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2
- #1
gendna2
Civil/Environmental
- Jun 15, 2013
- 33
I sent this to ASCE's Raise the Bar Folks. Doubt it will change anything because it seems like they have their mind made up. Only way to fight it is through state legislators; however, I wanted to share my thought with y'all if you're bored.
My opinion:
I am thoroughly against making an MS degree mandatory for a PE license and even more so against making an SE license separate from a PE license in all states. Essentially, it comes down to freedom, and the most important freedom, when you really think about it, is market freedom.
When does it all end? When do we, as a society, allow people to make mistakes, fail, sometimes even die, but let it be a person's individual choice. Individual choice is the crux of Christian thought; God could have easily made us automatons, but He let us choose between good and evil.
Engineers will fail, construction contractors will fail, maintenance plans will fail, money will be lost, people will perish. However; in a free market economy, one of individual choices, those engineers, contractors, maintainers, poor practices...all those people will go out of business, they will cease to exist.
I don't advocate extreme libertarianism; but the way we do business now is fine. We have a good system in place to protect the public and we give our engineers with PEs the ability to make the ethical decision whether to stamp or not to stamp drawings.
What I see as we push for the MS and the SE is a zero-fault system, with the drawbacks of implicit "guildism" but on a modern, professional level. Do we need a PE stamp with an MS degree behind it to design a basic storm drainage system, or to design sidewalks and intersections in a new subdivision? Do we really need an SE license to design a two story apartment building, or a 100 foot span bridge? In Illinois, a paragon of American economic stagnation, the answer is yes to both; along with licenses for every other thing under the sun.
This is the same "safety culture" that on federal contracts doubles the price of the work. It is a no fault, no mistake, will bear any economic price, type of thinking that is only going to add more regulation to the system.
Let's get back to that bar; instead of raising, how about we at least maintain it and really look at it. I can understand why people are frustrated with the quality of new engineers these days, but instead of a knee jerk reaction, let's do the harder things and look at the real problems.
I went to a prestigious university where students had the ability to choose a primary and secondary field of focus in their BS. We had to choose between Transportation (easy), Construction Management (very easy), Structural (hard), Geotechnical (hard), Water Resources Engineering (normal), and Environmental (no idea....but we'll come back to Environmental).
So what do you think a lot of students picked at this prestigious school? Construction Management + Transportation. Basically, we are still graduating students with no knowledge in reinforced concrete design, steel design, or foundation design. I don't need an engineer to be an expert in these courses, but it seems like a basic knowledge of foundations, steel, and concrete ought to be something a civil engineer should know. If I were ABET, I'm not sure I would accredit my alma matter.
To make matters worse, because of "sustainability" my alma matter added two more focus areas. These are real gems, when you look at the course requirements, you can conceivably get a degree in "Civil and Environmental Engineering" while taking nebulous courses in things like society and the environment. Sustainability is a practice; not something you devote fundamental engineering courses to. It's best left to the world of real engineering, where graduates will certainly get their fill of LEED.
Even my degree is fundamentally flawed. I have a degree in "Civil and Environmental Engineering". This is ridiculous, I've never taken an environmental engineering class. Until I finally found out that this used to be called "sanitary engineering", i.e. fecal management, I never was able to really wrap my head around this environmental thing. Of course, environmental engineering is about more than that; especially how to clean up toxic sites and comply with EPA regulations...but I'm not an environmental anything, and I don't want to be.
Another fallacy often thrown around is that these days, we are taking less credit hours than our predecessors...presumably in the 50s or 60s. If we take 16 hours a semester, which is about the limit for a reasonable brainiac, we get 128 hours to get an engineering degree. Throw in a couple of summer courses and maybe that semester where you took 18...and forgot half the information by Christmas, and you're in the 130s.
Now I worked harder in engineering college than ever before, and even harder than my job. My peers did the same. Many of us took 5 years total to finish. Even my peers who picked the easier Transportation + Const. Management path worked very hard.
We all took 4 levels of Calculus, the last being Differential Equations. We all took linear algebra, and 3 levels of Physics, including an electro-magnetism course. We had two levels of chemistry, and 18 hours of general education courses, a class that mashed CAD, with drafting, and 3-d hand sketching, a class that mashed Matlab, with C and Unix. The list goes on.
When I speak to some of the older engineers from the 50s and 60s; honestly, their education does not sound as difficult. On paper they had more credit hours, but in terms of actual work, their life seemed easier. This is anecdotal, but many of them did not seem to have needed as much calculus as us, maybe 2-3 levels maximum; and their load just seemed easier. It was definitely also a lot easier to get into a good school back then.
I really believe we are comparing apples to oranges when we compare these engineering degrees that required 140 hours plus with our load today. Something does not add up; because there is no way you could cram more classes into my schedule. It's almost insulting when I read these comments, because I remember how I had no life, was absorbed 24/7 in my studying just to keep up...and then I read an article talking about how I didn't have enough hours in my degree.
Again, God given personal choice is a factor here. Some schools in the US are definitely easier than others; not all engineering schools were created the same. The caliber of freshmen in some schools is hard to compare with others. Maybe that's why we see some low quality engineers out there, jump to conclusions, and decide that the MS is the solution. Maybe the solution is for a company to be more selective in its hiring practices; to ask some fundamental technical questions at the interview; to delve into the actual courses one took, and not just behavioral questions. Did you know Samsung actually has a GRE style test for prospective management employees?
Here's one thing I learned at a community college that was sorely lacking in my prestigious curriculum; full of "sustainability". Land surveying, the bread and butter that civil engineering was built on. I learned that and it completely changed how I visualized and thought as an engineer.
My question to you, those that keep pushing to "raise the bar", is this.
