I don't think it should be easy for a person to get a surveying license without a 4 year degree. I just think it should be possible.
Take a young guy that just got out of high school and married his high school sweetheart, then 7 months later started having kids. He goes to work for a local surveyor that does his own field work. He always disliked math in school because he didn't see any practical use for it. He was good at it and made good grades, just didn't like it. He loves the outdoors, loves the adventure of looking for markers that have not been seen in years. He see's a practical use of the math he has learned and starts to "get into it". He see's the real world application of the history classes in school. He works side-by-side with the old surveyor all day, every day.
This young man has a natural talent for surveying. He starts reading books about surveying, coordinate systems, gps, boundary law, anything he can get his hands on. The only way he can get licensed is a 4 year degree. It's 200 miles to the nearest college offering a surveying degree. He has his third baby on the way. I think there should be a way for him to get licensed. Not an easy way but a possible way. Make it hard as hell, but possible.
Compare that to what I call "corporate surveying". The surveyor sits in his leather chair reviewing plats, plays golf on fridays. Has a young survey manager that is working toward a license doing the scheduling of crews and assignment of jobs to the drafters doing the plats. The top crew for the company has gotten so good that they hold back data during the week so they can play basketball on friday afternoons and still have something to turn it. (I know this doesn't work with current data collectors but it's my story 🙂 ). The newest crew is two guys they just hired from the competition and its starting to be apparent why they left the other surveyor.
Which one would you rather your parents hired to split the old homeplace between you and your sister?
James
Holy Cow, post: 368974, member: 50 wrote: The engineering profession could quite easily reabsorb the survey specialty back within its ranks now that it has decided to go with areas of specialization for licensing. Now that there are structural engineers and environmental engineers, for example, rather than a single engineer label it would be extremely simple to add surveying engineer to the list of options for testing and labeling. As the demand expands for the surveyor to have a four-year degree this makes even more sense. Civil Engineers take enough classes in things like statically determinate structures and and statically indeterminate structures and soil mechanics and such that they are distinctly different from their Electrical Engineering friends who take classes in advanced circuit theory. microelectronic devices and signal processing. Surveying Engineers would simply take enough classes in subjects unique to the applications in surveying to be distinctly different from all the other categories.
The fallacy in that statement is that 'engineering surveying' is a significant portion of what sets us apart.
Boundary law, the establishment doctrines and case law study aren't even required in many survey programs. The application of these things is still learned through experience. Brian is correct. Allowing the identity of 'measurer' can and will lead us down many dark paths...
Brian Allen, post: 368933, member: 1333 wrote: I disagree. I think this new fad of mass hysteria about "not enough surveyors" entering the profession is way over-blown. The main reason why the numbers of surveyors becoming licensed is low pay in comparison to other respected professions. When a surveyor has to spend the same amount of time and money acquiring an education as an engineer, and enters the job market making considerably less, and will probably over the course of his career always earn less, why enter surveying - for the mosquitos or the endless circular "debates" with Kent?
When the number of surveyors drop enough to significantly affect the law of supply and demand, things will change rapidly. Imagine how fast the surveying schools will fill up when a newly licensed surveyor can demand in excess of 70K. Economics always has and always will dictate the number of people entering the professions.
The main problem I see with the current hyperventilating about the increasing age of surveyors is the only proposed solution discussed is to increase the quantity of people entering the profession. When you focus only on quantity - a guaranteed result is that quality will suffer. If we want our profession to eventually fade away into the dust bin of history, increase the quantity and decrease the quality of license holders.
Now is the perfect time to insist on raising the quality of surveyors. Better college programs and better pre-license work experience is the answer. Start teaching the professional side of surveying - boundary law, professional ethics, conflict resolution, professional communications, business law, etc. Demand more accountability in mentoring. Change the content of the state licensing exams from regurgitating statutes and rules to include state specific boundary resolution.
When the economic laws swing to lower supply and higher demand, and we finally are providing the quality of service commensurate to level of compensation we should demand, then, and only then, will our profession will be on solid footing for the future. More button-pushing technicians entering the race to under-bid each other, and under-provide for the public is a guaranteed recipe for disaster.
