An Age of Specialists

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 727, 19 June 1953, Page 12

An Age of Specialists

PROFESSIONAL PEOPLE, by Roy Lewis and Angus Maude; Phoenix House. English price, Jj

(Reviewed by

L.J.

W.

HIS book is of interest to a far wider circle than that implied in the title; it is of interest »to every taxpayer, for in New Zealand as in Britain or in any other welfare state the Government is the biggest single employer of professional péople, and the public pay. This is the age of the specialist (one chapter is titled "We're all specialists now’) and this country already sees something of the tendency, now far advanced in industrial countries, towards the formation of new _ professional associations, many of them taking on some of the colour of trade unions. In Britain, mere bigness of business has created, for example, a profession of management, which in the case of many of the. nationalised industries has effected a complete divorce of ownership from control. A good deal of space is given to defining a profession, and to discussion of such requirements as (a) a body of knowledge or skill acquired by study and training, and certified by examination, (b) a code of professional ethics and conduct accepted by the profesisional association as binding on all its members, (c) a high sense of duty towards the employer or client, and a concern on the part of the association to keep its members up to the implied contract with society to provide the best possible service. In this country, it may be noted, many _ professional associations, while laying down standards of knowledge required for .admission, prefer the examining to be done by an independent body such as the University. As the State becomes increasingly the employer of professional people, the community should become increasingly interested in the real cost; for as the State increases its social services it increases the demand for professional people without increasing the real income of the people employed. The ultimate result is a decline in quality and attempts at dilution. We see this in New Zealand in the dental service, in nursing, in the teaching profession, and in the use of "technicians" in various departments. "Thus does the State... mask a reduction in quality with a judicious spread of quantity." But there are 274 pages in this book of close reasoning, ample documentation, and much wit as well as wisdom.