A Conceptual Modification to the Continuing Education Requirements

[Ron247]

I just got through fulfilling my CEUs for 2025 which made me look back at the entire concept and architecture of the CEU system. The 2 major positives of them are that it keeps all of us up to speed on changes/innovations and it provides a system where we have a needed formal educational process beyond college. The thing that stood out to me about the current methodology is that IMO, it’s a better system when I am a mid-range (age-wise) registered engineer than when I am an old geezer or fresh out of college with no registration.

I just wanted to hear others’ opinions on this. The diversity of Eng-tips should provide some good insight. The following has more to do with me, than others.

I most needed CEUs fresh out of college, but since I was not registered, there are no requirements to get them. On the other hand, ever since I got over 65 and glued my left turn signal into the “On” position as required by AARP, the CEUs are difficult to find that could really help me. Everything is either too basic, unrelated to what I do or something I just go through the motions on to meet a “requirement”.

From this point forward, I am talking as a structural engineer although the concepts apply to all of us who need CEUs in any field. In Civil, structures is one of 6 subsets of specialties that a 4-year degree does not completely encompass. I can easily think of 10 courses I could have used right out of college but were not part of the normal 4-year curriculum. Some are SE related, some are just general business related. The following are examples:

• Cold-formed steel design: I needed this on day 1 of my first job and the employer taught me over time
• Masonry-I needed this as soon as I went from Job 1 to Job 2. Learned on my own
• Light gauge steel framing; kissing cousin of cold-formed; needed on Job 2
• Building Code-Needed on Day 1 of first job
• Stiffness and FE Programs; got them with a Masters
• Problem Solving & Goal Achievement; created my own method eventually
• Working in Groups; still learning on this one
• Transitioning from Technical to Practical; still learning on this one

Looking back, I wish I could have used the old “Lay-Away” plan from the 60s. I wish I could have paid for really meaningful courses I needed when I was not registered BUT WORKING UNDER A PE, and then been allowed to ‘carry them forward” once I got over 60. I would have wanted to Lay-Away my CEUs. Get them when I need them the most and give me a 3 to 4 year break when I get older to pay me back for being motivated earlier. Even if I could only use them every other year it would still be an improvement in my warped way of thinking. I understand it would require changes to an existing system, but so was the initial creation of the entire CEU system.

The courses I am talking about would be in-depth courses equal to a 3 to 4 hour college course and the test would be proctored by my PE mentor. The cost of $200 to $400 for a single real “self-study” course that literally helps me at work right them and saves me an entire years’ worth of CEUs in the future may not sound good to a young engineer graduate, but they may want to do some critical thinking on the subject if they are serious about this as a “life-long” profession.

Any opinions, criticisms or modifications to the concept?

 

[Ron247]

We had to write our own FEA software in FORTRAN with f'n punch cards! (did I just age myself?)

Same here. Sad thing is, the same people who are saying what the hell is a punch card, would have the same response if you said 5-1/4 or 3-1/2 floppy disk.

 

[phamENG]

Was the 3-1/2 really floppy, though?

 

[JAE]

That is why good mentors are so necessary. They are supposed to help direct you, but you have to be your own motivator. I

100% agree.

I am advocating for a more structured offering of additional after-graduation study partly steered by your employer but designed by a university for example.

This is where I'm at 0% agree.

The university - and follow on seminars don't get you what you need to do your job. The expectation that you should not feel uncomfortable not knowing something in the true industry - like the existence of the NEC for example - is unwise. Of course you're not going to know even some of the basics. That's why you need on-the-job training under your mentor. Most engineers hiring young graduates fully understand this. It is always a process.

"Structured offerings" and after-graduation classes don't cut it in my view. I think that's where we differ.

Actually working on projects, stumbling about at first, then beginning to cruise is what it's all about. Most of my mentees got independent within a couple of years - still asking questions of me 3, 4 or even 7 years later but I ask questions too after >40 years.

Finally - I think the sense of urgency to get on top of your profession asap is perhaps a cult of our current society where everything has to happen NOW - maybe caused by the iPHone - I don't know for sure.

 

[Ron247]

Was the 3-1/2 really floppy, though?

I stand corrected, it was just a "disk". Sometimes, when they would go bad, I would turn them into a punched disk or a stomped disk depending on how much info I lost in the process.

 

[JAE]

Was the 3-1/2 really floppy, though?

I used to work with a Wang 2200 computer with a hard drive that I swear used 10" x 10" truly floppy disks.

