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I think people are missing the basic reasons for certification:
1. To puff up the prestige or to make money for the certifying authority.
2. To restrict the pool of "qualified professionals" to well below the
free-market demand, causing an artificial shortage of workers. The purpose
of this is to drive up their incomes at the expense of employers and the
non-certified workers.
3. To enhance the status of the "qualified professionals." Surgeons, for
example, are now considered to be respectable professionals. They used to be
the people you went to for a shave and a haircut. Sadly, this effect doesn't
always accompany certification. Plumbing, for example, has never become a
profession one studies after Harvard. Perhaps if they adopted a better
uniform...
4. As a sort of substitute reputation for practitioners who don't have one
of their own. For example, the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval casts a
mantle of respectability over a product from a company that no one has ever
heard of. This is handy when dealing with a pools of clients or consumers
who haven't heard of you -- but only if they have faith in the Seal of
Approval. If products or services carrying some kind of Seal of Approval
turn out to be lousy, the value of the Seal declines. Groucho Marx summed
up this phenomenon when saying, "I wouldn't join any club that would have me
for a member."
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