[swearwolf]

I happened to read about this case while I was in the middle of Barbara Erinreich’s book “Fear of Falling”, which is all about the American professional middle class. Part of one chapter talks about how the professions organized to create credentialing systems that kept anyone who couldn’t afford the expensive and time consuming education out. Organic Chemistry is specifically mentioned for its role in weeding out potential medical students who might very well turn out to be good doctors, while simultaneously being irrelevant to the day-to-day practice of medicine. All of this serves the purpose of making sure the supply of doctors is low, and that their wages are therefore kept high.

Since the 80s, American society has shifted towards a ruthless form of capitalism that leaves fewer and fewer occupations capable of providing their practitioners with a middle class lifestyle every year. To me, it’s no wonder that students have become ruthlessly mercenary in response. They’ll do what it takes to make a good living, and they won’t tolerate gatekeepers getting in their way without a fight. This is exactly the behavior we (as a society) have incentivized in them.

[allturtles]

> Part of one chapter talks about how the professions organized to create credentialing systems that kept anyone who couldn’t afford the expensive and time consuming education out. Organic Chemistry is specifically mentioned for its role in weeding out potential medical students who might very well turn out to be good doctors, while simultaneously being irrelevant to the day-to-day practice of medicine.

Medical schools already have an easy way to affect the supply of doctors that's under their own direct control: their own admissions policies. Is the author hypothesizing that they are somehow controlling undergraduate chemistry classes in private and public institutions across the country, which seems very implausible?

[swearwolf]

No, the author’s hypothesis is that the professional middle class carved out a space for itself between the working class and the rich, using their specialized knowledge as the differentiating factor, and that they use all kinds of gatekeeping mechanisms to make sure that anyone who wants to enter their professions has to be credentialed, which typically involves dedicating the first third of their lives to education. The purpose of this gatekeeping is to ensure that there is enough of a scarcity to ensure good wages for those who have the right credentials, and to make sure that self taught or informally taught amateurs can’t enter the field.

Within that context, Organic Chemistry is put forth as an example of one such gate that all aspiring doctors must clear, even though they promptly forget the material when the class is over. The admission policies you pointed out are another such gate.

The book was written in the 1980s, and in the later chapters the author explores how the events of 20th century have impacted the system described above. For example, the substantial cuts to government spending enacted during the Reagan administration, and worsening prospects for jobs like professors and social workers, caused students to switch the focus of their college education towards getting a degree that would enable them to enter a field that would allow them to make a lot of money, rather than one they may have been intrinsically interested in. The distillation of this effect is, in my opinion, what we’re seeing here with the NYU students.

[michaelt]

> Is the author hypothesizing that they are somehow controlling undergraduate chemistry classes in private and public institutions across the country, which seems very implausible?

Isn't precisely what accreditation allows professional organisations to do?

It sounds plausible to me that the AMA could impose education requirements like organic chemistry as a requirement to joining their ranks. And indeed that keeping the supply of doctors limited would be in the interests of their members.

[CWuestefeld]

> American society has shifted towards a ruthless form of capitalism that leaves fewer and fewer occupations capable of providing their practitioners with a middle class lifestyle

While technically true, this statement is misleading. It's true that the middle of income range has decreased. But most of the movement out of the middle has been upwards, only a fraction have been pushed down to a lower rung. Many more find themselves pushed up into the 4th quintile than down into the 2nd.