@dmyhill ah, I see.?ÿ It looks like when I quoted that and replied, it replied to you when the intent was to reply to (and agree with) @tim-v-pls.?ÿ So, for clarity, I guess you and I disagree.?ÿ But it's certainly not a very important issue to me and I'd be fine with whatever "they" decided.?ÿ I just wouldn't vote your way (at this point) if I were in a place to.
Edit: I would, though, lean on the side of PLS requiring a 4 year BS degree that covered everything.?ÿ Similar to other professions, it would give the licensed person a working understanding of the foundational knowledge blocks so that even if he never uses PLSS or non euclidean geometry like reducing spherical angles and directions to "ground", he would know where to go to and what questions to ask if presented with the opportunity.
I have noted that most of the comments relating to putting a degree requirement in place has to do with ensuring surveyors become ??better? (surveyors). And, that may well be for many states. However, for Florida, that was not the case.
Sometime around 1990, a case ultimately testing the statutory length of a surveyor's liability progressed to the Florida Supreme Court. It seems that a surveyor had relied upon Florida's 2 year professional liability statute for protection against suit for damages. However, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that a Florida Professional Land Surveyor was not entitled to protection via the 2 year professional liability statute, due to the absence of a degree requirement. The Court ruled that surveyor's are not professionals because one can obtain licensure by experience only. Denied the protection of the 2 year statute, licensed surveyor's in Florida could only seek protection via the 4 year statute. In other words, from the date of knowledge of an error or omission in a survey, the harmed individual had all of 4 years to bring suit for damages.
Dr. David Gibson, then the University of Florida Professor of Geomatics (or whatever title was used at the time), and notably a leading voice/advocate for surveyors in Florida, led the effort to require a degree in order to ensure Florida surveyor's would be accepted as ??professionals?, and additionally be allowed access to the 2 year professional liability statute.
@i-ben-havin sounds like the Court pulled that one out of their hind exit points. We have Lawyers without Law Degrees, after all.
The increase in online degree opportunities, stemming from Covid, should make it a bit easier for folks to walk the degree path.?ÿ I know of three individuals who are currently attending classes online.?ÿ All of them indicated that they would not be pursuing a survey degree otherwise due to travel, housing, and cost concerns.
I was fortunate to have a more graduate school type of experience while obtaining an AS in Surveying as I tutored students in CAD, GIS, and survey math and collaborated with soil scientist, geologists, and many others.?ÿ It's hard for me to imagine replicating this via on the job mentoring or with an online degree.?ÿ I can't imagine a better way to learn than to be surrounded by dedicated learners and teachers.?ÿ I have faith that there's an undiscovered technological advancement out there that could help to replicate my experience.?ÿ Until it's found, requiring in person attendance seems like a great way to limit the amount of PLSs, whatever your feelings about that may be.
My thoughts on college or no college are framed around an acceptance that we, as in humans in general, are working with neolithic emotions, medieval institutes, and godlike technology.?ÿ Our emotions steer us towards tribal, us against them, only this way or that way solutions.?ÿ Our medieval institutes are too slow to keep up with changes.?ÿ By the time an ABET school goes through the proper channels to get an approval to make even the slightest curriculum change, the original need has evolved.?ÿ Inflexibility is a huge issue.?ÿ Our godlike technologies could bring the best teachers to any student in the world, but merit is not in vogue.?ÿ The current trend is to avoid searching for indicators of success if there's even a chance that it could shine an unpleasant light on the mediocre or inept.
All that to say that there may be hybrid alternatives not yet discovered and we should keep our minds open to whacky ideas like having PLSs earn PDH credits by teaching classes not attending them.?ÿ
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@i-ben-havin sounds like the Court pulled that one out of their hind exit points. We have Lawyers without Law Degrees, after all.
Only four states allow that. By far the exception and not the rule. CA even requires regular testing, which looks suspiciously like....formal education. Passage rates are also incredibly low for apprenticeship candidates.