What do you do when John Doe, the "Construction Management + Transportation" BS now gets an online MS in Sustainable Construction Management to fulfill your requirement of "raising the bar"?
My opinion:
I am thoroughly against making an MS degree mandatory for a PE license and even more so against making an SE license separate from a PE license in all states. Essentially, it comes down to freedom, and the most important freedom, when you really think about it, is market freedom.
When does it all end? When do we, as a society, allow people to make mistakes, fail, sometimes even die, but let it be a person's individual choice. Individual choice is the crux of Christian thought; God could have easily made us automatons, but He let us choose between good and evil.
Engineers will fail, construction contractors will fail, maintenance plans will fail, money will be lost, people will perish. However; in a free market economy, one of individual choices, those engineers, contractors, maintainers, poor practices...all those people will go out of business, they will cease to exist.
I don't advocate extreme libertarianism; but the way we do business now is fine. We have a good system in place to protect the public and we give our engineers with PEs the ability to make the ethical decision whether to stamp or not to stamp drawings.
What I see as we push for the MS and the SE is a zero-fault system, with the drawbacks of implicit "guildism" but on a modern, professional level. Do we need a PE stamp with an MS degree behind it to design a basic storm drainage system, or to design sidewalks and intersections in a new subdivision? Do we really need an SE license to design a two story apartment building, or a 100 foot span bridge? In Illinois, a paragon of American economic stagnation, the answer is yes to both; along with licenses for every other thing under the sun.
This is the same "safety culture" that on federal contracts doubles the price of the work. It is a no fault, no mistake, will bear any economic price, type of thinking that is only going to add more regulation to the system.
Let's get back to that bar; instead of raising, how about we at least maintain it and really look at it. I can understand why people are frustrated with the quality of new engineers these days, but instead of a knee jerk reaction, let's do the harder things and look at the real problems.
I went to a prestigious university where students had the ability to choose a primary and secondary field of focus in their BS. We had to choose between Transportation (easy), Construction Management (very easy), Structural (hard), Geotechnical (hard), Water Resources Engineering (normal), and Environmental (no idea....but we'll come back to Environmental).
So what do you think a lot of students picked at this prestigious school? Construction Management + Transportation. Basically, we are still graduating students with no knowledge in reinforced concrete design, steel design, or foundation design. I don't need an engineer to be an expert in these courses, but it seems like a basic knowledge of foundations, steel, and concrete ought to be something a civil engineer should know. If I were ABET, I'm not sure I would accredit my alma matter.
To make matters worse, because of "sustainability" my alma matter added two more focus areas. These are real gems, when you look at the course requirements, you can conceivably get a degree in "Civil and Environmental Engineering" while taking nebulous courses in things like society and the environment. Sustainability is a practice; not something you devote fundamental engineering courses to. It's best left to the world of real engineering, where graduates will certainly get their fill of LEED.
Even my degree is fundamentally flawed. I have a degree in "Civil and Environmental Engineering". This is ridiculous, I've never taken an environmental engineering class. Until I finally found out that this used to be called "sanitary engineering", i.e. fecal management, I never was able to really wrap my head around this environmental thing. Of course, environmental engineering is about more than that; especially how to clean up toxic sites and comply with EPA regulations...but I'm not an environmental anything, and I don't want to be.
Another fallacy often thrown around is that these days, we are taking less credit hours than our predecessors...presumably in the 50s or 60s. If we take 16 hours a semester, which is about the limit for a reasonable brainiac, we get 128 hours to get an engineering degree. Throw in a couple of summer courses and maybe that semester where you took 18...and forgot half the information by Christmas, and you're in the 130s.
Now I worked harder in engineering college than ever before, and even harder than my job. My peers did the same. Many of us took 5 years total to finish. Even my peers who picked the easier Transportation + Const. Management path worked very hard.
We all took 4 levels of Calculus, the last being Differential Equations. We all took linear algebra, and 3 levels of Physics, including an electro-magnetism course. We had two levels of chemistry, and 18 hours of general education courses, a class that mashed CAD, with drafting, and 3-d hand sketching, a class that mashed Matlab, with C and Unix. The list goes on.
When I speak to some of the older engineers from the 50s and 60s; honestly, their education does not sound as difficult. On paper they had more credit hours, but in terms of actual work, their life seemed easier. This is anecdotal, but many of them did not seem to have needed as much calculus as us, maybe 2-3 levels maximum; and their load just seemed easier. It was definitely also a lot easier to get into a good school back then.
I really believe we are comparing apples to oranges when we compare these engineering degrees that required 140 hours plus with our load today. Something does not add up; because there is no way you could cram more classes into my schedule. It's almost insulting when I read these comments, because I remember how I had no life, was absorbed 24/7 in my studying just to keep up...and then I read an article talking about how I didn't have enough hours in my degree.
Again, God given personal choice is a factor here. Some schools in the US are definitely easier than others; not all engineering schools were created the same. The caliber of freshmen in some schools is hard to compare with others. Maybe that's why we see some low quality engineers out there, jump to conclusions, and decide that the MS is the solution. Maybe the solution is for a company to be more selective in its hiring practices; to ask some fundamental technical questions at the interview; to delve into the actual courses one took, and not just behavioral questions. Did you know Samsung actually has a GRE style test for prospective management employees?
Here's one thing I learned at a community college that was sorely lacking in my prestigious curriculum; full of "sustainability". Land surveying, the bread and butter that civil engineering was built on. I learned that and it completely changed how I visualized and thought as an engineer.
My question to you, those that keep pushing to "raise the bar", is this.
What do you do when John Doe, the "Construction Management + Transportation" BS now gets an online MS in Sustainable Construction Management to fulfill your requirement of "raising the bar"?
