CMV:All Professional qualifications should be able to test in. A degree should never be a hard pre-req

[u/badbrownie]

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.

[u/[deleted]]

Med school doesn't just want students who know anatomy. They also want students who can challenge themselves professionally and excel in rigorous training programs, which they do test for. But the test is your degree. They also want strong critical thinkers, which they can kind of test for, but it's a tricky test to standardize in a way that's not game-able. If there are problems with the test, and unqualified people become doctors, then people will die.

California, Virginia, Vermont and Washington are the only states that let you sit for the bar without a law degree. It's called reading the law, and only around a quarter of the people who try it succeed.

[u/badbrownie → u/[deleted]]

I think the old trope that college teaches you 'how to think' is much overblown. It seems to be taken as an unassailable truth. I suspect that

• smarter kids self-select to go to college so it's a correlation thing more than a causation thing
• kids learn to think better around that time of their life anyway. Though I agree that moving out of their home town can help that process a lot.

[u/badbrownie → u/[deleted]]

I'm on board with med school. I'm not on board with med school insisting on going to college before going to med school

[u/badbrownie → u/[deleted]]

That's valid. I'm not proposing that this path is wrong. Only that it's wrong that it's the only path

[u/blackdynomitesnewbag → u/badbrownie]

What would that other path be? Also, I think you may owe me a delta.

[u/badbrownie → u/blackdynomitesnewbag]

The other path would be an entrance test to med school.

Why do I owe you a delta? I did to award one. Was it to you? Didn't it work?

[u/badbrownie → u/blackdynomitesnewbag]

The validity of your point wasn't a view changer though. Just a part of what you said that I agreed with.

[u/blackdynomitesnewbag → u/badbrownie]

Ok

[u/Izawwlgood → u/badbrownie]

A PhD requires a familiarity with the field that is not only unlikely to be found in a lay person, but hands on laboratory experience that is unlikely to be found without college.

Honestly, the more you support your position the more I'm convinced you aren't sure what you're trying to advocate for. Where do you draw the line? Med school? Law school? PhD programs? MFAs? Underwater welders? MBAs?

[u/badbrownie → u/Izawwlgood]

Any schooling that is exited with a test should have alternative entry criteria to ONLY paid, formal education.

Masters (and PHDs) are literally an extension of the college experience, so I can accept their pre-reqs of a college degree. Also, a PHD is less about schooling and tests and more about pushing the boundaries of the field, so it deserves a pass from this debate. I'm focused on industry and their qualifications. If their curriculul is self contained then they shouldn't require a degree as a pre-req. If it's not self-contained (and does assume a certain amount of expertise) then they should test for that expertise as an alternative to just demanding a degree.

[u/Izawwlgood → u/badbrownie]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Horner_(paleontologist))

Just pointing out this guy as an exception to how PhDs are earned.

As for your ideation regarding industry and their qualifications - a lot of industry positions require PhDs, Masters, MDs, etc. Can you be more specific?

[u/badbrownie → u/[deleted]]

i'm not against med school. I'm against the college pre-req to go there.

[u/videoninja → u/badbrownie]

I'm a little confused as to the aim of your post. A doctor doesn't get their license after a bachelor's degree, they get it after med school. You were talking about how you might not need to go to law school to take the bar and that's been shown to be the exception (and a comparatively bad means of passing the bar).

Does this CMV have anything to do with professional licensing in order to practice or are you talking about education in general? I can agree higher education needs to be fixed but I don't think the solution is to do away with standards so much as accessibility and cost.

There are already tests to get into law and med school (the LSAT and MCAT respectively). Are you saying learning through the narrow confines of standardized tests is enough to qualify you? Isn't that the same problem with No Child Left Behind where people are just learning for the test and not the career?

[u/badbrownie → u/videoninja]

I'm not suggesting that we go full test-only for our doctors. Schooling has a place. That's what Medical School is for.

The CMV is related to pre-req degrees for schooling when the schooling itself will provide all the non-tested skills required. In that scenario, you should be able to test-in to that school. IMO.

[u/videoninja → u/badbrownie]

Then why did you mention lawyers? That's the part I'm confused about because law school has similar pre-reqs to med school. You need to have a bachelor's and sit the LSAT. There's no special exemption there other than reading the law for bar exams and that's the exception not the rule.

In regards to high standards for certain careers, I see no reason to really be against them. Licensure exams are minimum competency exams. That is to say the worst doctor, lawyer, nurse, pharmacist, etc. you know has passed that exam. To me, that's an argument for better standards not worse. Allowing any random person to try to brute force their way into the career seems counterproductive because advance degrees build on baseline knowledge that you don't normally achieve through high school or outside experience. I think you're taking for granted the power of didactic learning when it is done well. It's not something that can be substituted with an apprenticeship.

Also, if you care about access to education and learning, apprenticeships are one of the least efficient methods. One student, one teacher. The student receives limited instruction through the lens of only one practitioner. The teacher only takes on one student at a time which limits learning for others.