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 |
I agree with most other comments that it will be a big cost/time burden on licensees and most courses are not worth it, especially if they are not in the field of engineer's/architect's/surveyor's practice. Just taking courses to fulfil credit requirements is at best an inefficient shortcut to actually enhancing licensee's knowledge.
If the state is really concerned about good education, they should produce quality courses and put it on a website with free access to all the license holders. To cover the cost of developing these courses on a continuous basis, the state can may be charge an additional $50 per renewal period. Assuming there are at least 2000 license holders, this will generate $100K, which should be enough to produce some common courses (ethics, management, scheduling, etc.) and some subject specific courses (separate for electrical, mech, civil, survey, etc.). May be course contributions can be sought from distinguished professors at universities or practicing engineers/architects. If they can arrange sufficient courses, the licensees can have a good choice of available subjects which might be of actual interest to them rather than attending vague seminars.
If other licensees are reading this comment, I would like to see how many are interested in forming a collective website and contributing subject matter. We could get the state's blessing and number of credits for each course we maintain on the website. We can also form a board of participants (on a rotating basis) to maintain the website. May be even sell our services to other states' license holders.
With this requirement in the Virginia law now, I don't see this going away. We have to deal with it or find another state.