The old saying is a nation prepares for the last war.
Land Surveying, by pushing Engineering programs, is preparing for the bulk of 20th century business which was "new" work, subdivisions, construction, lot splits, etc. In fact, the bulk of the business since the 17th century was development.
I believe we are entering a new era where: 1) the Courts are more reliant than ever before on Land Surveyors to provide a well reasoned opinion, not just a precise literalist plot of what should be. 2) There is less "new" work and more maintenance type work, retracing old boundaries and dealing with problems and proposing solutions.
Given the increase in productivity and work which requires less production type surveying such as construction staking and building thousands of lots per month, there will be less demand for Land Surveyors but more demand for intelligent, professionals.
Therefore, I agree with Brian, a College Degree should be required. The degree should cover topics relevant to what is coming in the future, not what has been in the past. All of the other Professions require them or, if they don't, most of their practitioners have one because that is what society looks to in order to determine if someone is an educated, professional. Because of technology, an apprenticeship approach just is not as feasible as it once was.
The Law Schools are spitting out twice as many graduates as are needed in the legal profession. I think it's not so much the average salary that drives it, I think it's the dream of becoming a star lawyer that makes $2 million per case, at least to some degree. Some may enter thinking they can make into a good paying job, certainly.
Gavin,
I agree few are on the all experience or all education bandwagon. As with most I think a combination should be required. Where I disagree with current policy is that it's 4 year ABET or your out. My own path tells me that's simply not right.
The tie to engineering seems related to another of my pet peeves. For some reason many of us separate ourselves into the math camp or the law camp. It's as though one must erase all math knowledge to understand law and vice versa. Putting us as a subset of Engineers would likely reinforce that dynamic. For the record I don't dislike Engineers. Few I know have cooties, and those few would be butt-heads regardless of their chosen profession.
Not long after I joined the new site there was an argument here about elimination of boundary experience from our law. My response was that it wouldn't happen. A year later I found myself testifying before our Board to keep the requirement mandatory rather make it optional. Another proposal would have stripped boundary law classes from a qualifying degree, nevermind the other subjects that aren't there. I dont disrespect the educators but i do indict our Profession as a whole for not speaking up.
Our Boards are looking for ways to break the logjam. The suggestions we make on this site are being read and considered by them. They need to hear in no uncertain terms that both boundary law and measurement sciences MUST be demonstrated prior to the issuance of a license. They also need a path laid out that makes sense and can be written into a defensible policy.
My suggestion for Idaho is simple. Keep the 4 year degree path open, but add more law and a legitimate exam at the end. The take home test is not a bad exam, but at this point we don't even know if the candidate is the one taking it.
Re-open the nominal 2 year path with a very heavy experience requirement. You could even replace the general education part with extraordinary performance on placement exams. Again, give the candidate a real exam on idaho code.
I cannot agree more about getting involved. Change is the one constant in every Profession. We can direct it or follow it, the choice is ours.
There may be lessons to be learned from other professions. Generally, there is no experience requirement for people taking the BAR exam or the CPA exam. For the CPA exam, many if not all states now require a masters degree in accounting. In the state of Washington, on the other hand, it is possible to take the BAR exam without ever going to law school through a mentorship program.
To me, the Society of Actuaries has one of the most workable education/work programs of all. Actuaries are not licensed but become Fellows of the Society of Actuaries upon completion of an exam program. When I was in that program in the late 60s, there were 10 exams; now they've split them up into pieces, so there are more exams with each covering less material.
The CPA exam can also be passed in pieces.
The Survey Tech programs works similarly. An employed surveyor is learning on the job and studying for exams. The different levels indicate different masteries of material.
So why couldn't the surveying exams be split into parts? Just for the sake of argument, how about 5 parts, with one part devoted strictly to boundary surveying and law? You choose the other topics for the remaining 4 parts.
