If you want to talk licenses, the oldest and best-known are those held by lawyers, accountants, and physicians. These "big three" licenses indicate professional expertise, and symbolize wealth as well.

It's not actually very difficult to join the ranks of "the licensed." All it takes is a trip to the motor vehicle bureau. If you can pass a written test and perform a few basic driving maneuvers to the testing officer's satisfaction, you too will be a licensed driver.

We all need a license to drive on the streets, but most of us might not be aware that there are also licenses for childcare, insurance, beautician services, hairdressing, and a long list of other occupations. The licenses for these fields are called technicians' licenses.

A license for everything

The ROC government first started issuing technicians' licenses in 1974 when the Council of Labor Affairs' Employment and Vocational Training Administration (EVTA) held a skill certification test for "refrigeration equipment installation and maintenance." Test takers turned out in droves, prompting the government in 1976 to make the skill certification system a key policy focus. Over the ensuing years, some 2.6 million technicians' licenses have been issued for more than 176 different occupations.

The field of bookkeeping and accounting has been the top licensing category, with over 288,000 licenses issued over the past 30 years, followed by Chinese cooking (over 240,000 Class B and Class C licenses issued). Metalworking, auto repair, industrial electronics, women's hairdressing, beautician services, and computer software applications have also accounted for a large number of licenses.

Some license categories have fallen by the wayside, of course, as times have changed. Few people seek licenses for lathe operating or Chinese tailoring, for example. In the meantime, new occupations are continually appearing. This year marks the first time that licenses are being offered for Web page design, under-floor cabling, computer software, and network installation. Regularly scheduled skill certification tests are currently held for 147 occupations.

Testing for "the right stuff"

Technician's licenses are divided into Class A, Class B, and Class C certificates. In computer applications, for example, the holder of a Class C license is expected to possess basic computer knowledge and operating skills; holders of a Class B license must have sufficient skill to use computer applications to perform their work more effectively; and a Class A computer applications technician will have sufficient skill to run a computer department. It is generally quite difficult to obtain a Class A license, and for some occupations no Class A licenses have even been issued yet; in some cases this is due to a lack of qualified license seekers, while in other cases it is owing to the difficulty of objectively evaluating certain types of skills. Even in the Chinese cooking category, where more than 240,000 licenses have been issued to date, Class C licenses account for a whopping 235,000, compared to just 6,000 Class B licenses.

Skill certification tests include a written section and a hands-on portion, with the latter being by far the more important.

More and more people take the test every year for childcare licenses. According to Chiang Ching-sui, a section chief at the Taipei Municipal Government Vocational Training Center, nearly 2000 people registered for this year's first test offered by the Taipei municipal government, though no test has yet been administered this year due to the SARS outbreak. In addition to demonstrating feeding and washing techniques on dolls, test takers are also required to demonstrate CPR techniques. With SARS, having so many people demonstrate CPR on the same few dolls would have been risky.

In the money

After all these years, though, many still don't know what a technician's license is good for.

Peng Jui-kuan, a group chief in Section 3 at the EVTA, explains some of the advantages. Besides getting extra points when testing for admission to a technical or vocational school, job seekers find potential employers more receptive to applicants who hold extra credentials. Particularly in the financial industry, you have to have licenses to even get your foot in the door.

The huge popularity of licenses in the financial industry is reflected in statistics, which show that as many as a million licenses related to financial sector occupations have been issued in this nation of 23 million, including more than 300,000 for various occupations involving the sale of life insurance products. These figures make Taiwan one of the world's top hotspots for such licenses.

Liao Chih-chiang, a personnel training officer at Cathay Life Insurance, states flatly that no one gets hired at Cathay Financial Holding Company unless they're at least licensed in securities, futures, trust operations, life insurance, and credit operations.

Monica Yuan, a 32-year-old employee at Standard Chartered Securities Investment Consulting, already has securities, senior sales, investment trust and consulting, trust, and financial planning licenses issued here in the ROC, as well as financial analyst and futures licenses from the United Kingdom, and is equipped to work in banks, securities firms, and investment consulting. "I figure it's better to go ahead and get the licenses," Yuan says. "You never know when you'll need them." Not only are the chances of a successful job hunt increased, but once hired you are more likely to get chosen for new positions and assignments as they become available.