 

[Ron247]

LOL, were starting to sound like an auction, We got 5 and a 1/4, 5-1/4, 5-1/4, Whoa now we got 10, do I hear 12, 12, 12, 12, last chance; sold for 10.

 

[phamENG]

I swear used 10" x 10" truly floppy disks.

Never saw one that big. The true floppies were going out right as I started learning to use a computer. My grandfather had one, but he wouldn't let us touch it until we'd had a class in school (7th grade, I think?). I learned on computers that had the 3.5" hard disks, and then CDs changed the game as I got to high school - most of the school computers had dual drives.

So I'm not quite as old as some of you, but the new grads coming out of school today make me feel it sometimes...

 

[Ron247]

JAE got me on the 10, we did have an 8" for one of the CE office computers, but students had the 5-1/4.
When the IBM PCs first came out ( I mean the super-powerful 256s), it was a 3-hour senior level course to learn DOS, Wordstar, Basic, and RBase. DOS had like 12 commands at the time. I mean senior in college, not in high school.

Carrying the box around with 5-1/4 disks all day sucked, but I cannot imagine 10" disks. It would look like you are carrying a big lunch box everywhere you go.

 

[JAE]

Ron247 - it might have been 8".

But I swear that northern pike I caught at my lake last week was 34" long....maybe 37.

 

[Ron247]

I dunno if they're particularly effective but my understanding was that the CEU requirements are really just intended to prevent mid/late career engineers from checking out & falling behind the times as codes, standards, research, available materials & products, etc. change.

As I recall, that is the origin of CEUs. Trying to make someone do what they should be doing anyway. My main problem with the system is that it does not steer anyone into doing what is right. Either you have a professional work ethic, or you don't. It is not just old engineers. I remember seeing a new set of drawings in the 90s, that used either a 1963 or 1968 concrete code. To top the punch card reference for age, in the 60s, concrete was still ASD working stress. I know the engineer. He was about 40 to 45 at the time.

courses benefits me either way

Many involved in this post, probably get way more CEUs in the normal course of a year than they need. That is not me. I now only need to stay updated on about 3 or 4 codes. I rarely do anything complicated anymore. At one time I had 4 unrelated licenses that each required CEUs. Engineering, Contractor, Privacy and Information Security. I dropped 3 this year over CEUs. I never actually used the Privacy or Information Security but kind of wound up with them while helping come up with training in them for people who worked for a friend.

Nothing I proposed here would help me, that ship has sailed.

 

[IRstuff]

Was the 3-1/2 really floppy, though?

Yeah, they were, once you got through the case. So, slightly thicker that the 5.25" floppy disc, but with a much harder/stiffer case.

As for the older generation of floppies, it was 8", not 10", as far as I know. We had a VAX-10 computer, which was huge, covering multiple equipment racks, that all booted from ye olde 8" floppy.

 

[JAE]

Yes and those 8" disks were indeed floppy.

 

[IRstuff]

Yes and those 8" disks were indeed floppy.

I had one I saved for posterity, but not sure where it is anymore

 

[Ron247]

I had one I saved for posterity, but not sure where it is anymore

Did you make a time capsule somewhere in the past? I think that is where my "girl-watcher" sunglasses are at. Can't sing the song, if you don't wear the glasses.

 

[skeletron]

All of the provinces I am registered in have some sort of "roll-over" where any additional CEUs can spill over to the next 3 years. There is a ceiling for how many hours can be rolled over and it is also dependent on how many categories you hit. But the intent is that it allows someone to take advantage of longer form courses. In my experience, the longer form courses are the ones I'm usually interested in because they offer more useful technical information. They also cost more than the 1-hr [insert manufacturer] webinars that allow you to check the box. There are some longer form courses that I'm putting off until I can run up my CEU total and truly get the full value out of the course...it's a dangerous game though.

I think the lay-away plan has some merit but I also see the associations balking at it because it could be quite a bit of administrative work. One association used to require you to upload a CE plan every year and then quickly scrapped that because they can't review every registrant's plan until the audits come up. It would be interesting though to actually have them track your CEU's through your career. Perhaps enforce a minimum "average" hours per year so that you don't go a decade without any CEUs. But maybe this would give registrants an opportunity to have a longer vision for their career goals.

I don't know why early year career CEUs aren't really counted. That's probably the time workplaces instill the habit of constant education (i.e. one of the principles of a profession). My workplaces certainly did by sending me to seminars or lunch-and-learns.

