Coming Soon: Canadian Online Degrees in Surveying and Geomatics
Thinking of pursuing a degree in surveying or geomatics? Doing so is about to get easier.
Currently, the Canadian Board of Examiners for Professional Surveyors (CBEPS) offers examinations twice a year and in person. CBEPS is working with its members (individual land surveying associations across Canada, except Quebec) to move the exams online. Funded by the Government of Canada’s Foreign Credential Recognition Program and the Association of Canada Lands Surveyors, a project is underway to not only implement online exams, but also to modernize the national syllabus and update the accreditation and exemption process.
The project has been divided into three phases:
- Modernize the CBEPS National Syllabus to meet changing societal needs and priorities
- Update CBEPS Accreditation and Exemptions Process
- Develop a clear path to an online Canadian surveying/geomatics engineering degree
Modernize the CBEPS National Syllabus to meet changing societal needs and priorities
The main components of the National Syllabus are 10 to 20 years old. There is also a lot of overlap between different learning outcomes of similar subjects. The new syllabus aims to reduce redundancy and address the expanded role of surveying. Surveying has expanded into areas such as: land management, project management and new technologies.
Update CBEPS Accreditation and Exemptions Process
The current process is out of date and academic institutions have been requesting updates to the process for some time. It is expected that updates to the process will enable educational institutions to provide all essential learning requirements and in addition, also focus their program on specialized areas. Each institution in Canada will generally have a different focus for their specialized area and allow them to put their funding to work in a better way.
Develop a clear path to an online Canadian surveying/geomatics engineering degree
The last phase is concerned with developing a clear path to a Canadian online degree. Once phases one and two are finalized and approved, the project will then focus on how to actually make an online degree happen. It becomes difficult to come up with a process that each institution will find acceptable and to know how the separate provincial governments will react.
Once the three phases of the project are complete, the CBEPS anticipates that the whole process towards an online degree in surveying/geomatics engineering will be a game changer. Moving the process online will open up the profession to foreign trained professionals and allow more Canadians to enter this industry without having to move away from home.
The project is due to be complete in 2022 and hopefully the ability to receive a degree in surveying/geomatics online will be possible not long after.
