3 ms·

> I’m intimately familiar with the reality. Neither of them regret their education or the effort they put in. The people I know in similar situations regret th

by tivert 2y ago

> I’m intimately familiar with the reality. Neither of them regret their education or the effort they put in. The people I know in similar situations regret their choices, or are at least are a little bitter. > There’s no good accomplished by restricting education and professional certification except to destroy peoples dreams for the sake of a lucky few. Let me put it this way: if their dreams are going to be destroyed, it's best to do that as soon a possible. Putting that off makes things worse, not better.

throwup238 2y ago
Except you have no idea a priori who will succeed and who won’t. If your selection process happens before the certification process, you’ll just be selecting for other metrics, ones usually irrelevant to the actual field. That’s just bad policy. There are a ton of shitty doctors and entire geographic regions that are deprived of specialists because of this kind of nonsense. Your policy may help a few people but it harms all of society.
- tivert 2y ago
  > Except you have no idea a priori who will succeed and who won’t. Sort of. In many areas it's possible to do a good-enough job of sorting out the people who will almost certainly succeed. It won't be perfect, but nothing is. If there are enough of those to fill a long and specialized training program to the point where actual needs are met, then you shouldn't be letting a bunch of extra "maybes" in too, because that just introduces bad outcomes at the end that could be avoided.
  - throwup238 2y ago
    Based on my experience with doctors medicine is not one of those fields. Residency is the final gauntlet that matters and that’s the part that’s artificially restricted. On the other hand, because of supply, finding a good lawyer just requires a bit of money, well within reach of the average person facing a criminal trial or some civil dispute. Finding a good doctor requires sitting on waitlists for months (if you’re lucky enough to find one taking new patients) unless you have enough money to afford a concierge service, which the vast majority of people cannot afford. I’ve had bad concierge doctors but I’ve never had a shitty lawyer paying that kind of money. I mean really, where do we stop? There’s many more English literature graduates than jobs. Same with ____ studies and just about every other humanities degree. Do we restrict those too? How about higher education altogether? There’s an important debate to be had about government financing and the non-dischargeability of loans and all its effects, but restricting education based on job supply is just harmful to societies on so many levels. This is a two way street. Everybody needs medical care. Almost everyone is going to need legal advice in their lives. Depriving them of competent care and representation does far more harm than limiting supply would save. Failed medical students don’t die from the ordeal, but patients do. The washout rate for A&P aircraft mechanics is on the order of 75%. Imagine if healthcare were as reliable as airplanes (though there’s a shortage there too).
    - tivert 2y ago
      > Based on my experience with doctors medicine is not one of those fields. Residency is the final gauntlet that matters and that’s the part that’s artificially restricted. You're getting the basic facts wrong. As least in the US, the restriction is acceptance to medical school. Part of the reasoning is they don't want to accept anyone who they think will fail years down the line, because that's bad for everyone (you, me, the failed student, and the teachers who aren't in it for the $$$). There's a surplus of residency slots (overall), because otherwise no foreign-trained doctors would ever be able to practice here. Lots of foreign-trained doctors practice here. My position is they need to increase medical school admissions (and residency slots), but not throw the doors wide open to all comers. The slots need to be managed such that anyone who gets can complete the program and will have a job waiting for them that pays commensurate with the amount of training they receive, but probably much less than many doctors get now. > I mean really, where do we stop? There’s many more English literature graduates than jobs. Same with ____ studies and just about every other humanities degree. Yes. What's happening with English literature graduates (at least on the PhD level) is an exploitative travesty. > ...but restricting education based on job supply is just harmful to societies on so many levels. I disagree. It's harmful to string people along with false hope, only to slam the door in their face at the end. It's harmful for society for people to waste time on a job training program (which is what medical education really is) for a job they'll never get. There needs to be a distinction made between general education and job training. Unless you're independently wealthy, specialized formal education needs to perform both functions. > The washout rate for A&P aircraft mechanics is on the order of 75%. Aircraft mechanic school is about 18-24 months (https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/how-long-is-aircraft-mechanic-school https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/how-long-...), and costs a few tens of thousands of dollars. That's not comparable, at all. > Imagine if healthcare were as reliable as airplanes (though there’s a shortage there too). Sure imagine that, but people aren't manufactured products. Not a valid comparison.
- DiscourseFan 2y ago
  Perhaps the fellowship for PhDs should only be two years, and a faculty review at the end of the two years cuts out the majority of students, so many more can be admitted and evaluated than actually graduate? And maybe another round after the 4th year? That would solve both problems: most people going into the programs wouldn't graduate, but many more people who wanted to try would be able to at least get in, and most of the students who did graduate would be able to get jobs (maybe, out of a 30 person starting cohort, 2 graduate with a PhD). It could vary year by year, so a year with a really great cohort, maybe the majority would come through, whereas with a bad cohort almost all of them wouldn't make it.
- kelnos 2y ago
  > Except you have no idea a priori who will succeed and who won’t. Not really relevant. We're not talking about the general concept of "success", we're talking about if the market for some profession or academic pursuit can support a certain number of people entering it. That's something that you can predict reasonably well. Not perfectly, and there can certainly be outlier events that drastically change things unexpectedly. But it's possible to have reasonably accurate forecasting here. As for "success", sure, it's hard to tell if any individual who wants to enter a particular field will do it well enough to be successful. Admissions departments at universities can sometimes do an ok job predicting that, but they often end up being wrong (in both directions). That's just life. The medical profession is of course doing those forecasts and then artificially restricting things further, in order to maintain high salaries and high prestige. I don't think we'd be having this argument if they weren't so greedy and set limits at reasonable levels such that we had enough doctors and specialists out there to handle patients promptly and effectively.
  - eru 2y ago
    I'm glad we are not relying on government forecasting for the number of programmers needed.

