Profession and Occupation Project Practice Assignment Paper

PROFESSIONAL PROJECT PRACTICE
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PROFESSIONAL PROJECT PRACTICE
The words profession and occupation can be interchanged. Profession and occupation have similarities and yet have minor differences (Basavanthappa, 2000, p.5). The need to understand the difference between profession and occupation as well as what makes them so similar is been a subject of debate. This paper seeks to discuss the differences and similarities between a profession and a skilled occupation from a project management perspective
The Differences
It is common for some countries to pay more attention to professional training with an almost exclusivity on academic subjects while firm-based and occupational training is left entirely to employers. Apprenticeship arrangements and other skilled occupations involve employees who formally agree with their employers to practice a recognized program of classroom and work-based learning (Basavanthappa, 2000, p.5). Apprentices are involved in the process of production, their trainer is often their mentor too, and ultimately have a sufficient occupational mastery, which is certified by an external body. Professions will almost have a certified body that formally train and certify the student.
Many professionals require that education be beyond high school, preferably a degree (Publishing, 2010, p.169). Skilled occupations are often those kinds of professions that do not require a further education. It, however, brings about a complication whereby it is difficult to draw the line that separates the profession from the skilled occupation because of the many dimensions in the character of skill. Educational attainment or even cognitive test result scores does not really define the broad scope of skills necessary to master and apply on certain professions or occupations (Basavanthappa, 2000, p.5). One would beg to answer the question on what category to place a professional baseball player since that of ‘middle-skilled’ does justify it is not necessary to attain an education beyond high school. One solution for this is by classifying skills by wages, which may be viewed as integrating the skill levels along various scopes along with those skills’ market evaluation.
Jobs that require middle-skills generally make up half of the entire employment today, even though their share of the total employment share decreased from about 55% to 48% between 1986 and 2006 (Lerman, 2013, p.5). Professional and related jobs rose from 17% in 1986 to more than 20% in 2006 while managerial positions attained a rise of about 12% to 15% of total employment. This statistics can show that skilled occupations are a majority compared to professional jobs.
The ‘common core’ was coined by the U.S. education reformers remarks that called for a comparable preparation in high school before seeking higher education or a job that was actually an opposite proposition to the facts on the ground where employers did not fancy that from potential skilled employees at all (Lerman 2013, p.6). The evidence shows that for skilled occupations, occupational as well as behavioral skills are to the employer’s perspective far more significant. The difference between a profession and a skilled occupation is also the academic qualification required to take the jobs as just shown. For instance, Lerman (2013, p.6) in a survey, was able to find that a sample of U.S. workers used 19% of their skill learnt in Algebra I, while Algebra II had only 9% of the workers applying it and no more than 15 wrote anything that was five pages or more. This though should not be mistaken to mean unskilled jobs do not require certain academic courses.
It costs less for apprenticeship training and other forms of skilled occupations. The government benefits by spending little for training workers as it reaps tax benefits from worker increased earnings (Lerman 2013, p15). This is in contrast to the money spent by governments on higher education.
It costs less for apprenticeship training and other forms of ...