Whether merited or not, professions requiring a college education command a greater degree of respect and tend to weed out some of the complete idiocy that led to a lack of ethics among too many appraisers - they didn't profit by big $ intelligent criminal conduct like Enron or insider trading ( that is terrible of course, but at least took brains and made their crooks millions )
Instead, we had naive appraisers who would not get a professional foothold elsewhere- doing comp checks and meeting value pressure simply to get work or being too intimidated to say no.
Again, to be clear, some individuals who do not go college are smarter than some college grads and more ethical as well in some cases. It is about the net result and impact on the profession .