Should the bar be raised to enter the profession?

[Jim Katen]

Originally posted by kurt

Thread drift......

I read the front page, but it is crowded. Crowded, as in overstuffed.

Mike has so much stuff goin' on in that head he's gotta get it out, I guess. The overall graphic impact would be "superiorly"(?, I had to use that word) improved if there was some stuff axed out. . .

Hey, it works for Dr. Bronner. . .

- Jim Katen, Oregon

[kurt]

Originally posted by Jim Katen

Hey, it works for Dr. Bronner. . .

- Jim Katen, Oregon

Ahhhh, yes..... I've spent many hours in the shower reading the gallon jug. Whatever happened to that stuff? Is it still available?

[chrisprickett]

I use it every day! I love the tingly feeling... We get our's at Trader Joes. I try to read the label, but the small print gets harder to read over the years![:-magnify

[Les]

Bruce, I did not recognize your name, so I ASSumed ----.

I am well known as a "bar raiser" and gadfly. I and my company spend thousands of dollars a year on public education, serve on state, national and local education committees, etc.. My office manager took the old NACHI test, 32min and passed, a local realtor 22min and passed, the local pest control guy 20min and passed.

I have spent hundreds of hours, thousands of miles and tons of money working on state licensure in Mich, only to find I could not get support nor opposition and woke up one morning to find a "new" bill in committee sponsored my NACHI and NAHI. It ain't easy holding up that bar. I feel a little frustrated and impotent. Me and my company are doing quite well and have for years and likely will continue.

I think both of us are preachin' to the choir.

[Bruce Thomas]

Les,

No problem. If you stick you head above the crowd expect to get tomatoes thrown at you, I always do. I understand your point compltely. In my opinion, we have to continue to preach to the choir and set a high bar, otherwise no body will. The informed consumer will seek out the best and it seems that we agree that being the best is a good goal.

Bruce

[:-cowboy]

[hausdok]

Hi Folks,

Well, I'm going to be changing the poll in the next day or two, so I thought I'd post the results here for you to see, so you wouldn't have to go to the home page to see them.

First, let me apologize for the way the poll was written. It wasn't until I'd posted it and folks began responding that I realized that one of the choices, the 6th, is virtually identical on the surface to the question asked at the top of the page. The one asks about mandatory minimum education and competency, the other about minimum education and standards, which I'd intended to mean one consistent standard of practice across the country, instead of different ones promulgated by different associations. However, the way I wrote it doesn't make that clear and I'm sure most folks probably thought that by "Standards" I was talking about background, moral character and the like. So, you can see that even though I tend to write a lot here, I'm not exactly the sharpest tack on this bulletin board. Anyway here it is:

1. 48% of those who've responded thus far agree that the image of the profession would be improved if there were a consistent mandatory minimum level of education and competence required nationwide to be an inspector. I'm guessing that most of these see competence as having done a minimum number of fee-paid inspections under someone else's tutelage or perhaps simply coming from a background in one of the construction-related trades versus a totally unrelated background.)

2. 10% Don't believe a minimum mandatory level of education or competence would improve the image of the profession at all.

3. 0% Nobody thought no steenking edukasion was necessary.

4. 1% felt that things are fine just the way they are.

5. 7% feel that a training course of at least 100 hours for entry is appropriate.

6. 25% feel that there should be a mandatory national minimum education level and standards for the profession.

7. 3% feel that a college degree is essential to the profession.

8. 4% feel that correspondence courses are producing too many poorly-trained inspectors.

So, if you presume that, because of my poor writing skills, most folks see items #1 and #6 as meaning essentially the same thing, we can say that we know that 73% of respondents feel that a mandatory national minimum education level is needed. If readers presumed that 'competency' and 'standards' meant qualifications/morals/ethics, than I guess that same number - 73% - agrees that experience and background need to be a factor. However, if they somehow divined exactly what it is that I was trying to say, than I guess 48% are more concerned with competence (ability) than a consistent nationwide standard of practice.

I'd like to point out that this number - 73% - mirrors the previous poll where I asked folks whether they thought HI's should be licensed in every state. That poll stood at 73% in favor of licensing from day one on, for more than 6 months, despite the fact that additional people continued to vote.

Since most licensing programs have mandatory education and experience requirements and adhere to some sort of standard, these two polls lead me to conclude that the profession favors, at a minimum, nationwide licensing as well as a nationwide mandatory minimum education level.

Any other thoughts on this?

What do you think folks? A new poll asking whether there should be one consistent standard of practice for the profession continent wide following the Aussie example?

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[crusty]

I would be curious about opinion regarding national standardization Mike.