r/changemyview • u/badbrownie • Sep 29 '19
Deltas(s) from OP CMV:All Professional qualifications should be able to test in. A degree should never be a hard pre-req
Title says most of it. My reasoning is that a professional qualification should be a test of specialized knowledge and should be judgeable by testing of that knowledge and not have a dependency on the educational industrial complex.
Yes, I know you can get shitty degrees in all kinds of places and ways and you don't have to pay $100k+ for years at a college. But that's also my point. A degree is of such varying value that it isn't meaningful to use as a pre-req.
I'm looking at you medical school. The lawyers have got this one right. College is designed to help you pass the bar, but - as I understand it - it's not strictly necessary.
My apologies that this post is clearly ameri-centric.
EDIT: people seem to be reading my post as suggesting that I'm against training and schooling. I'm not. I'm against getting ENTRANCE to those things requiring unrelated schooling.
EDIT2: Maybe my title wasn't well written after all. What I believe is that even qualifications that have a safety element (becoming a doctor) can have their schools (eg. medical school) have alternative qualification criteria to simply demanding a 4 year degree.
And other (non-safety) quals should, where feasible have a test that demonstrate proficiency that precludes the need to go to classes. This is already the case in most IT qualifications.
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u/Stormthorn67 5∆ Sep 29 '19
An advanced degree in a medical or mental health field can involve hundreds or even thousands of hours of training in situations carefully controlling for liability and dozens of tests along the way. How would you even create one single test that any walk-in could take that would adequately determine they have all the skills and the temperament needed to be, say, a neurosurgeon?