Careers in even very intellectual professions, like law and medicine, were primarily developed outside the universities, through apprenticeships (although a few degree programs did begin to emerge in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries). A law degree didn’t become a mainstream credential in the United States until the late 1800s, when the completion of postgraduate instruction became a requirement for admission to the bar.2 The idea that a college degree is a prerequisite to any professional career is a quite new one, only about a hundred years old. The idea that college is needed for
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