Yogi and entrepreneur Bikram Choudhury has been accused of sexual assaulting his students and of charging them exorbitant fees. From his point of view, his school, Bikram's Yoga College of India, provides a kind of public service.
It's actually not as absurd a comparison as it might seem. Beyond formal degrees like an M.D., Americans pursue countless qualifications granted by organizations ranging from Cisco Systems to the National Commission for Certification of Crane Operators to, yes, the College of India. These credentials are rarely mentioned in the debate about higher education and the job market, but like degrees, they're a valuable mark of distinction for many Americans looking for work, especially for those with no college degree and limited income.
Forty-six million Americans -- 21.6 percent of adults -- hold some kind of professional certification or license, according to unpublished estimates from researchers at Georgetown University. Some of them are self-taught, while others learned what they need to know to earn their qualifications with a few courses at a community college or vocational school.
Learning more about this vast world of certifications and licenses is a priority for researchers, said Anthony Carnevale, an economist who directs the group at Georgetown. Little is known about who holds them, who issues them or how valuable they are.
For policymakers, these credentials raise hard questions about regulation. On the one hand, the criticisms of Choudhury's business model suggest the risks of allowing anyone to sell a certification without demonstrating its usefulness, and yoga schools have become the target of controversial regulations in several states, most recently in Colorado. At the same time, rising tuition and living expenses at conventional, four-year institutions are leading policymakers to focus on other ways for Americans to develop their skills, and Carnevale argues that part of what makes these certifications so useful to employers and workers is private organizations' ability to adapt them quickly in response to changing technology and consumer tastes.
Carnevale's group estimated that people who hold these certifications and licenses earn $1,000 more a month, on average, than those who do not, based on the results of a survey. Among men without a college degree, those who hold a certification of some kind earn $36,000 a year on average, while those who do not earn just $24,800. That's a difference of 45 percent.
The advantage is smaller for workers who also hold degrees. Among those with with an associate's degree, those with a professional credential earned 16 percent more than those without one, and among those with a bachelor's degree, the difference was 7 percent.
And only 3 percent of those with one of these credentials were unemployed, compared to 7 percent of those without, according to the unpublished estimates.
These credentials help workers assure prospective employers that they're qualified, which results in more job offers and better wages. Of course, a letter from an old boss or a portfolio of work might accomplish the same goal, without the expense of acquiring the credential. But Carnevale's group found that many employers who advertise jobs online specifically ask that applicants hold a certification or license.
"They trust the certification," he said. "It cuts down on their search costs."
Some of the most sought-after were commercial driver licenses, first aid certifications, insurance licenses and certifications for forklift operators and auto mechanics.
That list includes credentials issued by state agencies. Many critics say that state law requires workers to fulfill unreasonable training requirements in order to practice ordinary occupations, and that these regulations keep people out of work unnecessarily.
"There's a lot of stuff on the books that’s basically a way for different occupations and professions to protect their jobs and keep people out," Carnevale said.
Licenses required by public authorities are only the beginning, though. Many commonly requested credentials are issued by private entities such as the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence or the American Welding Society. In the technology sector, the certifications offered by Cisco and Microsoft Corp. are much in demand. If you're an engineer applying to work at a firm that uses products from one of these companies, you might be asked to take their tests to show that you're ready for the job.
These credentials represent a kind of partnership between the public and private sectors. People applying for them might take a few classes at their local, public community college to prepare. These students might benefit from President Obama's recent proposal for federal funding for anyone who wants to attend community college.
Or they might attend a private occupational school that is regulated by the state.
Yoga schools are no exception. State regulation of schools purporting to train people how to teach yoga has led to controversy in several states, most recently in Colorado, as Julie Turkewitz reported in The New York Times last week. There, lawmakers are considering a bill exempting yoga from state oversight.
Turkewitz reports that a state Senate committee has approved the bill, "inspiring one Republican lawmaker and yogi to leap onto a desk and strike a crow pose, balancing his knees on his elbows."
Comm. exempts yoga teaching from vocational regs, Owen Hill does crow #copolitics http://t.co/jJropPJrtt MT AndyKerr pic.twitter.com/2FOa6tICzn
— Lee Ann Colacioppo (@LAColacioppo) February 25, 2015
Carnevale agreed with many of the arguments advanced by opponents of state regulation of yoga schools, such as Yoga Alliance, a not-for-profit organization representing yogis. Professional credentials often change too quickly along with technology and consumers' tastes to be effectively regulated by government. He added that earning a credential at a yoga school could indeed make a practitioner more attractive on the job market, because studios want to protect their customers from physical injury.
But he warned that entities granting professional certifications should be able to show that the credentials are worth the money.
"The issue here all around is how much of this is baloney," he said. "If a program professes to get your a job, it needs to be accountable for that, because we know so many of them don't."