by tivert 2y ago

throwup238 2y ago

Except you have no idea a priori who will succeed and who won’t. If your selection process happens before the certification process, you’ll just be selecting for other metrics, ones usually irrelevant to the actual field. That’s just bad policy. There are a ton of shitty doctors and entire geographic regions that are deprived of specialists because of this kind of nonsense. Your policy may help a few people but it harms all of society.

tivert 2y ago
> Except you have no idea a priori who will succeed and who won’t. Sort of. In many areas it's possible to do a good-enough job of sorting out the people who will almost certainly succeed. It won't be perfect, but nothing is. If there are enough of those to fill a long and specialized training program to the point where actual needs are met, then you shouldn't be letting a bunch of extra "maybes" in too, because that just introduces bad outcomes at the end that could be avoided.
- throwup238 2y ago
  Based on my experience with doctors medicine is not one of those fields. Residency is the final gauntlet that matters and that’s the part that’s artificially restricted. On the other hand, because of supply, finding a good lawyer just requires a bit of money, well within reach of the average person facing a criminal trial or some civil dispute. Finding a good doctor requires sitting on waitlists for months (if you’re lucky enough to find one taking new patients) unless you have enough money to afford a concierge service, which the vast majority of people cannot afford. I’ve had bad concierge doctors but I’ve never had a shitty lawyer paying that kind of money. I mean really, where do we stop? There’s many more English literature graduates than jobs. Same with ____ studies and just about every other humanities degree. Do we restrict those too? How about higher education altogether? There’s an important debate to be had about government financing and the non-dischargeability of loans and all its effects, but restricting education based on job supply is just harmful to societies on so many levels. This is a two way street. Everybody needs medical care. Almost everyone is going to need legal advice in their lives. Depriving them of competent care and representation does far more harm than limiting supply would save. Failed medical students don’t die from the ordeal, but patients do. The washout rate for A&P aircraft mechanics is on the order of 75%. Imagine if healthcare were as reliable as airplanes (though there’s a shortage there too).
  - tivert 2y ago
    > Based on my experience with doctors medicine is not one of those fields. Residency is the final gauntlet that matters and that’s the part that’s artificially restricted. You're getting the basic facts wrong. As least in the US, the restriction is acceptance to medical school. Part of the reasoning is they don't want to accept anyone who they think will fail years down the line, because that's bad for everyone (you, me, the failed student, and the teachers who aren't in it for the $$$). There's a surplus of residency slots (overall), because otherwise no foreign-trained doctors would ever be able to practice here. Lots of foreign-trained doctors practice here. My position is they need to increase medical school admissions (and residency slots), but not throw the doors wide open to all comers. The slots need to be managed such that anyone who gets can complete the program and will have a job waiting for them that pays commensurate with the amount of training they receive, but probably much less than many doctors get now. > I mean really, where do we stop? There’s many more English literature graduates than jobs. Same with ____ studies and just about every other humanities degree. Yes. What's happening with English literature graduates (at least on the PhD level) is an exploitative travesty. > ...but restricting education based on job supply is just harmful to societies on so many levels. I disagree. It's harmful to string people along with false hope, only to slam the door in their face at the end. It's harmful for society for people to waste time on a job training program (which is what medical education really is) for a job they'll never get. There needs to be a distinction made between general education and job training. Unless you're independently wealthy, specialized formal education needs to perform both functions. > The washout rate for A&P aircraft mechanics is on the order of 75%. Aircraft mechanic school is about 18-24 months (https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/how-long-is-aircraft-mechanic-school https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/how-long-...), and costs a few tens of thousands of dollars. That's not comparable, at all. > Imagine if healthcare were as reliable as airplanes (though there’s a shortage there too). Sure imagine that, but people aren't manufactured products. Not a valid comparison.
DiscourseFan 2y ago
Perhaps the fellowship for PhDs should only be two years, and a faculty review at the end of the two years cuts out the majority of students, so many more can be admitted and evaluated than actually graduate? And maybe another round after the 4th year? That would solve both problems: most people going into the programs wouldn't graduate, but many more people who wanted to try would be able to at least get in, and most of the students who did graduate would be able to get jobs (maybe, out of a 30 person starting cohort, 2 graduate with a PhD). It could vary year by year, so a year with a really great cohort, maybe the majority would come through, whereas with a bad cohort almost all of them wouldn't make it.
kelnos 2y ago
> Except you have no idea a priori who will succeed and who won’t. Not really relevant. We're not talking about the general concept of "success", we're talking about if the market for some profession or academic pursuit can support a certain number of people entering it. That's something that you can predict reasonably well. Not perfectly, and there can certainly be outlier events that drastically change things unexpectedly. But it's possible to have reasonably accurate forecasting here. As for "success", sure, it's hard to tell if any individual who wants to enter a particular field will do it well enough to be successful. Admissions departments at universities can sometimes do an ok job predicting that, but they often end up being wrong (in both directions). That's just life. The medical profession is of course doing those forecasts and then artificially restricting things further, in order to maintain high salaries and high prestige. I don't think we'd be having this argument if they weren't so greedy and set limits at reasonable levels such that we had enough doctors and specialists out there to handle patients promptly and effectively.
- eru 2y ago
  I'm glad we are not relying on government forecasting for the number of programmers needed.