Science-based and technology-based learned professions in development

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the "learned" professions are those requiring knowledge of an advanced type in a field of science or learning customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction and study as distinguished from a general academic education and from an apprenticeship and from training in the performance of routine mental, manual, or physical processes. "They include law, medicine, nursing, accounting, actuarial computation, engineering, architecture, teaching, various types of physical, chemical, and biological sciences, including pharmacy and registered or certified medical technology and so forth. The typical symbol of the professional training and the best prima facie evidence of its possession is, of course, the appropriate academic degree, and in these professions an advanced academic degree is a standard (if not universal) perquisite."

I want here to focus on the science-based and technology-based, learned professions. That would leave out from list above such professions as law and accounting. The engineering professions might be considered prototypical technology-based, learned professions. Meteorology and epidemiology might be considered prototypical science-based, learned professions. I don't think that the distinction between science-based and technology-based learned professions is common nor well established, but it is not important for the point I would make here. I refer to the two, together.

I would distinguish between those learned professionals who deal with public services and those who deal with services to individuals. Thus, I distinguish between public health physicians and epidemiological versus physicians and nurses in clinical practice; between engineers versus architects designing buildings for individual clients. (And indeed, the distinction extends to other learned professions, separating for example, judges who define legal precedents and interpret the law from lawyers who advocate for individual clients.)

I suggest that those in the learned professions providing public services are generally less likely to be able to appropriate a large share of the benefits created by their services than those providing private services. Thus, the social benefits from a railroad, road, or dam built on the basis of civil engineering services are likely to greatly outweigh the salaries paid to those civil engineers. The social benefits accruing from the services of a public health campaign are likely to greatly exceed the salaries paid to the public health physicians who run those campaigns. The social benefits that occur from good weather predictions are likely to far exceed the pay of the meteorologists making those predictions.

The science-based and technology-based learned professions are recognized as having high returns to investment in human resources. The high salaries accorded to physicians, engineer-entrepreneurs, and some other professionals can be measured, and suggest the high private-returns to scientific and technological higher education.

The social returns to public services by the science-based and technology-based, learned professions are difficult to measure, and I suspect that they are too often overlooked by development economists.

Science and Technology policy seems to me to have emphasized research and development (R&D) and, more recently, technological innovation. Good professional engineering is, to my mind, neither R&D nor innovation. Neither is the professional work of the entomologists working in plant pest control, nor the soil scientists working on maintaining soil fertility, nor the scientists working in plant and animal disease control. Nor is the work of epidemiologists and public health physicians working to reduce communicable and other diseases.

We know that poor countries do very little R&D, spending a much lower portion of their GDPs on research than do more affluent countries. While R&D is critically important for development, the developing nations are probably economically rational in spending only sparsely on R&D.

Innovation is clearly critically important, but much of the innovation that occurs in developing nations is in the form of adaptation and adoption of technology from abroad. Some have suggested that technology deepening, with the increasing mastery of technology transferred from abroad, is more important for poor nations than technological invention. While much of the innovation in poor countries is accomplished in low-technology industries, and can be done by people without professional scientific nor technological status, as these countries move into higher-technology, more extensive cadres of professionally trained people will be required. But even low-technology innovation in poor countries seems to benefit from the presence of engineer and scientifically trained managers, and from some professionals in the workforce. Of course, some innovations, such as in public health and medical standards require fully trained professionals in all countries.

I suggest that the public services of the science-based and technology-based learned professions may be as or more important than either R&D or innovation for poor countries. I further suggest that the training for such professions and building capacity of institutions that utilize their services for the public good should be given a very high priority in development programs for poor countries.