Registered or Licensed? 2

[SLTA]

When you're promoting yourself to engineering laymen, such as in an informational brochure, do you refer to yourself as a registered engineer or a licensed engineer?

 

[cvg]

never heard of a professional doctor, professional lawyer or professional hair dresser, even though all are required to take an exam and be licensed through the state. Never heard of an amateur Engineer (I'm sure they do exist), although other professions use the term. Rather unfortunate that both the public and the engineering community treats the engineering profession with such little respect that we have to add another descriptor such as "professional" or "licensed" to indicate that we meet the minimum requirements to practice...

 

[IRstuff]

There is a BIG difference, as you already know. Doctors, lawyers, etc. cannot practice AT ALL, without a license, but most states have industrial exemptions for engineers, as it should be.

" public and the engineering community treats the engineering profession with such little respect "

Let's be realistic here; no one can claim that hairdressers have "respect" akin to that of doctors, and certainly, few profess any respect for lawyers.

I don't think there is, or every will be, a public level of respect for engineers that can comparable with that of doctors. Doctors get respect because their work has direct impact on everyday people evey day. That will never happen with engineers because their work is only exposed to the public when it fails, and usually, only when it fails drastically. Nonetheless, engineers who can look at ailing engineering artifacts and diagnose them like doctors get considerable level of respect from their peers.

I would further dispute that doctors receive that much respect anyway; the broad public generally sees doctors as pill pushers and orderers of excessive medical tests.

TTFN

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