Right to use the job title "Engineer"

Right to use the job title "Engineer"

The word "engineering" within the term software engineering causes a lot of confusion.
The wrangling over the status of software engineering (between traditional engineers and computer scientists) can be interpreted as a fight over control of the job title "Engineer".
The position of professional societies of traditional engineers in the U.S. (especially theNSPE) is that the job title "Engineer" can only be lawfully used by licensed Professional Engineers, and for anyone else to use it requires their approval.^{[citation needed]} In the mid-1990s, the NSPE sued to prevent anyone from using the job title "Software Engineer". The NSPE won their lawsuit in 48 states.^{[citation needed]}. However, SE practitioners, educators, and researchers have ignored the lawsuits and call themselves "Software Engineers" anyway. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics uses the term software engineer, too. The term engineering is much older than any regulatory body, so many believe that traditional engineers have few rights to control the term. As things stand at 2007, however, even the NSPE appears to have softened its stance towards software engineering and following the heels of several overseas precedents, is investigating a possibility of licensing software engineers in consultation with IEEE, NCEES and other groups "for the protection of the public health safety and welfare".^[36]
In Canada, the use of the job title "Engineer" is controlled in each province by self-regulating professional engineering organizations, often aligned with geologists and geophysicists, and tasked with enforcement of the governing legislation. The intent is that any individual holding themselves out as an engineer (or geologist or geophysicist) has been verified to have been educated to a certain accredited level, and their professional practice is subject to a code of ethics and peer scrutiny. This system was originally designed for the practise of engineering where public safety is a concern, but extends to other branches of engineering as well, including electronics and software^{[citation needed]}.
In New Zealand, IPENZ, the professional engineering organization entrusted by the New Zealand government with legal power to license and regulate chartered engineers (CPEng), recognizes software engineering as a legitimate branch of professional engineering and accepts application of software engineers to obtain chartered status provided he or she has a tertiary degree of approved subjects. Software Engineering is included but Computer Science is normally not.^[37]