| Action | Develop regulations for a mandatory continuing education requirement for architect, professional engineer, and land surveyor licenses. |
| Stage | Proposed |
| Comment Period | Ended on 5/2/2008 |
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My only request of the board is to consider a means of allowing unlimited credit for self-study. In my experience, self-study generally provides the professional with the most focused and least costly means of acquiring knowledge useful in addressing the engineering needs of one's particular field of practice and set of clients. "Sponsored" programs are occasionally helpful, but usually only to gain foundational training or knowledge of a new engineering solution, design tool or technique. Even in these instances, I generally get the best learning from self study.
Now for an appeal to my fellow professionals who bemoan the fact we have to deal with these regulations...
For those of you who are also residents of Virginia, I encourage you to ask your legislators and the Governor to rescind this law. As a few others have noted, our Commonwealth enacted the legislation requiring these rules. DPOR is simply trying to do their duty.
As a professional engineer licensed in Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia and Maine, I have some familiarity with mandated CE programs (ME and WV). Unfortunately, they are easily represented as "chicken soup" by those who lobby for them. Even if you can get a proponent to concede the programs don't accomplish much, they will say the additional cost is negligible. Of course, this is nonsense. But I get the sense that, when lobbying government for "feel-good" laws, it can be easy to gloss over just how much they will tax the citizenry. Particularly when you bear in mind that many of our legislators are in the legal and insurance professions. I hear they've had to deal with mandated "continuing education" for some time now. Misery does love company.
Sarcasm aside, I am against this law. No government, no matter how noble, can develop a program to instill professionalism in a person. Neither can said government, unless massively funded and staffed, hope to run a program that will ensure all registrants are gaining and maintaining competency in their chosen technical specialties and client sets. In my opinion, continuing education mandates only divert time and resources from more optimal educational efforts.
This has been a hard lesson in civic involvement for me. Though I voiced opposition to these programs for most of my career, I was unaware of the Commonwealth's legislation until after it had passed the Assembly. I learned of it through a publication of the Virginia affiliate of the National Society of Professional Engineers. It was only then I learned VSPE had been lobbying the legislature for a mandated CE program. I immediately cancelled my membership, and regret to have been a dues-paying member of an organization which lobbied for this law.
I wrote the Governor upon learning of the legislation. Alas, he signed it into law anyway. But I will write to him and my legislators again. I hope to add my voice to many of yours, this time around.