And this is why this is a dying professional career........ Bah humbug and get off my astro turf
The profession is stronger now than it was when I got into it in the (very) late '80s. Dying??ÿ No, I don't think so. Changing??ÿ Yes, definitely.
Astroturf is ancient tech. Like 1960's. If you put astroturf in on a high school ball field for free the kids would refuse to use it.?ÿ The parents would have you arrested for child abuse.?ÿ It is the Wild T-16 of artificial playing surfaces.?ÿ?ÿ
The OP video - this business about 4000 hrs of experience is a foreign concept to me. Each state I've been licensed in counts experience in years, not hours.?ÿ
If we figured 2,000 hrs per year then the 4 yrs experience Oregon requires after graduation with an ABET surveying degree would be 8,000 hrs. And the 12 yrs for experience only licensure would be 24,000 hrs. So the creator of the video probably would have been wise to note that his specifics applied to one state only.?ÿ ?ÿ
I'm pretty sure our profession will survive as a career
The 60's and 70's had booms that created surveyors and they needed a lot of people. Still much the same into the 80's, and a bit into the 90's. By the time we hit 2000, there were far too many PLS's.?ÿ
Less licensees does not equal a dying profession. The market corrects. It will go up and down. Always does, always will.
Whether the 21st. century or 22nd. century; some young person will stand out in the wind and sun with an old deed and discover bounds long since buried by a previous surveyor...and feel that excitement of "time travel" to which we as surveyors are so accustomed.?ÿ ?ÿ
Amen.
This is one of my main gripes.
The quantifiable time is so random between boards.?ÿ It's not that complicated but they make it so.
Thank you for pointing that out, I know that far too well from my discussion with almost employers and board members directly and can never get a good solid answer.
No one quantifies hours. Not physicians not lawyers not nursing nor engineering.
Pilots do, and maybe Hobbs meter people, but that's it that I'm aware of.
?ÿ
?ÿ
The OP video - this business about 4000 hrs of experience is a foreign concept to me. Each state I've been licensed in counts experience in years, not hours.?ÿ
If we figured 2,000 hrs per year then the 4 yrs experience Oregon requires after graduation with an ABET surveying degree would be 8,000 hrs. And the 12 yrs for experience only licensure would be 24,000 hrs. So the creator of the video probably would have been wise to note that his specifics applied to one state only.?ÿ ?ÿ
He did note that the board requiring 4,000 hours broken down into 5 categories is Texas.
Here in the USA we have, as a group, pushed the narrative that "land surveying" is a monolithic profession (in that it is solely about boundary work) and that it somehow exists outside of and is "better than" the larger field of geomatics.
The reality is that the land surveyors can wear many different hats because they are often authorities on related geospatial services. The landscape of the geospatial industry as a whole is changing, and in turn impacting even traditional land surveying. The surveys we produce and the data we deliver is being used differently than in the past. As a consequence of this (and rapid advancement of technology) we need to know about more than rules of construction, dignity of calls, and case law.
I would say that I am a geomatics/geospatial professional first, and a licensed land surveyor second. Partly because a good chunk of my work does not require a license, but primarily because land boundary surveying simply cannot exist without geomatics.
I suppose one could make the argument that land surveying is a specialty and is all about boundary rather than technical knowledge. But if we go down that road, and ignore the technical knowledge, all we can do is look at monuments and make a decision. No lining out crews on GNSS observation procedures (because we don't care to learn geopositioning or geodesy or map projections or error theory), or office staff on QA/QC and least squares analysis (ahem, which are required to prove out relative accuracy of ALTA/NSPS boundary surveys), or drafters on dynamic vs. static labels in CAD.
The better (not necessarily best) answer is that boundary surveying exist under the umbrella of geomatics, as a license that one earns after they have proven themselves competent in the technical and theoretical fundamentals of geomatics - with additional training, education and mentoring in the nuances of boundary analysis.
This will sound harsh, but it's true nonetheless. No other profession screams for the right to a license based on sitting in the truck long enough. The path without a degree is there, but it's longer and harder. It should be.
Absolutely agree with this. Those fundamentals take time to learn and they're not something you just "pick up", many of them are on par with upper-level university courses...which is not surprising considering that we are supposedly a profession, which means formal education.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: it is absurd to think that every surveyor has the time and the ability to teach (or learn) 2-4 years' worth of university courses "on the job".
"Didactics is?ÿa theory of teaching, and in a wider sense, a theory and practical application of teaching and learning. ... This theory might be contrasted with open learning, also known as experiential learning, in which people can learn by themselves, in an unstructured manner, on topics of interest."
New word every day ?????ÿ 71 years old and still learning.That's what's so amazingly attractive about this site. You learn stuff whether you like it or not, and that's a good thing.
