Misconception #27: We could not have doctors or other important professions without the schools

The job market has adapted to the schools. This means that there are a lot of professions that demand certification before applications will be considered. That doesn’t mean that an employment model couldn’t exist without the schools.

College degrees can simplify the hiring process for employers. If someone else says that someone can do a job, that’s better than having to go through applications of people without any indications of competency. That’s the primary reason that businesses want that piece of paper. They want to simplify the process of finding new hires.

There is nothing that can be learned in school that can’t be learned elsewhere. When you are hiring someone because they learned in school, you are discriminating against the millions who learn elsewhere. Among those who you are discriminating against are strong self-motivated independent learners.

Without the schools, a new path for professions such as doctors would have to be established. Perhaps we would become more reliant on promoting from within to provide opportunities to prove skill on the job. Personally, I would rather have someone who has proven job skills than someone who passed the right tests in college.

How about you? Imagine that you have a major surgery ahead of you. You can choose between two doctors, both of who have access to the finest equipment. One has extensive schooling and doctorate degrees from a prestigious medical school but has never operated on anyone. The other doesn’t even have a high school diploma, but has a hundred similar surgeries performed in his life without any problems. We will level the playing field and talk about a first.  The surgeon with limited schooling hasn’t done the exact surgery required, only the similar surgeries. Who would you choose?

There is another benefit to doctors and similar professions lacking schooling demands. The model that the schools use rely on sharing existing knowledge. Under this model, success relies almost entirely on what is already known. In other words, the medical world of the future seems to rely heavily on what is already known. Without the schools, learning would more likely be based on pursuing answers to the unknown. This would almost certainly result in a more progressive health care industry.

The bottom line here is that I would have no problem seeing a doctor without schooling as long as that doctor has been given the opportunity to gain practical experience and had access to the same quality as products of our colleges. Unfortunately, our current job market simply won’t allow that to happen. Too bad.