Action | Develop regulations for a mandatory continuing education requirement for architect, professional engineer, and land surveyor licenses. |
Stage | Proposed |
Comment Period | Ended on 5/2/2008 |
We do not need a continuing education requirement for PEs. Such a requirement will not add to professionalism or expertise of our engineers, but will add unneeded administrative burden and costs for individuals, companies, Government and, in the end, those who benefit from engineering services. In addition to added costs, the effort to satisfy the non-productive requirement will detract from valid efforts to improve expertise, which usually must be tailored for the particular area of work. Determination of the needed training is best left to the experts in the particular areas. They know best when, what, and how such training should be provided. This will also avoid improperly legitimizing training from purveyors who are looking to get there product on the list whether or not it has a valid demand from the experts producing real useful engineering work. Similarly, it will encumber home-grown training programs that have more value due the administrative burden and roadblocks to getting on the list due to judgments from bureaucrats who don't understand the details.
In my organization we have many forms of continuing education to maintain state-of-art expertise. These must tailored to fit our needs, not those perceived by academics or those looking to make a buck by riding coattails of Government imposed requirements.
Approving these requirements will be big step BACKWARDS for true engineering professionalism in the State of