Protesting ASCE's Raise the Bar Initiative 49

[gendna2]

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"?

 

[WiSEiwish]

As a fairly recent grad (2008) from engineering school and a recent PE (2012) with only a BSE in Civil Engineering I have a few thoughts.

First, I find the proposed requirement to obtain a Masters is ridiculous for a few reasons. From my own experience I found that learning takes off on the job. I have learned way more in my 6.5 years of engineering experience than I did in school. I understand there is probably going to be some sort of grandfather clause associated with any new rule, but to play the game, if I went back to school now for a masters degree I would most likely be no better off and arguably worse off as it would limit the time spent on the job. As the current requirement to obtain a PE requires four years of relevant, documented experience, the amount of knowledge gained in those four years post graduation will more than account for the two years spent behind a book in a classroom.

Second, engineering is an ever changing field. Any good professional realizes this and takes it upon himself to understand the trends and new design methodology to stay on top of the field. Self study is a practical requirement to ensure that you are consistently doing a good job. Also, a masters just out of college is done with your best guess as to what you want to do. How often do we realize we have favorites on the job? As our careers progress toward (hopefully) a sub-discipline that we like the most we can direct our self-study toward what is most applicable to us. This is going to be more productive in the long run than getting a masters will be.

Third, I find the thought of a masters being required more an indictment of the current standards for a bachelors degree than for the actual need for more qualified engineers. My degree program required 128 credit hours. The amount of time spent in school was more than enough time for me to gain adequate knowledge to not be completely clueless as I stepped into my first job. However, I still felt overwhelmed. My degree required some amount of humanities courses which I find irrelevant. Sure the academics want us well rounded individuals with a broad knowledge base, but it is their misunderstanding that tells them that this knowledge base is best achieved in school. Engineers are smart enough to know that some amount of social skills are required to do their job and some amount of knowledge outside of the engineering field is generally preferred, but that comes with being human and doesn't need to be told to us. We don't need college to grow in knowledge in other areas. I took 16 credit hours of math and, so far in my career, I've taken integrals and derivatives which are all taught in the first Calculus class. By the time I worked through all the red tape classes to get at what I wanted to do I was almost done with college. Shouldn't structural analysis, steel design, concrete design, and others be introduced very early on in our college careers (using structural engineering as an example)? There are enough required but unnecessary classes that could be eliminated in favor of engineering focused classes that would allow for individuals to achieve masters level knowledge in four years.

 

[Forensic74]

I dunno guys, I practiced in the field for almost a decade before going back for a MS and can say it was worth it from a technical perspective for me. Learned a lot about the development of codes and the research process which has become useful in practice. That being said, I think the whole initiative is to improve perception of our industry by outsiders. Owners, clients, etc (aka people who dont know better), seem to take people with advanced degrees more seriously whether or not its really justified.

 

[capeengineerma]

The biggest issue I have with this initiative is the language and the type of additional courses they are talking about including in the requirements to receive a master's degree. I could maybe support it if they were talking about adding a bunch more technical requirements to make engineers more educated in their desired field or specialty, however from the articles I have read, they are talking about adding a bunch of touchy-feely courses in international relations, human interaction, green design, etc, etc. They use the whole idea about how the engineering field is world wide and engineers need to know how to work in this global economy and relate to all the interactions involved in other cultures. That is a one size fits all approach assuming that most engineers are going to work for large international firms. I would guess that less than 25 % of engineers that actually get licensed are employed or are ever involved with firms that do international work.

It all comes down to what was said in the earlier posts: the ASCE is trying to make engineering on the same level as doctors and lawyers for educational requirement prior to licensing with the idea that it will bring a higher level of respect to the profession and in turn increased wages...which will never happen.

