Circumstances of Surveyor License Acquisition System in Japan

Abstract

The license acquisition system of surveyors in Japan is composed by two levels of national license; the surveyor and the assistant surveyor. The survey Act, which determines the qualifying standard for licensing, accept several routes for acquiring the license, depending on the situations of applicants. Two primary route of license acquisition are by passing the national qualifying examination and by graduating at designated universities, junior colleges, technical colleges and technical schools. The circumstances of surveyor license acquisition system in Japan were investigated from the Survey Act and the national qualifying examination. It became clear that the surveyor has been required the new technologies and a wide range knowledge for survey. So as to clarify the abilities of the surveyors who passed the national qualifying examination and of those who graduated from the above university or technical school, the ability verification test of assistant surveyors was given. As a result, it can be said that the former group performed better than the latter. In order to reduce the difference of difficulties for license acquisition, the contents of current survey educations in higher education should be improved. This paper presented the circumstances of the national license in Japan, including the details of the national qualifying examination and other routes of the license acquisition, and indicated the problems.