(much better than trying to explain to SWMBO why I was banned from Bingo for the third time, dammit)
Land Surveying is the intersection of at least five different professions that I can think of. It grew out of Civil Engineering in California so it seemed natural to base it in the University Engineering Department. I think the polymath aspect is why surveying engineering programs have low enrollments. Don??t get me wrong, a few engineers make good surveyors.
In our office we have 2 geology degrees, 1 FSU, 2 OIT, 1 geography degree and I??m the College dropout. The chief of lands (an LS) has a degree in economics and got into surveying because he was working as a diver at an Oceanographic institution when a survey crew surveying the beach asked him to swim the pole out to get some underwater shots. Soon after their boss recruited him into surveying, honest true story.
The law and boundary surveying professions are closely related. The law is merely incidental to other professions mainly when they screw up but for boundaries it is integral. Frank Emerson Clark recognized this fact 100 years ago and he was a lawyer.?ÿ
Most of the engineers I know knew they were going to pursue engineering in high school, some earlier. I had a boss that said he was sitting in a huge freshman engineering course when he looked out the window and saw some students OUTSIDE with tripods and instruments, what is that? I want to do that. That??s how he switched to Surveying Engineering, to get outside was the motivation.
I got into it because I needed a job and didn??t want to be homeless. My Dad was a Civil Engineer so I knew a little about civil drafting. I knew how to calculate a traverse. It??s a great job for a creative person. Every day in the field requires figuring out how am I going to measure from here to there. Freshman year of HS I had to take algebra, I did okay but the more abstract it got the harder it got for me. Then sophomore year I took geometry, everyone else hated it, struggled, I thought PICTURES this I can understand. Then we got into trigonometry, hey this seems useful, everyone else??sin cosine what?
"Didactics is?ÿa theory of teaching, and in a wider sense, a theory and practical application of teaching and learning. ... This theory might be contrasted with open learning, also known as experiential learning, in which people can learn by themselves, in an unstructured manner, on topics of interest."
New word every day ?????ÿ 71 years old and still learning.That's what's so amazingly attractive about this site. You learn stuff whether you like it or not, and that's a good thing.
(much better than trying to explain to SWMBO why I was banned from Bingo for the third time, dammit)
I landed in surveying/geomatics by accident, but would have been a history teacher otherwise. My wife started out as a Montessori teacher but has since switched over to public while getting her master's.
The Montessori method blends open learning and directed learning, and depending on the philosophy of each individual school there's more than one or the other.
The cream of the crop (and most eye-poppingly expensive) schools are state-certified, follow state curricula, and walk that line extremely well. Everyone has different learning styles, and there's a lot of hands-on and work-at-your-own-pace, but they make absolutely sure that students always meet standards, and usually far exceed them.
Both well-run Montessori schools and true universities are similar in that they impart knowledge as well as help students figure out HOW to learn, effectively turning them into auto-didacts. All professionals need to be auto-didacts, but they still need the fundamental knowledge of their profession. Getting both at the same time is efficient and necessary, and the fact that segments of higher education in the USA have been significantly degraded and/or co-opted by other interests doesn't make all higher education worthless.
There is always going to be a very small percentage of natural auto-didacts who can literally learn anything and everything themselves, whether or not they have standardized course material or an instructor guiding them. I think I've met maybe three or four in my ~40 years.
There is a much larger percentage of people who are not natural auto-didacts, but think that they are and will treat any formal course of instruction with suspicion while throwing out anecdotes about how they saw a [professor/doctor/lawyer/engineer/even surveyor!] do something wrong once. They are usually the ones who also failed to become auto-didacts through instruction, and a good university will weed them out. It's not a perfect system but it's about as good as we're going to get, short of crazy amounts of testing for licensure.
I remember sitting in trig class (don't remember if it was Jr High or High School) thinking "When am I ever going to use this?", but I stuck it out because I was always fascinated with numbers and calculations. It was still in the schooling years that I started working for Dad and found the use for those calculations, almost fifty years later and I'm still having fun with numbers, my only regret was not finishing the Calculus series (got discouraged after lousy teaching on mutivariable calculus, but that's another story) when I was working with the Traffic Engineer, he told me that I would really like Differential Equations when I got there.
@rover83 There is a serious move at the national level to split up the PS into modules. This would give states the ability to license by discipline if they choose. We really are there as a profession. The harder we fight it the more functions we shed...
@rover83 There is a serious move at the national level to split up the PS into modules. This would give states the ability to license by discipline if they choose. We really are there as a profession. The harder we fight it the more functions we shed...
This would be a great idea. Count me as a yes vote.
@dmyhill?ÿ
This is the model medicine uses, and it hasn't been a bad thing for a long time.
I'd be down right scared if my proctologist was also doing dental surgery. I'm glad they specialize and focus on the overarching medical practice first and foremost, and the finer details afterwards.
@dmyhill?ÿ
Nah... I'd rather not have to take separate tests for: boundary; grade level construction; topographic mapping; scanning; high rise construction; riparian; railroad; industrial metrology; etc...
