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Sure, they’re well-paid but they’re still a working class profession. It’s like how plumbers often make more than junior state department officials and NYT journalists, but the latter are clearly higher status professions.
What's the long term upside of being a PA/NP? Are their managerial and executive equivalent roles for PAs/NPs? Beacuse while making $130k is great out of school and pretty good for a full career (inflation adjusted, of course) ... junior state department officials can build careers that end in Congress, advising /consulting F500 corporations, or just good old fashioned Sinecures at Think Tanks that can push them past $500k / yr. Sure, definitely not all of them will get there, but there's at least the possibility and the pre-established career path.
I'd argue that this is one of the defining features of the PMC approved career paths - that they all have the possibility of creating eye-watering levels of income (bonus points, however, if they have some way for you to pretend you're doing it out of genuine passion and not just for the money. This is why politics is so PMC attractive).
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Which raises the question- I see a lot of recruitment and advertising around me to become electricians, underwater welders, pilots, etc. I see some recruitment to become an RN or EMT but functionally none to become a PA or an NP.
Now it's possible that I just miss it, because it's aimed with surgical precision at eg medics leaving the army, currently employed lower healthcare professionals, etc, but I think it much more likely that these fields are just doing a bad job of recruiting the best and brightest out of strata that see $130k/yr as a salary that makes lack of social respect with a masters degree worthwhile.
I can't drive down twenty miles of highway without seeing a nurses wanted sign, usually with a prominent signing bonus advertised as well. Maybe it's a regional thing?
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Is that a function of education time/costs? Employers are willing to take on apprentice welders and electricians, but the educational hurdle for an NP is several years of training before someone becomes employable. Pilots need (preferably paid) hours to hit minimums for airline work. Nobody seems to be willing to hire to train engineers or lawyers either because those are harder to learn (earn licenses) while working at more entry levels.
Pilot training is so expensive that it probably evens out here(planes, man).
In the book Where's my Flying Car?! The author does a great breakdown of how, because of over-regulation, general aviation died by the 1960s. If it hadn't, he lays out a good case that a pilot's license would be roughly equivalent of (good) driver's education for the same cost, and hundreds of thousands more people would probably fly. It would reshape highway systems and transportation in general.
Regulation doesn't just slow existing business / industry, it aborts new ones from forming and developing before they ever have a chance (emotive metaphor definitely used on purpose)
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