I should probably clarify that experience-only for surveyors has always been OK by me. But in that case, candidates really should be taking additional exams prior to the PS, equivalent to finals, covering concepts of the foundational survey courses that a four-year geomatics degree requires. Alternatively, how about some oral examinations or free-form responses to really prove understanding? I would support that for degreed candidates too since the PS barely scratches the surface and doesn't really test fundamental understanding...
Our godlike technologies could bring the best teachers to any student in the world, but merit is not in vogue. The current trend is to avoid searching for indicators of success if there's even a chance that it could shine an unpleasant light on the mediocre or inept.
I grew up in the 80s/90s, when the toxic "every kid's a winner!" attitude really took off. It wasn't a new concept, sort of the next logical step in the "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge" (written by Isaac Asimov in 1980) attitude. It really messed up our concepts of effort, achievement, rewards and resiliency.
Just because someone is a nice, likeable or good person, or even a good employee, doesn't mean that they deserve whatever they want.
Conversely, just because someone cannot make it through a vetting or examination process doesn't mean they are a bad person or worthless.
I have noted that most of the comments relating to putting a degree requirement in place has to do with ensuring surveyors become ??better? (surveyors). And, that may well be for many states. However, for Florida, that was not the case.
Sometime around 1990, a case ultimately testing the statutory length of a surveyor's liability progressed to the Florida Supreme Court. It seems that a surveyor had relied upon Florida's 2 year professional liability statute for protection against suit for damages. However, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that a Florida Professional Land Surveyor was not entitled to protection via the 2 year professional liability statute, due to the absence of a degree requirement. The Court ruled that surveyor's are not professionals because one can obtain licensure by experience only. Denied the protection of the 2 year statute, licensed surveyor's in Florida could only seek protection via the 4 year statute. In other words, from the date of knowledge of an error or omission in a survey, the harmed individual had all of 4 years to bring suit for damages.
Dr. David Gibson, then the University of Florida Professor of Geomatics (or whatever title was used at the time), and notably a leading voice/advocate for surveyors in Florida, led the effort to require a degree in order to ensure Florida surveyor's would be accepted as ??professionals?, and additionally be allowed access to the 2 year professional liability statute.
Frier was a Land Surveyor. The Court says they can??t overrule their prior opinion without declaring the Statute unconstitutional which seems hyperbolic to me but they have the gavel, not me.
Garden v. Frier, 602 South 2d 1273, Florida SC 1992:
??Our intent in Pierce was to establish a bright-line test based on the minimum four-year-degree criterion, to the extent this is possible. Unfortunately, the suggestion that the equivalent of a four-year degree would suffice did not serve this end; and we now recede from this language.[2] Too much imprecision and variation is created by allowing courts to second-guess what does or does not constitute the equivalent of a college degree.
Accordingly, in harmony with the central thrust of Pierce, we hold that a "profession" is any vocation requiring at a minimum a four-year college degree before licensing is possible in Florida. There can be no equivalency exception. There also is no requirement that the four-year degree itself be in a field of study specifically related to the vocation in question, and we recede from Pierce to the extent it suggested the contrary.[3] As a corollary, a vocation is a profession if any graduate degree is required as a condition of state licensure, without regard to the nature of the undergraduate education.?
It started with an insurance agent claiming to be a professional.
Pierce v. AALL Insurance Inc., 531 So. 2d 84, Florida SC 1988:
?Thus, while the common law definition of professional is too narrow, the dictionary definition adopted by the district court is not narrow enough. Accordingly, we must draw a firm line somewhere in between. Education is the common factor among all vocations which are considered professions. We believe that a minimum of a four-year baccalaureate degree is required before any person can be called a professional in the field in which he or she completed their college degree. However, this does not mean that insurance agents who have college degrees in insurance are necessarily professionals. Certainly one may become an insurance agent simply by completing a short correspondence course or by working full time in an insurance agency for one year. ?? 626.732(1)(b), (c), Fla. Stat. (1983). Thus, one may qualify to be licensed as an insurance agent despite having no specialized education.