 

[hawkaz]

jdgengineer wrote:
"I went to UC Berkeley for my master's and I found the coursework incredibly useful (perhaps not everyone would agree). The classes I took were:
-Advanced Concrete Design
-Advanced Steel Design
-Wood Design
-Advanced Matrix Structural Analysis
-Nonlinear Matrix Structural Analysis
-Dynamics of Structures
-Advanced Earthquake Analysis
-Earthquake Resistant Design"


Most of these classes were part of my BS degree in the mid 80s. Are they not part of the BS programs anymore?

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

None of them were for my BS in Civil Engineering. Unless you want to count the typical steel and concrete design courses, or the matrix structural analysis course, as "advanced". I did take wood design as an elective but it was typically a graduate level course.

Maine Professional and Structural Engineer.

http://www.fepc.us

(Just passed the 16-hour SE exam, woohoo!)

 

[Lomarandil]

Among others:

BS degree (2010)
Concrete Design
Timber/Masonry Design (as elective)
Advanced Structural Analysis (as elective)

MS Degree (2012)
Steel Design
Advanced Concrete Design
Advanced Steel Design
Dynamics of Structures
Advanced Earthquake Analysis
Earthquake Resistant Design

And that was at a "rigorous, engineering focused" school with minimal liberal arts/humanities classes.

 

[IRstuff]

The last group of posts seem to be skirting an issue that is prevalent in the "unwashed" masses that make minimum wage. There is continual pressure to make productivity improvements, which, for a mostly brain-dependent industry means that you try to cut salaries. An (obvious) goal, therefore, might be to winnow out the fewer MS engineers to be the, previously, licensed engineers, and make the BS engineers to be the equivalent of nurse practitioner or physician's assistants, who are now tasked with treating patients at a much lower wage than the full-up doctors as a way of keeping medical costs down.

The posts that I've read about getting an MS is that in the SE and CE fields, there's little premium for getting the advanced degree, so the way to higher productivity and cost efficiency is to push down everyone that doesn't have an MS.

Not that I'm a conspiracy theorist... just saying...

TTFN
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[GerryBertier]

BS in Civil? My degree was BS in Architectural Engineering (structural specialty) and I had:

Advanced Structural Analysis
Soil Mechanics
Advanced Steel
Advanced Concrete
Wood/Masonry Design

Other classes I had that really helped:
Construction Law
Sustainable Design
Estimating
Project Management for CM
(2) Electrical Design Courses
(2) HVAC Design Courses
A full year Senior Design Project where I drafted/engineered a building with other specialties.

Even though I only have a BS, I was still able to pass the 16 hour SE Exam with some effort.

There are other structurals at my work with MS Degrees and for the most part, I still feel technically equal to them.

I'm constantly learning, whether on this site, webinars, publications from AISC,ACI,AISI or APA. And paying good text books when they go on sale to fill out my library.

I can learn and be much better at work by spending 40k in the above ways. School is just so expensive, I can't justify it.

Maybe school will come down at some point and it'll be worth it for me.

 

[hawkaz]

I was an opponent of the MS requirements- but if schools aren't teaching these classes at the BS level anymore, something will need to be done differently. Personally, I think we should go back to teaching these at the BS level.

When I was in school, some classmates stayed on to get their MS. Several years later, they thought it was a waste of time. I got a 2 year head start on them with experience and they were never able to catch up.

 

[gendna2]

This is a great thread, people are having an intelligent conversation about something that really matters to their lives. Thank you for not flaming me or my original post.

I. I have an interesting point to reiterate based on hawkaz's post. Hawkaz stated that he was able to take several courses in the 80s, such as as Advanced Steel and Concrete Design, or Advanced Earthquake design, in the 80s as part of his BS. I don't understand how this was possible back then. If people can shed some light on this, I'm really open and curious.

Here is what I originally wrote:

"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."

