Top 10 Professions Requiring the Most Pre-Licensure Education Hours

Occupational licensing in the United States imposes varying education requirements across the 97 professions tracked in PlainCredential's licensing-requirements database. This ranking averages each profession's required pre-licensure education hours across every state that reports a figure, computed live from 4,947 state-profession requirement records, not a hand-picked list.

What the data actually shows: the top 10 is not a healthcare sweep. 4 of the top 10 slots go to skilled trades (electrician, plumber, elevator installer) whose apprenticeship-style licensing counts cumulative classroom-plus-on-the-job hours over several years, which lands them alongside 6 healthcare/mental-health/animal-care professions with doctoral-style academic + clinical training. Reported hours are not directly comparable across licensing models, an apprenticeship hour and a supervised-clinical-practice hour are counted the same way in the underlying state data, but they are not the same kind of training.

#	Profession	Category	Avg. Hours	Range	States Reporting
1	Psychologist	Mental Health	5,919	5,000–6,973	51
2	Electrician	Construction	5,837	4,000–7,946	51
3	Elevator Installer	Construction	5,837	4,000–7,946	51
4	Plumber	Construction	5,837	4,000–7,946	51
5	Veterinarian	Animal Care	4,919	4,000–5,973	51
6	Pharmacist	Healthcare	4,689	4,000–5,480	51
7	Optometrist	Healthcare	4,459	4,000–4,986	51
8	HVAC Technician	Construction	3,837	2,000–5,946	51
9	Physician Assistant	Healthcare	3,689	3,000–4,480	51
10	Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW)	Mental Health	3,459	3,000–3,986	51

Methodology Notes

Averages are computed live by grouping every state-profession requirement record with a non-null education-hours figure by profession, then averaging within each profession. The range column shows the lowest and highest state-reported figure for that profession; large ranges usually reflect states that count differently (for example, whether a degree program's total credit hours are converted 1:1 into "education hours" or only clinical/apprenticeship hours are counted). This ranking reflects hours as currently recorded in our database and does not distinguish classroom hours from supervised on-the-job or apprenticeship hours, both are summed under a single figure per state.

Caveats and Limitations

Reported hours exclude post-licensure continuing education and can differ in how a state's licensing board defines a countable "hour." Some professions license under different names in different states, and some states report a range or a degree requirement rather than a granular hour count, in those cases the requirement record uses the board's own stated figure. Users should verify current requirements with the relevant state licensing board before relying on a specific number. See the full profession directory for state-by-state detail.

Compiled from official source data by PlainCredential · Updated May 2026

Every figure on PlainCredential is rendered directly from NCSL and state occupational- licensing board data, no number is typed in by an editor. This page draws directly on PlainCredential's own licensing-requirements database, no figure is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.

Publisher	PlainCredential
Sources	Public state occupational-licensing board records and federal interstate compacts