[size=14]Excerpt taken from Wikipedia:[/size]In Britain, the term 'engineer' is often mistakenly used to describe a technician or a person that mends and operates machinery. A notable example was on Page 8 of the 2001 UK Census Form, where one of the example job titles listed was "Television Service Engineer" (
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/pdfs/engh1.pdf). (This is in contrast to mainland Europe, where engineering is seen as comparable to other professions such as medicine and architecture - see above.) Professional engineers registered with the Engineering Council UK have the exclusive right to the titles Chartered Engineer and Incorporated Engineer. These titles are only awarded after a rigorous formation including higher education, training and experience.
In the United States, the term "engineer" is also used to denote an operator of an engine of some sort, e.g., a railroad engineer denotes the operator of a locomotive, a ship's engineer denotes the operator of the steam engine on a steamship, and a stationary engineer is normally responsible for a stationary steam engine. Occasionally "title inflation" results in non-engineers holding jobs with "engineer" in the job title. For example, the term "field engineer" is often used to describe manufacturers' (or third party) supplied installers and/or maintainers of (complex) equipment at a user's site. However, they are not commonly degreed engineers.
In firefighting, the term "engineer" refers to a firefighter whose job is to drive the fire apparatus and, if it has an onboard water supply, to stay with the engine and operate the pumps so that the firefighters on the hose can have enough water to put out the fire.
The term "engineer" may also be used to describe holders of some forms of professional certification other than university degrees, such as (but not limited to) Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, Certified Novell Engineer, Red Hat Certified Engineer and so on.
In Canada, the usage of the term "engineer" to describe holders of professional certification is not legally permitted. The Canadian Council of Professional Engineers mounted an extended campaign to get Microsoft to renounce use of the word "engineer" in the title of their certification. A 2001 reader survey by Microsoft Certified Professional magazine found that over half of respondents supported changing the name of the MCSE to remove the word "engineer".
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