A candidate is hired by a surveying firm after college or whatever education is required. He works every day and studies for whatever part of the surveying exam he's sitting for at the next session. Most candidates will finish the 5 parts in 5 years or less, but some will drag it out. But, either way, we have licensed surveyors who have both experience and formal training.
Splitting the exam into parts narrows the field of study for a candidate sitting for a particular part. On the other hand, since that exam covers a limited topic, questions can be more detailed, so it's not a watered down approach. And candidates are always making progress toward their license.
As far as administration goes, computers have made that much easier. Developing exams may be harder if they're administered more frequently, but applying, grading, and reporting should be nearly automatic.
If you want to include written answers to discussion questions, look to the College Board's administration of Advanced Placement exams. They assemble a group of readers for each topic for a week or two and house them in college dorms. The readers do their thing and the students get their grades.
Cost? Well, nothing's free. If you want a license, you have to have both skin and money in the game.
Just a thought from someone who greatly respects surveyors and their role in American society.
Tennessee has not made the 4 year degree mandatory, but they've made it close.
Without a degree you have to work 10 years before you can take the FS.
THEN you have to work 6 more years AND take 12 hours of surveying classes before you can take the PS.
And that sounds like a reasonable alternate route.
I get the concern about surveying engineering coming out of an engineering program. BUT......................that is merely the home base to get the diploma. A reasonable curriculum would need to be constructed that would address the concerns expressed above. That is not a problem. Engineering curricula do that already. Numerous classes that are required to get the diploma come out of the other colleges within the university. For example, curricula that revolve around soils normally require agronomy courses. Curricula that revolve around biological materials and/or chemistry must take advanced level courses from those departments in other colleges. Electrical engineering usually demands higher level physics classes than most other programs. Nuclear engineering.......don't get me started on what all they have to take. Specialization dictates a far broader scope of classes than will be found in the home department. Business classes are highly recommended as is the thought of going for an MBA before leaving the university. There is no reason the types of law-related classes most commonly applicable to boundary surveying cannot be made a part of the base curriculum.
Meanwhile, an existing structure is in place to supply a home with a ton of support to encourage enrollment in the program. Probably 2/3 of those who start out in engineering end up in either a different engineering program or some other field, but they do graduate.
JaRo, post: 368999, member: 292 wrote: I don't think it should be easy for a person to get a surveying license without a 4 year degree. I just think it should be possible.
James
I agree, there should always be a "mustang" route to licensure as it is in the lawyer and civil engineer fields in most States.
I graduated with a BA degree in Chemistry from an (almost) Ivy League school but worked summers for the Forest Service and got the surveying bug. Then worked for municipalities, in the privates, State, the Feds and had a fierce desire to learn more; bought a library's worth of books, involved in the local Chapter, took time off to attend national ACSM meetings, went through the BLM Cadastral Survey courses, etc. Spent the rest of my career in surveying and after the mandatory 6 years of working under the supervision of an LS got my license. Interesting was my science degree counted 1/2:1 for the experience requirement, a 2 year bonus. Got licensed in other States by taking their test.
Back then there were only a few 4 year surveying colleges in the US, some geared more for the Forestry people. Mid-career I started in run in to 4 year Surveying College grads who were well versed in the trade and helpful for me concerning the then new GPS, but seemed like they were computationists, not too interested in digging both in the dirt and at the Courthouse, interviewing adjoiners, looking at occupation. Most ended up as good surveyors, others ended up as really bad pin cushioners.
Graduation from any 4 year degree piques my interest, especially hard science degrees; it implies the graduate has a grasp of reading and writing, the nature of reality and a somewhat broad view of the human condition. But surveying is a niche profession, years of eager apprenticeship may produce a better surveyor who may not be so erudite but be a better surveyor.
So I'm against requiring a 4 year Surveying degree prior to sitting for the exam, it's no guarantee. Let the exam winnow the wheat.
JaRo, post: 368999, member: 292 wrote: I don't think it should be easy for a person to get a surveying license without a 4 year degree. I just think it should be possible.
