need to be completed to keep the business open, mentoring is probably not at the top of the 'to do' list.
"By the same token not every academic program is equal to another. Some
are excellent some are not. some teachers are very good others well
let’s just say they should being something else."
Completely agree with this.
I haven't looked at our standard in a number of years or looked around at many other states to see what they require, so that is good to hear. I'm not sure how the number of participants in the 2 year programs have changed over the years since I got licensed, but I only know of 1 surveyor that went to school for a bachelor's degree in Surveying. Most of the Surveyors I know went through a 2 year program. One of the better 2 year programs shut down due to low numbers back years ago. I hope the numbers of students is greater than it was a few years back. It seems the interest is less than it once was. I'm not sure what the reasoning for that would be, but pay is generally low until you get licensed and, even then, it depends on what position you hold in a company or the availability of good paying jobs in the job market, which is pretty limited in my area.
"All of the people licensed pre early 1990’s and became licensed qualified based on 10 years of progressive experience."
I was licensed pre 1990's, 1988 to be exact. I had a Bachelor's degree and 4 years of responsible experience. I know plenty of Surveyors our age and older who followed this path. I know 2 who have their Masters.
"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."
This is a problem with the program offered at NJIT. It is only offered as a part time night program. I have had High School students ask me about a Career in Land Surveying and Colleges, and have had to steer them toward out of state programs.
One of the reasons that the NJ State Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors supported the education requirements was the dismal passing rate on the Licensing Exam. The passing rate completely turned around once the degree requirement took effect.
The public and professionals that I work with assume that Land Surveyors have a minimum of a Bachelor Degree. Maybe this is unique to my area. Per the last US Census Over half the population of the county I live and work in have a Bachelor's degree or higher.
"One of the reasons that the NJ State Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors supported the education requirements was the dismal passing rate on the Licensing Exam. The passing rate completely turned around once the degree requirement took effect.
The public and professionals that I work with assume that Land Surveyors have a minimum of a Bachelor Degree. Maybe this is unique to my area. Per the last US Census Over half the population of the county I live and work in have a Bachelor’s degree or higher."
I'm not sure where you are getting this dismal passing rate comment from but there is not one person that I can think of who had the knowledge and experience required and did not pass the exam. Some took it more than once but I know of none who did not end up passing.
Few people in the public know anything about the educational requirements when it comes to land surveying and I don't believe that they care about it. They just know that they need a survey done and that it has to be signed and sealed by a licensed surveyor.
As far as the statement that over half of the population of the county that you live and work in have a BA or higher degree, according to the US Census, I find that hard to believe, but if it is true, I'm sure that many of them work is positions outside of their field study and would be willing to bet that very few of them have a degree in land surveying.
Lou Raimondi, a past State Board member, had commented at our chapter meetings about the poor passing rate. Dr Greenfeld, of NJIT, would post the almost 100% first time passing rate of his graduates.
.The public probably doesn't know the education required and requirements for most professions. But I'm sure if you asked they would assume like accountants, engineers and architects, at least an undergraduate degree.
The shortage, at least in northern NJ, is at the technician level. Many firms run six field crews with only one Licensed Surveyor. While I don't necessarily agree with this model, especially with boundary surveys, the State Board doesn't have a problem as long as they are properly supervised. I watched a lot of firms hire High School Graduates as rod men using the carrot and a stick approach. If you work for 10 or so years you can get a license. Most don't, You did and that's great but you have to realize that you are one of the exceptions like everyone else on this Board that got licensed through experience only. Times have changed, as has been said by others, those entry level positions have been replaced by technology.
Education is an investment in yourself.
Here is the link to the US Census for Bergen County New Jersey:
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/bergencountynewjersey/PST045223
The shortage in Bergen County is likely no different than the shortage in any one of our counties, or, for that matter, nationally. When you speak of Dr. Greenfeld, whom I have seen many years ago in presentations he was making, there are other things to consider, the first being that he ran the only program in the state at NJIT. To make those comments, one would have to track all students over a period of close to a decade as the majority of the students, were/are, part time students who would need at least 7 years to complete the program without taking breaks or dropping out of the program altogether.
As for the 51.7% of Bergen County residents having a BA or higher, here is an interesting clip from the same data, the average COMBINED household income in the same census data is roughly $118,000. For being in the NYC metropolitan area, that number is quite low based on the 51.7% BA or higher rate. I have a few PCs that make $77K/year alone.
If the logic is that a degree makes us professionals like doctors, dentists architects, engineers and the like, why is that combined household income so low in an area so close to the City?
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.
Some 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.
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 ?
I 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.
