So far as I am concerned, it's not merely a lost cause, but it's a bad one as well.
Imagine I were to set up a Society of Artists. The membership is only £100 per year. The Society will offer Chartered Artist status to properly qualified artists, for only another £50 on top of the membership fee.
A few years down the line, I start complaining that lots of unqualified people are calling themselves artists. This is a terrible thing, and dilutes the status of proper, qualified artists. I start a petition to lobby the government to only allow charted members of my Society to call themselves artists.
How far do you think I would get?
The word "engineer" has been around for centuries; long before the current engineering institutes were founded. It's widely used bt the public to mean all kinds of things. Nobody is going to be interested if a small number of institutions try to hijack the word for their own exclusive use.
So far as I am concerned, it's not merely a lost cause, but it's a bad one as well.
Imagine I were to set up a Society of Artists. The membership is only £100 per year. The Society will offer Chartered Artist status to properly qualified artists, for only another £50 on top of the membership fee.
A few years down the line, I start complaining that lots of unqualified people are calling themselves artists. This is a terrible thing, and dilutes the status of proper, qualified artists. I start a petition to lobby the government to only allow charted members of my Society to call themselves artists.
How far do you think I would get?
The word "engineer" has been around for centuries; long before the current engineering institutes were founded. It's widely used bt the public to mean all kinds of things. Nobody is going to be interested if a small number of institutions try to hijack the word for their own exclusive use.
