Not long after I chose electrical engineering as a major in college,
someone asked me if I was planning to take the EIT exam. What was that? It stands for “engineer in training”
and it is the customary first step in obtaining a Professional Engineer (PE)
license. To the best of my
recollection, it didn’t cost that much and I went ahead and took it, not so
much because I wanted a license but because I was the kind of nerd who couldn’t
turn down a chance to see how well he did on standardized tests. By the time I graduated, I had learned
that you had to “practice” for a specified number of years to take the next
exam to become a full-blown PE, and in the meantime I had not been able to find
anyone who could tell me what good it would do to have a PE license. So I dropped the whole thing.
Doctors and lawyers in Texas, just to choose a state I’m familiar
with, must have licenses issued respectively by the Texas Medical Board (a
government agency) or the State Bar of Texas (a private organization authorized
to grant licenses to practice law).
You can go to jail for practicing medicine without a license, and the
penalties for violating legal codes of ethics include “disbarment,” which
effectively ends your career as a lawyer.
But the codes of ethics of most engineering organizations do not have
the force of law, and the great majority of practicing engineers are not
licensed, at least not in the U. S.
(The laws of many other countries for licensing engineers more closely
resemble those of the medical and legal professions here in the U. S.)
Why can you practice engineering without a license here, but not
doctoring or lawyering? The
doctors and lawyers have to answer for themselves, but it turns out that for
engineers, every state (that I know of, anyway) has something in their laws
concerning the engineering profession called an “industrial exemption.” The gist of the exemption is this. If an engineer works for a private firm
whose products are sold outside the state where the engineer is employed, then
the state regulations don’t apply.
The federal government is not in the business of licensing engineers, so
that is the reason why you don’t need a PE license to work as an engineer in
most firms.
The industrial exemption doesn’t cover everyone. Public works such as roads, bridges,
and buildings that are all in one state are not regarded as interstate
commerce, and so many engineers working for certain civil-engineering firms must
sign off on plans as licensed engineers.
Also, there are situations in which engineers who work directly for the
public, such as consulting engineers, find it helpful if not essential to be
licensed. And there is the
prestige factor of being able to list “P. E.” after your name, but that’s a
pretty silly reason by itself.
The National Society of Professional Engineers, for one, would like it
if every engineer were licensed.
That organization performs a function similar to the state bars for
lawyers, in that it operates the examination system for licensing of engineers
and investigates alleged cases of unethical behavior by engineers. However, the power to revoke licenses
lies not with NSPE, but with the state boards of professional engineers who issue
a person’s license in a given state.
All this seems rather obscure and complicated, but most political
things are. Would we be better off
if the federal government, for example, issued engineering licenses, and no one
could be hired as an engineer even by a private firm without possessing such a
license? That is similar to what’s
happening in the medical profession today, as more and more doctors join
clinics and hospital-run HMOs rather than try to make it alone in private
practice.
If such a thing were to come about, there would be some good effects
and some bad effects. The good
effect, for engineers, anyway, is that average salaries for engineers would
probably increase, simply because the supply of engineers would go down while
the demand stayed the same.
However, a bad effect might be that universal licensing requirements for
U. S. engineers might encourage the ongoing trend to outsource engineering to
countries outside the U. S. Of
course, you could try passing laws about that too, but you might succeed only
in making an entire firm wash its hands of the U. S. altogether, if it got too
expensive to do engineering here.
Would we enjoy better-engineered products under a universal licensing
law? Somehow I suspect that
competition and quality control give us products that are the best our money can
buy most of the time already.
Microscopic state control of every aspect of manufacturing, from
engineering to marketing and distribution, was tried for decades in the old
Soviet Union. And the products
that resulted were not renowned for their attractive characteristics, although
there were exceptions.
Much later in life, when I was contemplating a move from Massachusetts
to Texas and wanted to get a job teaching in the latter state, I found out that
some schools encouraged their applicants to have a PE license. So I looked into what would be involved
in getting one in Massachusetts.
It turned out that for someone with enough years of experience, you
could avoid taking an exam altogether and simply assemble a lot of
documentation on your career and appear in person before the state board of
licensure. I did so, and I
remember one of the members asking me if I intended to practice engineering or
just teach it. I told him frankly
what my reasons were, and he said something like, “Well, if that’s all you’re
going to do with it, I guess it’s OK.”
So I walked out of the hearing with a PE license, which I have
maintained to this day.
As it happened, nobody
much cared at Texas State University (or Southwest Texas State, as it was
called then) whether I had a PE license or not. But the certificate looks nice on my wall, and I get to put
“P. E.” after my name, for what that is worth.
Should every engineer be licensed? On the whole, I think such a law would cause more problems
than it would solve, even for the engineers who might think they would benefit
from the restricted market of engineering talent that would result. But at the same time, I think it is a
good idea for every engineer at the start of his or her career to consider
becoming licensed, because it can’t hurt you, and it might help both you and
the people you are obliged to serve.
Sources: I referred to the Wikipedia article
“Regulation and licensure in engineering” and the websites of the Texas Bar
Association and the Texas Medical Board.