To add to that, I came in with AP credits and took maybe one or two general educational courses. There was no way, unless you were a workaholic and a genius, for you to jam any more engineering courses into a 4 year pipeline without removing physics, math, chemistry, or solid mechanics courses. Sure, there were those bright students, who went to the A+ large high schools in suburbs somewhere; and they had taken two levels of Calculus, Physics, etc... and they could, theoretically, get their MS in 4 years....but those people were the exception. Again, I don't see how people in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, were able to take all these advanced, graduate level courses, in their undergraduate studies.

II. I plan on getting an MS in structural engineering and think it will be valuable.

My most important point is free will, free decision making, and a truly free market.

I don't want guildism, coercion, market distortion, and overall educational inflation; where pretty soon everyone will have a "college degree".

III. IRStuff, I agree with you man. The last couple of years, I go to the doctor, and I deal with a Nurse Practitioner. I got not problems with NPs, they're fine, and I'm sure they are way cheaper...but what we've really done, is put a band aid on the bigger cost problem. I'm sure if we had a freer market, with less requirements for that Doctor to be a doctor, i.e. no need for a bachelor's prior to medical school; the way it is in most of the world, where medical school is a 6 year integral program, costs would go down. That's one thing among many that keeps costs high in the US versus other countries...even though the health outcomes are the same in many cases.

 

[KENAT]

Sidebar - not sure where your 6 year without bachelors comes from genda, in the UK if you go straight to med school from 'high school' then it's a 5 year course - unless you take an extra year to get a bachelors as well. At least that was the case back in late 90's when I had friends studying medicine.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[IRstuff]

The typical US medical school path is 4 yr pre-med ending with something like a BA-Bio, followed by 4 yr medical school. followed by a minimum of 3 yr residency, for Family Practice. Even with a 5-yr combo college/medical school, there's still a minimum of 3 yrs of residency. Other disciplines like Surgery can extend residency out to 7 yr, which puts someone at age 32 before they're no longer in a teaching hospital environment.

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[canwesteng]

There's simply no way you'd get to what I consider advanced concrete design in a four year degree. Similarly with advanced earthquake analysis. At the same time, someone with a thesis based masters is not going to have covered these to a sufficient extent and is going to need a lot of experience under a senior engineer and read up on the subject to be able to execute these properly. There is no substitute for experience.

 

[gendna2]

Kenat, I believe that in some Eastern European countries and definitely Vietnam, medical school is 6 years without any pre-BS degree. Just some knowledge I know from people that went to medical school there.

Of course, these countries also have specializations and years of residency as well, with some specializations taking a great deal of time.

/

canwesteng, good point on the thesis based masters. If you take that option, you have even less classes to get all your advanced courses.

/

Still, what I'm really curious about is an older engineer's perspective who went through school in the 60s or 70s. I just want to know how they could take significantly more classes than we do today.

 

[IRstuff]

The US might be different; there are those of the conspiracy bent that think that purpose of the entire chain of college, medical school, and residency is to limit the number of qualified doctors. Certainly, the typical college degree used for pre-med is not necessarily that relevant to the medical degree itself.

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[hawkaz]

gendna2, How many credit hours are required for graduation these days? It was 140 at a prominent midwest school in the 80s. I have heard 128 now- is that accurate?
We also had minimal liberal arts requirements, no physical education requirements, minimal rhetoric... Heavy emphasis on our majors.

 

[Lomarandil]

Well, that may not mean much.. My alma mater recently caved to pressure and brought the number of credits required back to 139.5

They did this by reducing the value of lab courses, instead of removing any.

 

[WiSEiwish]

Hawkaz, as of 2008 it was 128 credit hours at the University of Michigan. Attached is the sample schedule.

Of the 128 credit hours that are required for a degree they are broken down as follows:
All program requirements: 55hr
Advanced math: 7hr
Technical Core Subjects: 18hr
Program Subjects: 28hr
Technical Electives: 9hr

From my experience, noted above, this schedule does not provide the student with adequate knowledge when starting a career post baccalaureate. It would seem that a masters would be a great idea. However, requiring a masters is a tricky matter. First it costs a lot of money. Second, it can delay entry into the workforce. Third, it can be essentially an admission that the bachelors curriculum is simply not good enough. In order to save time and money it would seem that the ideal thing to do would be to revise the curriculum. "Raising the bar" to a masters seems like special interests in education getting the money they want.

