ChaosMuppetPe - I like your points. From folks I've spoken with, 'that are on the inside', there is a mentality with some that the SE should be harder, its almost like the whole "I had to pay my dues thing" and people wanting to protect their status. Because I'm fairly certain the NCEES solicits information from new and existing SE's on question ideas. So the irony here is that no matter how much we all grumble about the process and ambiguity and so on, its quite possibly us doing this to ourselves. Think about this, if you go thorough this process, as is, pass the tests, and get your SE, how would you feel about making it easier for people behind you? Be honest with yourself, you don't have to report on here, but would you really want it to be easier for other people? That's a tough question if people are actually being honest with themselves. Do you want it to be easier for people that would be competing for the same jobs, and essentially diluting the pool of existing SE's by increasing the supply, while not changing the demand ... we all know what that would mean, value goes down.
I believe a compelling argument can be made to the converse, that demand is in fact going up, and supply is remaining static / decreasing, because more states are requiring an SE, and based on the number of folks sitting for the test, divided by the number of states requiring it, you could argue that the average # of new SE's per state is going down. So there is a really good argument not for necessarily making the test 'easier' per se, but enough with the games. I met someone this weekend that described to me a very good point, and that was a scenario where there would eventually be a short fall of SE's if enough states require it, and not enough people can pass the test. That's a scary scenario, and it doesn't have an easy solution. Because I don't think the test should be easier -- I like that the test is challenging, I like that it takes hard work, and that's why the accomplishment will (eventually) mean so much -- but if high quality engineers and judgment is the goal, then NCEES would be more transparent with their results and outputs. I'm sure we can take 10 people that fail this test, and find 10 different reasons why, and individually each of those people may be very expert at several things and possibly just coming up a bit short in one or two areas -- and it would certainly be nice to get detailed output to that effect so people would know what they need to work on.
