Originally Posted by
Genghis the Engineer
That is what they are - you either need a 3 year BEng plus a 1 year MSc, or a 4 year MEng to meet the present minimum educational requirements for award of CEng. [I snuck in before that with just a BEng, but the world moves on.]
G
On a point of order:
There are actually no minimum educational requirements for registration at C.Eng (or I.Eng, or EngTech) level - the Engineering Council are firm in this point. The Standard (UKSpec) describes the requisite level of "Underpinning Knowledge and Understanding" (UK&U)
by reference to exemplifying qualifications (an accredited masters degree supported by an accredited honours degree for C.Eng), but the actual requirement is to demonstrate UK&U
to the same level as the exemplifying qualifications. This is where the CEng standard differs from the colonial "PE" standard. I got a database search of all CEng and IEng awards from 1990 to the present (which was then 2015) and estanblished that only 21% of successful applicants held the full exemplifying quals; the remainder had demonstrated UK&U by other means. The bulk of the 79% just have a bachelors degree, but many have less (or military attainments via the SRA schemes) and I know of several examples of successful CEng candidates who held no degree at all. They are rare, but they exist; one such is current current Vice President of the IET (
FREng CEng FIET, but no degree). My experience as an assessor since that time suggests that it is still very much the case.
Having the exemplifying quals makes life easier for we assessors, but it doesn't necessarily make it any harder for the applicant. It just means that they need to add a bit more detail in their career history to show how and when the higher level of UK was achieved, whether by formal further education, work-based/experiential learning etc. If the assessors are still unsure after requesting further evidence then they invite the candidate to submit a technical report, but that's quite rare. There also used to be Engineering Council Exams as an alternative, but that got rather silly and the EC Exams were formally withdrawn in 2011.
The point being that (unlike the PE and Eur.ING registrations) the CEng/IEng registrations require evidence that the candidate actually understands and can apply the underlying physics/engineeing theory/principles and mathematical tools rather than merely having passed the exams!
PDR [MSc CEng MIET, registration assessor/advisor for the IET]