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Having an engineering diploma is not the same as having an engineering license though. In US, 99% of engineers do not have a professional engineer license.

by bsoles 2y ago

feoren 2y ago
I'm not sure what that has to do with my comment at all, but your 99% number is definitely way off. The number of PEs in the US seems to be around 500,000 per NCEES. That represents way more than 1% of all "engineers" -- there are not 50 million "engineers" in the US, unless Subway has started calling their employees "Sandwich Engineers" now. What are you counting as an engineer, if not a PE? For this discussion, an engineer would be someone working in a profession where a PE license is available, matching their day-to-day work. You could say "what about software engineers?" but that will skew your numbers, because we don't know how many SEs would be licensed PEs if a licensing program was available (which is kinda what we're discussing here). The question is: for those professions where a PE license is available, how many get it? This is a number that seems a bit hard to find, but the consensus seems to be around 20%. So you're off by a factor of 20x. Please don't just make up random stats, or you will be contributing to the misinformation in the world.
- bsoles 2y ago
  An engineer is someone who has an engineering degree from a college/university; it is that simple. Having a PE license or not has nothing to do with being an engineer. The PE only brings additional responsibilities, liabilities, and signature authority to someone who is already an engineer. Otherwise, what do you propose we should call someone who has, say, a mechanical engineering degree from a university? Are they not an engineer? I also don't care about the numbers of an organization who has a conflict-of-interest in the matter. I teach graduate level engineering classes and I know for a fact that almost nobody in my classes goes for the PE license. That is representative enough for me over the years.

Having an engineering diploma is not the same as having an engineering license though. In US, 99% of engineers do not have a professional engineer license.

by bsoles 2y ago

Having an engineering diploma is not the same as having an engineering license though. In US, 99% of engineers do not have a professional engineer license.

feoren 2y ago

I'm not sure what that has to do with my comment at all, but your 99% number is definitely way off. The number of PEs in the US seems to be around 500,000 per NCEES. That represents way more than 1% of all "engineers" -- there are not 50 million "engineers" in the US, unless Subway has started calling their employees "Sandwich Engineers" now. What are you counting as an engineer, if not a PE? For this discussion, an engineer would be someone working in a profession where a PE license is available, matching their day-to-day work. You could say "what about software engineers?" but that will skew your numbers, because we don't know how many SEs would be licensed PEs if a licensing program was available (which is kinda what we're discussing here). The question is: for those professions where a PE license is available, how many get it? This is a number that seems a bit hard to find, but the consensus seems to be around 20%. So you're off by a factor of 20x. Please don't just make up random stats, or you will be contributing to the misinformation in the world.

bsoles 2y ago
An engineer is someone who has an engineering degree from a college/university; it is that simple. Having a PE license or not has nothing to do with being an engineer. The PE only brings additional responsibilities, liabilities, and signature authority to someone who is already an engineer. Otherwise, what do you propose we should call someone who has, say, a mechanical engineering degree from a university? Are they not an engineer? I also don't care about the numbers of an organization who has a conflict-of-interest in the matter. I teach graduate level engineering classes and I know for a fact that almost nobody in my classes goes for the PE license. That is representative enough for me over the years.