The Noble Professions

Teachers and physicians choose these public service careers essentially because they have an urge to serve the fellow human beings. Service gives them satisfaction; earning a living is almost by the way. Teachers serve by teaching, i.e. preparing the next generation for their adult life. Physicians heal the sick. Both offer crucial service to the society. By and large they love what they do. When things are going well their hearts are suffused with contentment.

The joy in service and hunger for power – or its substitute, the wealth - are two ends of the spectrum of human endeavour. At one end of the spectrum, there are rare saints who have no wish for power and are totally dedicated to serve, much like Mother Teresa. They derive great deal of satisfaction from their work and wish for no monetary reward. At the other end of the spectrum, there are examples of physicians and teachers who only work for the money and have little interest in genuine welfare of their wards. They neither wish nor receive any spiritual satisfaction from their work. Most people are somewhere in between these extremes and for them job satisfaction and financial goals are complimentary. When there is a high degree of job satisfaction financial reward is less important. However, better compensation becomes an issue for them when the job environment is not to their expectation.

Till a few years ago physicians and teachers were regarded as members of the two noble professions. They were widely respected and their service was accepted by public at large with gratitude. They felt appreciated and were happy to serve. They put in long hours and volunteered more time in service of the profession. Yet, the cases of burnout were few and far between. They worked for as long as their health permitted. However, the equation has changed with the advent of internet. Perhaps high expectations and the temperament of the ‘me generation’ – nothing can be good enough for me - also contribute to the growing unease of many professionals. Teachers often have to go to inordinate lengths to justify assignments to the kids and the parents, the grading of students’ work is frequently challenged and their voluntary work to help the children carries risks including that of the law suits if events take an unpredictable turn. Medical advice is challenged by the patients based on faulty and inappropriate information from biased websites written by ignorant bloggers and physicians are blamed even when their prescriptions were not followed. It is not surprising in this environment that a large number of teachers and physicians are unhappy in their jobs. They work fewer hours and are reluctant to volunteer their time for peripheral services. They demand and receive better compensation, sometimes for less work. It is no wonder that the budgets of government departments dealing with education and healthcare are increasingly under pressure and there is a dire shortage of competent teachers and physicians.

Practitioners of ‘noble professions’ have limited options when there is a danger of burnout or when they reach retirement age. If there is a financial need, they soldier on even if the work is stressful rather than a joy. Conversely, if the health is failing the choice to stay in their jobs may not be practical. The fortunate ones with adequate pensions or other resources and in good health compare the satisfaction from their occupation with the emotional rewards from what they plan to do with their time after retirememt. Playing golf in the day and bridge at night, traveling to tropical resorts, theatre, concerts and opera in great cities like Vienna are no doubt tempting and many retire to a well-deserved life of rest and recreation. For some, though, the recreational activity is not enough. They want the genuine good feeling they get by contributing to the welfare of others. If one is accustomed to serving, switching gears to full time recreation can be difficult. These are the individuals who have a difficult decision to make, all the more so because they are rightly afraid that the alternate activities which can provide comparable sense of worth that they obtained from the practice of their profession may turn out to be a mirage. The thought of giving up a bird in the hand when the one in the bush may not turn out to be good enough, is not palatable. In most cases they carry on, albeit with a lighter load, till the work becomes onerous or the age catches up with them.


Comment:

Margaret Wente wrote a column in the Globe and Mail (March 31, 2011) saying that University education was wasted on a many entrants who would be better off as tradesmen. There were a number of letters countering it with the argument that the University graduates earn, on average, substantially more than tradesmen annually and over the lifetime.

This is another case where the averages are deceptive. Many graduates in law, medicine, computer sciences, engineering, business and many other professions earn several times more than the tradesmen. But there are graduates in Arts faculties, some sciences and social services who have difficulty finding and holding relatively low paid jobs even with post-graduate degrees. Graduates in these subjects have significantly lower income than tradesmen when they have any income at all. Moreover, they have spent money on fees and upkeep over several years taking on large loans in the process while their school classmates who went into trades were earning money. It is these graduates who have wasted (from earning viewpoint alone) there years at the University which they could have fruitfully employed working for trade diplomas. On the other hand, there are many businessmen who started as tradesmen and graduated into service company owners with six and seven figure incomes. It boils down to the old saw – you can’t keep a good person down. Conversely, it is hard to raise a not so good person however much you plaster him with paper degrees.

One can not make conclusions of life time importance based on broad statistics; data have to be examined in detail. If this were done, the merit of Ms. Wente’s argument will become clear and if the conclusions were put into practice, Canada, Alberta in particular, would not have to import highly paid workers in crucial industries.