How do you admit that you don't know how something works and then simultaneously throw out an attack on "hicks" that do?
If you knew anything about PE's, you'd know that an accredited degree is only PART of being a PE. It includes essentially an apprenticeship of sorts under another PE as well as real engineering training. The object is for "booksmarts" to be augmented with the ethics of experience, something that book learning does not provide.
A graduate with an Electrical Engineering PhD from UTexas is no more automatically a "Professional Engineer" in Texas than a BSEE from Calpoly. That's the law, and it was created for good reason in the civil and mechanical and aerospace industries. Now in the electrical and computer engineering world, it's becoming very important for people building GPS systems and software, for example, that hikers might rely on for safety, that the developer's skillset be licensed.
That said, I think it's unlikely that EE's will pursue their PE nearly as much as their civil and aero cohorts because the job market for it just isn't there.
What REALLY needs to be stopped, which isa totally different thing, is crap like the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineers misnomer. Microsoft is not any kind of accredited educational agency, nor are the people associated with this program involved with "engineering" anything at all.
Sorry I don't mean to start a flame war. I was reacting to how some people down there saw it fit to define criteria for Engr. based on their interpretations.
What REALLY needs to be stopped, which isa totally different thing, is crap like the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineers misnomer. Microsoft is not any kind of accredited educational agency, nor are the people associated with this program involved with "engineering" anything at all.
I agree on PE for Civil/Mechanical, etc. Also agree with you about MCSE being not really Engineering and IT programmers not being real engineers. No argument about that.
My point was about EEs. How can you expect EEs to go through the PE crap when we mostly work for private corps. and have very little contribution to public works, like Civil/Mechanical guys do? We work on cutting edge technologies, make significant intellectual property contributions (just compare patents in EE related fields to Civil/Mechanical) and don't think some 50 year old bureaucrat in Austin should sign off on our certification. That was the point I was trying to make. I did not mean to come across as insulting.