Take a young guy that just got out of high school and married his high school sweetheart, then 7 months later started having kids. He goes to work for a local surveyor that does his own field work. He always disliked math in school because he didn't see any practical use for it. He was good at it and made good grades, just didn't like it. He loves the outdoors, loves the adventure of looking for markers that have not been seen in years. He see's a practical use of the math he has learned and starts to "get into it". He see's the real world application of the history classes in school. He works side-by-side with the old surveyor all day, every day.
This young man has a natural talent for surveying. He starts reading books about surveying, coordinate systems, gps, boundary law, anything he can get his hands on. The only way he can get licensed is a 4 year degree. It's 200 miles to the nearest college offering a surveying degree. He has his third baby on the way. I think there should be a way for him to get licensed. Not an easy way but a possible way. Make it hard as hell, but possible.
Compare that to what I call "corporate surveying". The surveyor sits in his leather chair reviewing plats, plays golf on fridays. Has a young survey manager that is working toward a license doing the scheduling of crews and assignment of jobs to the drafters doing the plats. The top crew for the company has gotten so good that they hold back data during the week so they can play basketball on friday afternoons and still have something to turn it. (I know this doesn't work with current data collectors but it's my story 🙂 ). The newest crew is two guys they just hired from the competition and its starting to be apparent why they left the other surveyor.
Which one would you rather your parents hired to split the old homeplace between you and your sister?
James
that is the post of the year, James. we call it "Big Survey".
As long as the degree programs exist within the school of engineering at colleges & universities, and ABET is the lone accrediting body, surveying degree programs will continue to focus on measurement and gravitate toward identifying as a branch of engineering. They are increasingly going to crank out graduates who become licensed surveyors who look to whichever editions of BCLP and EPBL as the definitive authority on boundaries rather than their state's laws and court decisions. They will become the leaders of state surveyors' society, and members and staff of licensing boards. In the highest likelihood, many will keep up with the capabilities of new measuring and mapping technologies. Some will actually making use of those technologies. Few will pick up some boundary knowledge at conferences and seminars. But very few will accept information from those functions or from magazine articles that conflicts with what they believe is contained in BCLP and EPBL, or will study boundary law on their own.
ABET is comprised of career academicians with engineering background or a survey background gained under the direction of engineering academia. Many surveyors have gained their experience at companies run by engineers or from surveyors who gained their education and experience from engineers. Engineers by training and by nature believe that all surveying is about making measurements and converting measurements into maps of black & white facts. They don't accept that there is any responsibility or authority to decide when facts may need interpretation, or any responsibility or authority to consider legal principles when interpreting facts. In truth, many resent "surveyors who think they are lawyers", meaning any surveyor who even hints at referring to a legal principle in an attempt to resolve an ambiguity.
The typical 4-yr degree has 2 "legal aspects" classes, one descriptions class, and one PLSS class. Some may have a "boundary surveying" lab class. Most have a subdivisions class, which they would count toward a "boundary" component of their curriculum, but since that class focuses on designing street alignments and lot layouts according to a set of state & municipal subdivision codes & zoning ordinances, it imparts no knowledge of locating existing boundaries.
In the "legal aspects" classes, if the student is lucky, the instructor will be a practicing surveyor or have many years of boundary experience. More likely, the instructor has just enough experience to qualify to take the licensing exam with little if any being boundary. In a few cases, the instructor isn't licensed at all but is a career academician with advanced degrees and without enough experience to apply for the state exam. More often than not, the instructor has just enough knowledge to appear authoritative to most students and has little or no interest in boundary surveying. The technology required is common, the field procedures basic, and the math to process results at the easy end of methods taught in the degree. Nothing exciting for most engineering trained professors.
