Software Engineering Professionalism - Licensing

Licensing

The National Society of Professional Engineers provides a model law and lobbies legislatures to adopt licensing regulations. The model law requires:

1. a four-year degree from a university program accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Committee (EAC) of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET),
2. an eight-hour examination on the fundamentals of engineering (FE) usually taken in the senior year of college,
3. four years of acceptable experience,
4. a second examination on principles and practice, and
5. written recommendations from other professional engineers.

Some states require continuing education.

In Texas Donald Bagert of Texas became the first professional software engineer in the U.S. on September 4, 1998 or October 9, 1998. As of May 2002, Texas had issued 44 professional engineering licenses for software engineers. Rochester Institute of Technology granted the first Software Engineering bachelor’s degrees in 2001. Other universities have followed.

Professional licensing has been criticized for many reasons.

• The field of software engineering is too immature
• Licensing would give false assurances of competence even if the body of knowledge were mature
• Software engineers would have to study years of calculus, physics, and chemistry to pass the exams, which is irrelevant to most software practitioners. Many (most?) computer science majors don't earn degrees in engineering schools, so they are probably unqualified to pass engineering exams.
• In Canada, most people who earn professional software engineering licenses study software engineering, computer engineering or electrical engineering. Many times these people already qualified to become professional engineers in their own fields but choose to be licensed as software engineers to differentiate themselves from computer scientists.
• In British Columbia, The Limited Licence is granted by the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia. Fees are collected by APEGBC for the Limited Licence.