3 ms·

You bring up a great point. I'd argue that, instead of being required to go to medical school, you should be tested on the merits. If you meet the objective b

You bring up a great point. I'd argue that, instead of being required to go to medical school, you should be tested on the merits. If you meet the objective bar (no lawyer pun intended, though see California's attempt at doing this for the legal profession), then yes, you should be able to practice even without a multi-year degree.

smt88 11y ago
One could consider med school to be a series of tests on the merits, including the subsequent internship/residency and licensing standards. It's just not possible to study at home and be educated enough to be a doctor. You need huge amounts of expensive resources (cadavers, equipment, live patients, etc.)
- gnaritas 11y ago
  > One could consider med school to be a series of tests on the merits, including the subsequent internship/residency and licensing standards. Only if one doesn't understand that medical schools are a cartel. There are far more people qualified and willing to be doctors than are allowed to be doctors, cartels have to keep their supply low to keep their wages high.
nmrm2 11y ago
This makes more sense for professions that are "all books", so to say. E.g. law, where all you really need is a slightly longer test (or not even that). But this makes no sense for medical school, which teaches a lot that would be extremely difficult to test directly. Often the direct test would basically amount to going to medical school for some non-trivial amount of time anyways.
- sandworm101 11y ago
  Law is not all books. There is something physical about law school. It may not be as physical as med school, but the three-year process of getting the JD is more than a pile of textbooks. Interaction with students and professors, structured or not, is as important as the reading. It changes people. By third year you realize exactly how vast the practice is and no longer focus on the gritty aspects of constitutional debate.
  - nmrm2 11y ago
    Sorry, I didn't mean to disparage Law School. I assume it's valuable as well. But the barriers inherent in medical training are really far and beyond pretty much any other field -- you need a bunch of dead bodies and a lot of very expensive equipment. By the time you pay for just the materials necessary for the series of tests and exams that would reasonably certify someone to be a doctor, you might as well make a degree program out of it. So even if someone could get all of the book learning and also find a gaggle of doctors to study with and learn from, Medical School is one of the very few professional programs where having a degree program would still make sense, totally independent of learning and development, just from a logistical standpoint. In that sense Medicine is pretty unique (unless you count graduate degrees in experimental sciences, I guess).

smt88 11y ago

One could consider med school to be a series of tests on the merits, including the subsequent internship/residency and licensing standards. It's just not possible to study at home and be educated enough to be a doctor. You need huge amounts of expensive resources (cadavers, equipment, live patients, etc.)

gnaritas 11y ago
> One could consider med school to be a series of tests on the merits, including the subsequent internship/residency and licensing standards. Only if one doesn't understand that medical schools are a cartel. There are far more people qualified and willing to be doctors than are allowed to be doctors, cartels have to keep their supply low to keep their wages high.

nmrm2 11y ago

This makes more sense for professions that are "all books", so to say. E.g. law, where all you really need is a slightly longer test (or not even that). But this makes no sense for medical school, which teaches a lot that would be extremely difficult to test directly. Often the direct test would basically amount to going to medical school for some non-trivial amount of time anyways.

sandworm101 11y ago
Law is not all books. There is something physical about law school. It may not be as physical as med school, but the three-year process of getting the JD is more than a pile of textbooks. Interaction with students and professors, structured or not, is as important as the reading. It changes people. By third year you realize exactly how vast the practice is and no longer focus on the gritty aspects of constitutional debate.
- nmrm2 11y ago
  Sorry, I didn't mean to disparage Law School. I assume it's valuable as well. But the barriers inherent in medical training are really far and beyond pretty much any other field -- you need a bunch of dead bodies and a lot of very expensive equipment. By the time you pay for just the materials necessary for the series of tests and exams that would reasonably certify someone to be a doctor, you might as well make a degree program out of it. So even if someone could get all of the book learning and also find a gaggle of doctors to study with and learn from, Medical School is one of the very few professional programs where having a degree program would still make sense, totally independent of learning and development, just from a logistical standpoint. In that sense Medicine is pretty unique (unless you count graduate degrees in experimental sciences, I guess).