 

[Ron247]

All of the provinces I am registered in have some sort of "roll-over" where any additional CEUs can spill over to the next 3 years. There is a ceiling for how many hours can be rolled over and it is also dependent on how many categories you hit.

Most of mine only allow you to roll over from the previous year and many limit the hours. A 3-year cycle coupled with more roll-over hours would be a vast improvement. As you state, it allows for a bigger time investment on a single subject you may really want or need.

I think the lay-away plan has some merit but I also see the associations balking at it because it could be quite a bit of administrative work.

I saw the record keeping as an issue also, but many states don't actually record your CEUs, they tell us to keep the records in case of an audit.

But maybe this would give registrants an opportunity to have a longer vision for their career goals.

My desire was to give recent graduates and hires a better chance to get essential training early in their career and then build on it throughout their career. This can be more beneficial to those that did not hit the lottery with the first mentor they got. But as you state, courses like this require more than 3 to 4 hours. I do not want to add hours to what is already required, and want it to be an option to the employee. Let them invest extra early, get paid back later.

Thanks for the input. Seeing and having things explained from different viewpoints helps build a better mouse-trap.

 

[jhnblgr]

Continuing education is a good idea but the execution of it has been dumbed down so much it’s become red tape in the US. Likely you really should be required to take a college level course every few years in the area you practice to keep current or things very specialized in nature. A lot of engineers forget the very basics of engineering before even graduating I have found when trying to explain complex topics using the basic fundamentals. I don’t think the schools are failing so much as the students don’t value the information enough to keep it in their memory, since the can quote the last few NBA game stats but not the definition of shear.

 

[Ron247]

I had someone I worked with like that. When I tried to teach them the few different lumber sizes (2x4, 2x6 etc), they said they could never remember all that. They could, however, cite about EVERY piece of info on his favorite college football team's players. Name, position, high school, height, weight and whether they were a senior, freshman etc.

 

[CWB1]

CPE = Continuing Professional Education. The courses and credits/hours are colloquially called CPEs. Not sure why some states shorten it to CE, but feds and most cert providers use CPE.

Can you elaborate on this statement, I am not following the context or intent.

Grads who are serious about being in a technical role go into a corporate training program to round out their technical and business knowledge. Like many professions, college is a basic education but where we trained is the bragging point bc that's what quickly brings us up to professional competency. Technically neither college nor training programs are required but without both you're a decade or two behind the curve and unlikely to be considered competent to hold technical roles at most companies. You could mandate that juniors take CPEs or other external courses but that wouldnt change the result bc like college, they're too generalized and hypothetical to be meaningful, and usually taught by less competent professionals/academics/consultants. An internal 40-hour FEA course that uses the same tools, processes, requirements, and parts/assemblies that the students see daily, and taught by senior CAE analysts sharing real good/bad/ugly lessons-learned over decades of edge-cases is a far better education than 16 weeks of hypotheticals at the local U. It'd take juniors many years to learn those lessons via regular work/projects alone. Likewise there's no replacement for VPs discussing profit/loss/financials, PMs showing manpower/budgeting tools/data, test engineers reviewing FMEAs, etc. Its the reason many say they learned more in their training year(s) than they did in undergrad or could in a master's, which is why few pursue advanced degrees.

The risk of doing as you suggest is that you're creating another credential of false-competency, which makes regulation more difficult and disasters more common. Sadly, we have many engineers today who dont realize that they are downright dangerous bc they weren't trained properly yet have licenses/certs/credentials suggesting otherwise. The plethora of highly-credentialed engineers in design-only companies who've never tested/validated anything yet believe their analyses are accurate/safe is simply mind-boggling. JMO but if we want to have licenses or other credentials let's set decent standards - completion of a recognized corporate training program; 20+ years in a niche across various design, analysis and testing roles; and research/patents/papers demonstrating that we're familiar with modern methods.

Personally, I expect juniors to be familiar with first-principles, regulation/code requirements, and standards but not reliant on them. I've seen many failures bc twits treated first-principle calcs as an alternative to detailed FEA/other analysis, bc regulations or standards were treated as how-tos or misunderstood/misapplied, or other nonsense.

 

[XR250]

I've seen many failures bc twits treated first-principle calcs as an alternative to detailed FEA/other analysis,

There are likely more cases that are the opposite of this. i.e - jump to FEA when first principals would suffice or not checking the output with first principals. We see this quite often in this forum.