Everybody's got one

Most technical and vocational schools require that students obtain a license in their field of study prior to graduation.

Chen Chung-en, president of Yu-Da Institute of Business Technology, points out that in Germany, where technical and vocational education is particularly successful, a professional license is worth even more than a university degree. And though Taiwan's licensing system is not yet fully developed, Yu-Da Institute still requires that students get at least two licenses in order to graduate. People studying data processing, for example, have to get a Class C computer technician license and pass the General English Proficiency Test.

Even students at teacher's colleges and universities now have to take skill certification tests. They used to enjoy guaranteed job assignments upon graduation, but that came to an end when the Teacher Education Law took effect in 1994. The new law required them to do an internship after graduation in order to receive their teaching certificates, and the law was further amended two years ago to make mandatory a certification test upon completion of the internship.

Although the licensing system helps to raise the overall skill level of the workforce, and also serves to certify job skills, business and industry in Taiwan don't generally take licenses too seriously.

According to Tien Chen-jung, dean of the Department of Industrial Education at National Taiwan Normal University, business and industry have disagreements with the content, format, and categories of the skill certification tests.

Lin Teng-chiao, a senior specialist at the Ministry of Education's Department of Technological and Vocational Education, feels that the Council of Labor Affairs doesn't renew its test questions quickly enough to keep pace with new developments in business and industry, and the lack of any compulsory requirements for the licenses detracts from their usefulness.

Lin notes that a license is required for just about every line of work in Japan. In Taiwan, by contrast, such requirements are much less common. In order to register their incorporation or obtain a business license, to name a few rare examples, companies that hire accountants, refrigeration technicians, plumbers and electricians, physicians, lawyers, or environmental engineers must see to it that a certain number or percentage hold licenses. Most other occupations, however, are not subject to compulsory licensing requirements. The enactment of legislation in this area would help to promote Taiwan's licensing system.

But compulsory regulations alone do not mean that issuing licenses will guarantee quality, for some types of business are plagued by the reprehensible practice of "license rental."

Back when Taiwan was still enjoying rapid economic growth, investment consulting firms abounded. Regulations required such firms to hold a financial analyst license. This was very hard to obtain, so many firms simply "rented" the use of an outside party's license. The market rate for such rentals has been as high NT$40,000 per month.

Another problem is that it is quite difficult to test job skills in occupations where creativity is important. Hsia Hui-wen, principal of Taipei Kai-Ping Vocational School, has obtained her Class C license for Chinese cooking. She feels that licensing is basically a good idea but that the system has become too rigid. "Cooking is an art," says Hsia, "not a mechanical process. Tests can't cultivate creativity."

Going global

Hsiao Tien-tsai, a group chief in Section 1 at EVTA, acknowledges that the skill certification system has experienced some bottlenecks in recent years. Certain procedures must be followed in drawing up test questions, and it takes time to arrange test sites, test administrators, and the like. These difficulties pose a roadblock to EVTA in its efforts to keep pace with changes in society.

And it would be difficult to administer blanket licensing for the entire range of occupations. Some occupations are simply not amenable to licensing. In the field of floristry, for example, teachers and entrepreneurs have asked the Council of Labor Affairs more than once to issue floristry licenses, but the Council looked into it and found that floristry criteria vary from one country to the next, and thus decided that it would be difficult at this point to develop standards.

With private-sector providers of job training and licensing increasing in number, EVTA is devoting serious thought to changing its function. Peng Jui-kuan of EVTA's Section 3 points out that tremendous investments in equipment are required for testing in so many different occupational categories. For this reason, job training and license testing may be outsourced in the future to the private sector.

And now Taiwan's fledgling licensing system is beginning to fall in step with global trends, prodded along by the larger trend toward globalization. Monica Yuan already holds seven licenses, yet she is still actively preparing to obtain certified financial analyst (CFA) qualifications in the United States. The CFA is one of four major licenses recognized internationally. Apparently less than 50 people in all of Taiwan have a CFA license. Even though it will take three years for her to work her way through all three levels of the CFA licensing process, she still feels it is worth it, for once she has this internationally recognized license, her job prospects will suddenly become "globalized."

In an age of globalization it is only natural that the licensing system should also go global. It looks like ambitious license seekers can look forward to an unending smorgasbord of credentials to go for!