It has recently become popular to dismiss and/or degrade formal education. We are told that university degrees are worthless, and that with the internet anyone can learn anything by themselves at anytime. So why do employers in many industries require formal higher education? In the internet age some-one can teach themselves the same skills and knowledge as a University (indeed many Universities are making many of their lectures available for free online), so why should people pay (directly through tuition or indirectly through taxes) to go to Universities just to get a piece of paper they can stick in their CV?
Rather than discuss this in general abstract terms, consider one field to start with: Medicine. Medicine has the most formal education requirements of almost any field (undergraduate degree, medical school, residency). Medical professions are also generally governed by national regulatory bodies (eg. the British Medical Association). However, most of medical education involves memorizing huge amounts of information (diagnostic symptoms, drug treatments, anatomy, etc..) which obviously anybody could do on their own time using the same textbooks and manuals. In addition, many of the skills can be learned by practising on one's self or on a friend. Yet I suspect no one would want to get a diagnosis from a doctor without formal qualifications & accreditation.
This is because formal education &
accreditation involves other experienced & qualified people checking
that a potential doctor has the skills & knowledge required to be
a good doctor. There could be people out there with an interest in
medicine who have learnt all the stuff themselves and are just as able
as the formally trained doctor but we don't trust other peoples' lives
on their word; we require independent verification of their skills.
Many
other professions are in a similar situation, you can teach yourself
civil & mechanical engineering from textbooks & tinkering in the
garage but to be hired as a professional engineer you will need formal
education (any volunteers to be the first person to drive over the
bridge designed by a self-taught engineer?)
Formal education has
other benefits as well. Formal education ensures a relatively universal
vernacular and relatively consistent structuring of work so that a group
of professionals can work together more efficiently (eg. universal
standards for drawing blue-prints, consistent medical jargon).
So what sorts of jobs should require more formal education/national regulatory bodies than they do now?
A big one is software engineering/programming. Many programmers are self-taught with minimal formal education, largely due to the shortage of programming professionals. But millions of people's lives depend on the software flying passenger jets, software which runs car safety features, the software on the computers in power-plants, even the software controlling the timing of traffic lights.
Another is the financial industry. Many many finance companies recruit graduates from Oxford regardless of what their degree is in (Medieval historian? No problem! Come run the global economy in London). We have all just experienced just how devastating it can be to let the financial industry run wild.
What about the degrading quality of education?
Educational quality is degrading for several reasons (mainly perverse incentives) but is a completely separate issue to whether formal education is a worthwhile endeavour. Just because a light bulb burns out doesn't mean internal lighting is a
bad idea.
