Continuing Education Critical, But Often Mandated Ongoing Education is Out of Control
Most would agree that licensed professionals need to go through ongoing education in order to stay up on their craft. And many believe that by doing this regulators can make sure they do not break the law. This is all fine and good, except that often regulators are making laws so quickly, they are stifling the very enterprises they are trying to keep above board and in compliance to help the clients, consumer, and customers. At some point too much ongoing education or continuing education causes a problem and let me explain.
If a seasoned professional is spending all their times studying for tests to comply with rules and regulations, then obviously they are not working during those many hours of study. Often we find that ongoing education courses which are required are the equivalent of three units in college, and sometimes these happen once per quarter. A professional could easily go out of business during a recession because they are so busy studying to make sure they can maintain their license and they don’t have time to get out and do sales.
In this case it is putting the professional out of business, and there seems to be a small education lobbying industry that is that has come into play – call it the Ongoing Education Industrial Complex if you will. This is where those that administer the tests sit in rooms with regulators, and legal representatives and come up with the new laws, thus guaranteeing them a captured audience of students and test takers to comply.
At a time in our economy when we want small businesses to do well, the last thing we should be doing is making more and more mandatory tests preventing them from doing their job. Yes we need full compliance with regulations, but at some point we need to stop making more rules, and realize that we cannot regulate morality, and if we try, we are hurting most of the good participants in the industries, and it is likely that we will not be preventing any crime just because we have instituted more ongoing education.
This is something we need to think about and consider.
Far too often we have regulators sitting around and making new rules and regulations, when they have never participated in an industry. And sometimes we have industry associations, which are filled with the big boys on the block, the larger companies who send their attorneys to these rule-making sessions. And they create more rules and regulations, and ongoing educational requirements to put up barriers to entry to their smaller industry competitors.
It is easy for someone in academia, or a consumer rights group to demand more ongoing education and rules, but often these rules are not applied correctly to protect the consumer, and much of the ongoing education is nothing more than busy work, rote memorization, and we have the same dilemma as we have in our schools with no child left behind laws. I hope you will please consider this.