Therefore, for purposes of the professional malpractice statute of limitations, we define a profession as a vocation requiring, as a minimum standard, a college degree in the specific field. In other words, if, under the laws and administrative rules of this state, a person can only be licensed to practice an occupation upon completion of a four-year college degree in that field, then that occupation is a profession. For example, one can only be licensed as a certified public accountant in Florida if he or she has completed a baccalaureate degree in accounting plus thirty additional semester hours in that field. ?? 473.306(2)(b)(2), Fla. Stat. (1987). Similarly, a person cannot be licensed as a land surveyor in Florida unless he or she has graduated from a four-year university surveying program and worked for two years in land surveying under a licensed land surveyor. ?? 472.013(2)(a), Fla. Stat. (1987). See Cristich v. Allen Engineering, Inc., 458 So.2d 76 (Fla. 5th DCA 1984).[2]?
The Chief Justice says in his concurring opinion in Garden v. Frier that they should declare the statute unenforceable and the Court force the legislature to define ??Professional,? and that defining ??Professional? themselves in legislating which the Court is not permitted to do.
In Pierce they say the LS requires a degree but in Garden they say since there is a non-degree path to the LS it is not a profession.
Interesting.?ÿ But bizarre.?ÿ I mean, why does a professional get the benefit of a shorter term of liability??ÿ I think that's more the issue than what defines professional
Whoever is lobbying for us at both the state and national levels isn't really getting it done, in my opinion, if we're having to alter our requirements to satisfy some arbitrary definition of our profession
I've been busy catching my own tail the last week or so but kind of following this post.
Overall the dialogue has been a pretty good back and forth with a couple of jabs and pokes here and there but it pretty much exemplifies the problem that exists in surveying,?ÿ is there's such widely varying opinions not just from the practitioners and the licenses but the states the counties and even the federal government.
At the very least the joke that always comes up is that we have just as many liquor laws as we have surveying boards because each state gets to make up their own decisions similar but different.
As a whole I think within this profession, regardless of what some loose-lipped gavel swinging monkey on a bench has to say because judges make mistakes all the time, it's important to realize that we are the ones(and I say we by being a person who works under a licensed surveyor, because I'm not licensed yet)that have to define where this goes because if we let the lawyers do it, if we let the judges do it,I f we let the real estate brokers and the insurance agents do it, we are at fault for letting them direct how our careers and how our professions can go forward.
The issue in the Florida case was the Statute limiting liability to 2 years did not define ??Professional.?
In the first case they were confronted with the question of whether a licensed ?ÿInsurance Agent is a Professional. Instead of kicking the Statute back to the legislature they painted themselves in a corner by declaring only the members of licensed professions that require a 4 year degree in the specific field are ??Professionals.?
In the second case the Land Surveyor defendant is a member of a profession which has a degree path to licensure but also a non-degree path. Therefore they concluded the Land Surveying is not a ??Profession? for purposes of the statute of limitations statute. They did soften their position ruling the required degree does not necessarily have to be in the specific professional field.
Interesting.?ÿ But bizarre.?ÿ I mean, why does a professional get the benefit of a shorter term of liability??ÿ I think that's more the issue than what defines professional
Whoever is lobbying for us at both the state and national levels isn't really getting it done, in my opinion, if we're having to alter our requirements to satisfy some arbitrary definition of our profession
We don't have to alter our requirements. We have to decide whether land surveyors are professionals or not. It will be very hard to make the argument that we are professionals if we don't think four years of education is required to be minimumly qualified.?ÿ?ÿ
@jph Me neither, but unfortunately this title has a real world effect on our job responsibilities, recruiting, and compensation.?ÿ?ÿ
@aliquot?ÿ
I've never cared much for titles
I was recently asked if I would mind if they changed my title from Assistant Division Chief to Deputy Division Chief. I told them I didn't care as long as my pay didn't go down, but if the Deputy title came with a badge, I would prefer that. Still waiting for the badge.
Professional is one of the most overused and misused words in the English language.?ÿ I may be forced to use it but that doesn't mean I have to like it.
I don't care whether or not the word "Professional" is struck from "Professional Land Surveyor". But even if that were to happen, the debate over pathways to licensure, mentorship and required education would still remain.
@rover83?ÿ
As it should.?ÿ Times change and it is important that surveyors change with those times.?ÿ That includes educational requirements.
