Engineering Inc. - January/February 2008 - (Page 23) bachelor’s By Jim Parsons A Plus for the Profession? New educational requirements raise the bar on professional licensure +30 T NCEES’ new Model Law, which has a target effective date of Jan. 1, 2015, calls for an engineer intern with a bachelor’s degree to take at least 30 additional credits of acceptable upper-level undergraduate or graduate-level coursework from approved providers before sitting for the Principles and Practice of Engineering (PE) examination. Exceptions are given to interns who already have post-graduate education credits (see Examination Essentials, page 24). Known informally as Bachelor’s Plus 30, the requirement essentially restores the educational component for engineering licensure to the 150-credit-hour degree January / February 2008 hey don’t make engineers like they used to. And to many in the profession, that’s a serious problem. Amid concerns that the gradual erosion of credit hours needed to earn a bachelor’s degree at most U.S. engineering schools is leaving graduates insufficiently prepared, the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) recently amended its educational prerequisites for professional licensure. standard used by most schools during the first half of the 20th century. Proponents such as Craig Musselman, president of ACEC-member firm CMA Engineers, Inc., in Portsmouth, N.H., say that modern challenges and preparation issues, not nostalgia, are at the heart of the issue. “Engineering programs have been pressured by legislatures, college administrators and parents to reduce the number of credit hours for graduation,” Musselman says. “At the same time, engineering curricula are being expanded with new topic areas, adding breadth of topics at the expense of depth of coverage. There’s just no way that enGIneerInG InC. Derek Lea 23
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