Occupational licensing

Occupational licensing, also called licensure, is a form of government regulation requiring a license to pursue a particular profession or vocation for compensation. It is related to occupational closure. There is strongest public support for the licensing of professions whose activities could be a health or safety threat to the public, such as practicing medicine, and doctors require occupational licenses in most developed countries. However, some jurisdictions also require licenses for a much wider range of professions, such as florists and hairdressers. Licensing creates a regulatory barrier to entry into licensed occupations. Licensing advocates argue that it protects the public interest by keeping incompetent and unscrupulous individuals from working with the public. However, there is little evidence that it affects the overall quality of services provided to customers by members of the regulated occupation. It can also harm consumers by raising prices and reducing innovation by new market entrants, and may slow overall economic growth. Competition law can conflict with licensing practices if the licensing body favors its own licensees in ways that do not clearly protect the public. Alternatives to individual licensing include only requiring that at least one person on a premises be licensed to oversee unlicensed practitioners, permitting of the business overall, random health and safety inspections, general consumer protection laws, and deregulation in favor of voluntary professional certification schemes or free market mechanisms such as customer review sites. Traditionally, occupations in the crafts professions and in the liberal professions organize their respective industries in guilds and chambers in European countries like Germany and Austria. One of the most important changes in licensing has been the 2004 reform in Germany, where workers in 53 of 94 crafts professions were not required to be licensed anymore in order to start a business. In 2020, 12 of these deregulated professions reinstated the licensing requirement.

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Professional certification

Professional certification, trade certification, or professional designation, often called simply certification or qualification, is a designation earned by a person to assure qualification to perform a job or task. Not all certifications that use post-nominal letters are an acknowledgement of educational achievement, or an agency appointed to safeguard the public interest. A certification is a third-party attestation of an individual's level of knowledge or proficiency in a certain industry or profession.

Educational inflation

Educational inflation is the increasing educational requirements for occupations that do not require them. Credential inflation is the increasing overqualification for occupations demanded by employers. There are some occupations that used to require a primary school diploma, such as construction worker, shoemaker, and cleaner, now require a high school diploma. some that required a high school diploma, such as construction supervisors, loans officers, insurance clerks, and executive assistants, that are increasingly requiring a bachelor's degree.

Certification

Certification is part of testing, inspection and certification and the provision by an independent body of written assurance (a certificate) that the product, service or system in question meets specific requirements. It is the formal attestation or confirmation of certain characteristics of an object, person, or organization. This confirmation is often, but not always, provided by some form of external review, education, assessment, or audit. Accreditation is a specific organization's process of certification.

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