Why Raise the Bar?

 

 

 

 


A Commitment to Engineering Excellence

The complex challenges facing 21st-century society will require professional engineers (PEs) to advance their technical excellence and professional leadership. The engineering education of the present—a four-year undergraduate degree—will not be sufficient to prepare the licensed professional engineers of the future.
 

A need for expanded knowledge

PEs need greater breadth and depth of knowledge, leadership, and vision to address the increasingly complex challenges facing society.
 

Society expects more

Every other learned profession has recognized the need to require education beyond the bachelor’s degree. The time has come for engineering—with its broad impact— to recognize that need as well.
 

Current education hours are insufficient

The credits required to earn the traditional four-year undergraduate engineering degree have decreased significantly. The expanding technical and professional knowledge required by engineers can no longer be learned within a four-year bachelor’s degree experience.
 

Enhanced leadership skills

PEs with enhanced technical, leadership, communications, and business skills will give the profession more effective project teams, generating improved operations and service.
 

Engineering licensure boards support advancing education

The organization representing licensure boards remains committed to improving education standards to better prepare engineers to enter the profession and voted to develop a position statement that supports additional engineering education beyond a bachelor’s degree.