July 2008
NSPE TODAY
By Executive Director Larry Jacobson
I am somewhat baffled by the ongoing debate over the proposed requirement to increase the threshold for PE licensure from a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree to a B.S. plus 30 additional credit hours—the rough equivalent of a master's degree in engineering.
Both sides debate the economics of licensure. Those who want to raise the bar might risk limiting supply because only the best students will be able to sit for the exam. Those who want to maintain the status quo hope to increase supply by allowing more marginal students to sit for the exam. The economic arguments obey the law of supply and demand, and the outcomes are predictable.
The reason I am baffled is nobody has argued for or against the continued existence of the professional engineer as a member of a profession, and moreover, a learned profession. Professionals come in several gradations. People who earn their livings doing almost anything classify themselves as "professional." There are professional barbers and truck drivers. Some professionals are highly skilled. Consider professional musicians or professional baseball players. Yet another stratum contains professional accountants, stockbrokers, actuaries, and business executives. They are usually highly educated.
And finally we reach the top of the heap, the learned professions. Take a moment to Google "learned profession." You'll discover that it's a technical term referring to a very limited group of professionals: physicians, attorneys, and engineers. Sometimes university professors are included. Sometimes ordained clergy is included. But the core group is doctors, lawyers, and most of the people who are reading this column: licensed professional engineers. Indeed, that's a very exclusive set of professions.
The thing that separates the learned professions from all other professions is a body of knowledge that is so broad and so technical that it requires specialized schooling to learn. Nobody is smart enough or insightful enough or clever enough to figure out the learned professions without attending specialty schools where the discipline is taught by professors of vast learning and experience. The need to be taught a learned profession is the rationale for the existence of the classic medical, law, and engineering schools.
The learned professions of medicine, law, and engineering are licensed to protect the public from unauthorized practice by those who don't possess learning and experience deemed worthy of the public trust. In effect, the law creates a legal monopoly. The law reasons that only those at the very pinnacle their professional food chain will be allowed and encouraged to use professional judgment to solve problems and advance mankind. It is the learned professionals who write the rules for everyone in their food chain, yet the learned professional who writes the rules is the only one allowed to exercise professional judgment rather than simply follow prescriptive rules. Their standard is to always use the best professional judgment and act with the highest degree of integrity and ethics. That is the reason ethics is such an important element of any learned profession.
These learned professions also enjoy special benefits and protections under the law. Since the special knowledge can be known only by persons who have been specially schooled in the profession, it makes no sense for the acts of these professionals to be judged by those outside their profession. Members of the learned professions enjoy a malpractice standard that allows them to be evaluated by others in their profession. After all, who would ever become licensed in one of the learned professions if he or she had to be right 100% of the time? Attorneys apply their best judgment, but one side or the other loses every case that's litigated. Physicians apply their best judgment, but every patient inevitably will finally succumb to disease or accident. Despite application of best judgment, even the best educated and most experienced professional engineer will make a mistake. It is because physicians, attorneys, and PEs are at the top of their professions and in the very best position to make wise and balanced choices that they are allowed to exercise professional judgment and don't have to be right all the time. If that were the case, there would be no innovation or advancement for the good of the public.
Maintaining the status of a learned profession assumes the professional and the profession itself keep up with the ever-expanding body of knowledge. To fall behind ultimately disqualifies the practitioner from having the capacity to apply professional judgment. So, in order to keep up, the learned professions require continuing education both in the technical substance and the ethical application of that expanding knowledge.
Over time, the learned professions have significantly raised the threshold of learning to enter their professions. In response to their exploding body of knowledge, medical education requires a four-year degree as prerequisite to a four-year medical school. Legal education is somewhat similar. Entrance into law school requires a four-year undergraduate degree followed by three years of law school. Engineering also has experienced an expanding body of knowledge, but engineering schools have regressed from five years (160 credit hours) to a four-year (125 credit hours) undergraduate degree. To its credit, the engineering profession is considering restoring its threshold of licensure to the equivalent of a fifth year of academic study.
It is clear to me that in the case of the engineering profession, there is much more at stake than simple economic arguments can describe. If licensed professional engineers fail to raise the educational threshold for licensure, they will ultimately be declassified from the status of a learned profession. That will result in a loss of long-enjoyed privilege, protection, and status. It was a tough, uphill battle to establish engineering as a licensed profession. To lose that status by failing to keep pace with the body of knowledge would be short sighted. The profession needs to be vigilant to maintain its status and avoid Esau's classic mistake of trading his birthright for a bowl of soup.
