The PhD Octopus (1903)

Re:The PhD Octopus (1903) by tomrod on Friday March 24, 2017 @01:56PM (#13950841)

In some areas you absolutely want a strict standard, to your point on dentists. PhD is an interesting requirement, however, due to the variance in skillset, experience, and training an individual going through the educational process receives compared to vocational programs. The degree can substitute for a license, but it's going to be very noisy. Requiring it leads to less absolute diversity in a hiring pool (as opposed to categorical diversity) which may or may not be the goal of the institution. But once you've found a good hire, who can perform the function of the job to the client's satisfaction, the vocational or educational background is more or less unnecessary. To refer to your dentist example: it may take me a lot of encouragement to trust my Uncle Joe with no dental degree to work on my teeth, but once he's proven himself the need for institutional acknowledgement of his ability is trumped by his performance.

Another tangent point to consider: dentists and other vocationalists have existed long before a licensing board did, and someone, somewhere, got the first History PhD.

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Re:The PhD Octopus (1903) by dhfhduk on Friday March 24, 2017 @04:40PM (#13952051)

I would disagree about professional licensure, and think the same arguments apply there as in other areas, although maybe in different ways. In fact, I think the problem in licensed professions is even worse, because assumptions are never questioned, to avoid being called reckless, and have the weight of law.

In fact, I think this is a prime problem with healthcare in the US in the moment.

The problem James outlines is the same with professional fields: we assume that license X, which often requires degree A, is necessary for competence in an area, and that competence cannot be achieved in an area in any other way. As a result, we stop actually paying attention to competency per se, and focus on licensure, which is not the same. As a result of that, we lose choice: any other way of meeting a demand is assumed to be illegitimate and unsafe, which is untrue. Competition is lost, and monopoly is gained.

In your example, for instance, you suggest a hypothetical case where someone doesn't have a dental degree. But in reality, it's almost certainly not that that person would have no degree at all, and no experience, it's that they would have a different sort of degree, with a different sort of experience.

Dentists are maybe a poor example, because if anything, their profession is an example of one that is being stifled by current practice. I suspect that they are in a position to learn to do a lot more than they are, and are held back by professional licensing laws relative to MDs.

The appropriate example isn't "would you hire someone without a dental degree to treat your cavity?" It's "would you hire a dentist with appropriate surgical training to do jaw surgery?" Would you hire an optometrist with years of opthomological surgery training to do LASIK surgery? Would you hire a psychologist with pharmacology training to prescribe you lithium, or a psychologist with appropriate training to do TMS treatment of your depression? Would you trust your pharmacist to pick the right antibiotic for your infection, that has been precisely characterized by a lab already? What about a neuroscientist with clinical training to interpret your MRI scan?

Licenses, although well-intended, have become hindrances to lower cost and better choice. The tail is wagging the dog in professional fields exactly the way James suggested over a century ago.

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