Here is what I would do for the Civil Engineering Degree.
All program requirements: (Free up 20 credits)
1. Rename to Technical Core Subjects
2. Cut the humanities and social sciences out completely +16 credits.
3. Eliminate Engineering 101 (Computer programming) + 4 credits
Advanced Mathematics: (7 hours - Leave as is)
Technical Core Subjects: (18 hours - Leave as is)
Program Subjects: (28 hours - Leave as is)
Technical Electives: (18 hours - Add +9 Credits)
1. Declare concentration and have 4 required technical electives for that concentrations = 12 credits.
2. Two courses (6 credits) are left for the student to choose from the other concentration's electives.
General Electives: (11 hours)
1. This could be anything.

 

[HamburgerHelper]

I kind of wonder how this will play out in my field ,power, where probably 90%+ of the people I have worked with that have graduate degrees have H-1Bs or some other immigrant classification. Most of those immigrants I suspect get graduate level degrees not because they are needed for most positions but because it helps with finding companies that will sponsor them.

That said I can readily tell when I work with people who has a very solid power education that from a school that had a good undergrad or graduate power program and who has had to pick up everything on the job but I don't think graduate work should be a requirement. There is a huge shortage of power engineers as it is, increasing the requirements for superficial reasons doesn't benefit anyone.

 

[gendna2]

hawkaz,

I checked my school, and the number of required credits is 128. When I graduated, I had over 140.

Here is a breakdown:

-4 core CE courses in your primary are of emphasis (RC Design*, Steel Design*, Integrated Structural Design*, Advanced Structural Analysis, i.e. matrix analysis)
-2 CE courses in secondary area of emphasis (Highway Design*, i.e. mostly the geometric aspects, Railroad Track Design*)
-5 breadth CE courses (Structural, Transportation, Geotechnical, Engineering Surveying, Construction Materials)
-4 Mechanics Courses: Statics, Solid Mechanics, Dynamics, Hydraulics
-7 Match Courses: Calculus I, II, III, Differential Equations, Matrix Theory, Engineering Statistics, Engineering Economics and Optimization
-4 Physics Courses: Newtonian, Electro-Magnetic, Quanthum, Thermo
-2 Chemistry Courses:
-1 Engineering Graphics Course (very difficult course, crammed ridiculous amounts of information into the course), 1 CS course (also very difficult due to cramming)

Chemistry, Hydraulics, Materials Engineering, and maybe Physics were 4 hour courses because they had a lab; but 3 of the above courses were only 2 hours, so let's say each course was 3 hours for simplicity. The courses with a star had a large design project at the end. Overall, this equals about 90 hours.

On top of this I took:
-AAS in Land Surveying Technology, CAD Certificate (very good program, dove deep into plan reading, drafting, and spent a lot of time in the field surveying)
-RC II, Construction Management Cost Accounting, Wood Design
-AP courses for most of my humanities and general education requirements
-Business Writing, which was a very good course

Conclusion: Disagree on removing humanities requirements, but agree on making them remedial, i.e. if you have to take them during the regular semesters, it'll bump your time in college to 4.5 years. I am appalled at the overall lack of cultural, historic, and english knowledge that many "university" graduates have these days. That being said, throwing courses at them is not the answer; making them re-mediate in the key concepts of American history, European history, and English is important.

I would re-move my college's politically correct insistence on a non-western humanity; or a foreign language. I'd also get rid of computer programming, it was a painful waste of time. I wish I could have taken the business computer programming which taught them to program with excel; mine tried to cram C, Unix, and Matlab into one course....it was awful.

Finally, the "3 hour" courses I took seemed to be 3 hours in name only; they behaved more like 4 courses. Just something to think about.