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Advanced Education to Become a Licensed Land

Surveyor: Is It a Help or a Hindrance?

By Trent J. Keenan, PLS

We had multiple panel discussions focused on moving the profession forward at the
2022 Western Regional Survey Conference. This conversation centered on whether the
advanced education requirement is a help or a hindrance to the profession, and this is an
abstract article based on these discussions.
Many of today’s surveying companies have less than five employees. They’re
also booked out for months. Demand has never been higher for surveying
professionals—in part because our workforce pool has never been smaller.

The million-dollar question often asked is whether specific education requirements
will help bolster our workforce or leave it lagging even further.

In this article, we will focus primarily on the path to becoming a licensed land
surveyor. We all understand that not everyone wants to peruse licensure and we
still need just as many survey technicians over the next few years.

Professional land surveyors are on the decline
It’s tempting for surveyors to look at the current climate as job security
and a hefty paycheck. But in the long term, we need more surveyors to fill
our ranks.

Why? It’s only a matter of time before the short supply of surveyors results
in legislative change. Developers aren’t patient. If they have to wait three
months to get a boundary or topo survey, they’ll head to the lobbyists.

The most likely candidates to fill surveyor shoes are engineers. There are
currently 513,000 engineers who already have a formal education and
would just need a few extra surveying classes to round out their eligibility
to tackle surveying work.

There are currently 35,000 licensed land surveyors. An estimated 44% of surveyors over the age of 61 are going to be retiring in the next
10 years. That’s a loss of 15,000, which means our profession needs to average 1,500 new licensed surveyors a year just to maintain
the status quo. Meanwhile, only 596 people are taking The Principles and Practice of Surveying (PS) exam right now, and only 68% of
those will likely pass.

The need for more licensed surveyors is clear. Is education the answer?

Will degree requirements solve the land surveyor shortage?
We may not answer that question here, but we will explore it in full.

The truth is that the current generation of professional land surveyors came to surveying through a wide variety of pathways. Many fell
into surveying later in life.

Here is a small sampling of how attendees of the 2022 Western Regional Survey Conference came to the land surveying profession:

l An associate degree in AutoCAD, no formal surveying education.
l An associate degree in land surveying
l A survey technician role, plus some high school drafting classes
l A bachelor’s degree in aviation management and a few classes in surveying—after a 30-year career at Caltrans
l A surveying career after 20 years in the Air Force
l A degree at Great Basin College
l An engineering dropout who became a survey technician, then went back
for a bachelor’s degree in land surveying and geomatics 10 years later

10 The Nevada Traverse Vol.49, No.4, 2022