Paid by the gate

The people who decide which credentials count are paid by those credentials.

In plain words

Follow the money around the circle. The government lends. The colleges collect. The colleges' own associations decide which colleges count. And licensing boards write that approved degree into law. Nobody in that circle has a reason to open a second door, because every one of them is paid by the first. The better ways of learning aren't outlawed. They just aren't allowed to count.

Evidence and sources

• Federal student aid flows only to schools approved by a recognized accreditor. Congressional Research Service, R43159.
• The CPA 150-hour rule cut new accountants by about 14 percent and minority entrants by about 26 percent with no sign of better quality. Andrew Sutherland, Matthias Uckert, and Felix Vetter, Journal of Accounting Research 62, no. 2 (2024).
• About one in twenty American jobs needed a license in the 1950s; about one in four does now. Morris Kleiner and Alan Krueger, Journal of Labor Economics 31, no. 2 (2013).
• Modern medical training was shaped by a 1910 report funded by the Carnegie Foundation. Abraham Flexner, Medical Education in the United States and Canada (1910).

Questions this answers

• Who accredits colleges, and who pays them?
• Why do you need a bachelor's degree before medical school?
• Why did CPAs need 150 credit hours?
• Why does so much work require a license?

Where this falls short

Some licensing protects the public, and the 1910 reforms closed real quack schools. The gate did both: it protected patients and it protected incomes.

In the book

In Four Weeks, Not Four Years: Chapter 8.

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