The PLSS class will typically take a week or two to cover the creation & development of the PLSS, then spend the rest of the time going over how to properly perform a section breakdown of a normal section, a fractional section, a lotted section along a std parallel or a western Twp edge, and of course a Section 6. They will go over definitions of different types of GLO/BLM surveys, will go over the prescribed order of a township survey. They will cover Ch 1 & 2 of the Manual fairly well, cover the 1st half of Ch 3 pretty thoroughly, and then barely acknowledge that the any other content of consequence. Most students end up thinking that they need to do a full section breakdown for any parcel described in terms of the PLSS when in fact, most of them will never work in an undivided section. This is a prime example of what Dave said about preparing for the last war. In this case, the colleges are preparing surveyors for work that's been mostly done for 100 years in most areas. That's 5 or 6 wars ago. While it's important to be aware of history and know how the surveys were supposed to have been performed, IMO, the focus should be on the last 1/2 or 1/3 of Ch 3, and Chs 5 to 7. Those are far more applicable to what most surveyors will encounter.
Most surveyors will engage in a significant amount of construction work and mapping for existing conditions base for engineering design. Some may build the bulk of their practice on those things. I can see the importance of exposing students to making and working with measurements with the most modern equipment the school can get. However, one of the most valuable set of exercises I had in school was performing traverse and topo with equipment that had been obsolete for 20 to 80 years. It gave me an appreciation for the capabilities of old equipment & methods.
Nearly all surveyors will perform some amount of boundary surveying, with most engaging in it regularly. I'm pretty certain that ABET and colleges have gotten feedback reflecting that many times, and you'd think they might take that as indication of how to design the degree content. But they don't.
ABET's highest level of accreditation is EAC, and all major programs strive for that. To get that, they must have a certain amount of engineering content and a certain amount of pure math & science. To get there and still meet the seemingly ever-increasing general ed mandates, boundary content suffers. If a program were to include more focus on boundary, it would result in a "lower" level of accreditation (RAC).
If we want to see programs that focus more on boundary and other less technical but arguably more professional aspects of surveying, we need to look somewhere other than ABET for accreditation and program content. I've heard of a school in NH that is now offering a 4-yr law degree applicable for related professions and paralegals. There may be others (I'm having a deja vu moment - didn't we have this same discussion about 2 months ago?).
I would really like to see teamwork between established survey degree programs, reputable law schools, state societies, and licensing boards to develop content criteria for a program that focuses on boundary and other land use matters, and develop a new accrediting system.
The engineers among us want to lure students with cool toys. The problem with that is the type of student who is attracted by cool toys isn't the type to take either their career decision or their studies seriously. Another problem with cool toys is that they're increasingly designed to do nearly all of the work. After hitting the 'start' button, the field person is there to babysit the measuring machine. The same is increasingly true of adjustment and mapping (and now, animation) software. Unlike the tools that were in use when many of us started 25, 35, or more years ago, there is little to keep the user engaged. Once the gamer set that initially enrolled learns that, coupled with typical earnings for the average surveyor, they're going to move on to something else... unless they drop out to live with their parents, play video games & smoke pot after finding that college requires actual study.
Although the pay differential between engineers and surveyors is getting slimmer in many parts of the country, it is still significant in several regions, and the sad fact is that in a few regions, a surveyor prior to getting a license may make only a little more than a burger flipper, and a newly licensed surveyor little more than the asst manager at the burger joint. That's reflective of not only what others think of surveying as a profession, but more pointedly, what many surveyors think of surveying as a profession.
Under the ABET model, enrollments will continue to decrease, the surveying engineers will continue to ignore calls to refocus degree programs to distinguish surveying from engineering, will continue to try to identify more with engineering or some specific technology-dependent related field, and will continue to try to appeal on the basis of cool toys and colorful mapping and animation. They will continue to wonder why their efforts garner no long-term success. They'll never break from that cycle and will oversee the demise of more survey degree programs while remaining convinced that they just didn't find the right marketing strategy for the engineering-subordinate career paths they were trying to sell.
There will be no improvement until the ABET model is replaced with one designed to develop areas of practice that only surveyors are authorized by law to do, and develop areas that naturally relate to our unique areas of practice. There will be little change in practice, professional recognition and compensation until the majority of surveyors are willing to recognize and embrace the professional aspects their licensing authorizes, develop their knowledge and application in those areas, and see & comport themselves as professionals.
