The writer seems to be fighting a battle that's already lost, against an imagined degradation of the status of engineer when the engineer term was never afforde

The writer seems to be fighting a battle that's already lost, against an imagined degradation of the status of engineer when the engineer term was never afforded the same status or responsibility as MD in medicine or JD in law. Medicine and law come with a set of legal responsibilities, government licensing, personal liability for incompetence and harm to others, and the threat of having your title stripped away. Engineer was only ever a certificate by the non-governmental ABET for college programs. Any employee deploying a degree of "ingenuity" to a problem for his employer is an engineer. If his ingenuity results in planes falling out of the sky, his employer is legally responsible, not him. Of course, Professional Engineer (PE) is entirely different with similar legal responsibilities and sanctions as medicine and law. Maybe if the terms are too confusing PEs could do what lawyers and "doctors" did and start calling themselves Doctor Machinarius (DM) and stand among the ranks of MDs, JDs, and PhDs. Of course, that would require a regulatory body with actual teeth and government power instead of ABET.