2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

During the past 25 years, there have been many changes to the Principles and Practice (PE Exam) examinations and licensure policies affecting civil engineers. In 2000, the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) transitioned the PE exam to a multiple-choice format and began allowing PE examinees to choose one of five civil engineering (CE) discipline specific exams instead of a broad problem-based exam. Beginning in 2022, all CE discipline specific PE exams transitioned to computer-based testing (CBT). In 2024, NCEES modified the CE discipline specific PE exams to focus on depth. Another change has involved state boards of registration decoupling the experience requirement from the PE exam. This allows many civil engineering graduates the flexibility to take the PE exam prior to gaining a requisite number of years of experience for licensure. Currently, nearly two thirds of jurisdictions allow graduates of EAC-ABET accredited civil engineering programs to take the Principles and Practice (PE Exam) immediately after graduation.

The changes to the PE exam provide more options and choices for civil engineering graduates from accredited programs. Many examinees will choose to take the examination prior to gaining experiential knowledge. In that case they will rely primarily on knowledge from their undergraduate education. The question is whether graduates have gained sufficient knowledge to pass the PE exam upon graduation. The following study focused on how closely the curriculum from a statistically averaged EAC-ABET accredited civil engineering program aligns with the content on the five new civil engineering specific PE exams.

The average civil engineering curriculum from a study of 87 EAC-ABET accredited programs was compared to the content (232 unique subtopics) on the revised CE discipline specific PE exams. The NCEES topic list for each exam was mapped to course descriptions in undergraduate required and elective courses. The results indicate that 1) the range of civil engineering topics varies significantly in each of the five NCEES civil engineering PE exams, 2) required courses in the average civil engineering curriculum cover 48% to 68% of the topics on each of the five NCEES civil engineering PE exams, and 3) most civil engineering curriculums have the flexibility to cover 82% to 95% of the topics on each discipline specific PE exam if specific electives are included. Students who plan to take the PE exam in their first year after graduation must carefully plan their undergraduate elective courses around the specific topics on the NCEES PE examination of their choice.