I don't think you can jump from a completely disparate array of glorified first aid courses, back room fire brigade add ons and perhaps more importantly,a general attitude that all of this is okay, and go all the way to uniform 4 year degrees. I think it would be almost impossible, even if you had the promise of much better wages right from the beginning.
We went from a basically state wide associates degree (or at least what might be called an *** in the US), to a bachelors involving a few universities and 3 government mandated services (that then became one services) with some advancements in scope etc. Vastly simpler than what has been suggested here. Ten years later, we're still struggling with some of the broader brush strokes let alone the details. Wages are a very big part of that.
All that systemic upheaval, people being left without jobs, different systems in different areas with different cultures struggling to conform to a one size fits all approach.... without any promise of improved pay. Not ganna happen.
You are conflating the merger of the services with the change to pre-employment degree based education. Changing to degree based education happened well before the merger occurred. It also didn't really change anything from an organisational culture perspective, except possibly to introduce another layer of belligerence from those who feel threatened by advancement. The merger of course did change things, most notably due to the crippling debt taken on when the rural service came into the fold, and it is this to which you refer with different systems, approaches, cultures and redundancies. That is nothing to do with degree-based education.
However, prior to degree based education in Victoria there was very much a "one size fits all" approach, with everyone taking the same course at the same place. Now there are 6 universities within Victoria alone offering under-graduate, conversion and post-graduate courses, and all the small variations that come with that: hardly one size fits all.
Indeed, it could be argued that in the US there already is a "one size fits all" approach, as the curriculum for EMT, EMT-P, whatever, is standardised by the DOT as well.
Of course there will be some education providers that are better, some that are worse. There will be some areas that require further education, some that are happy with the baseline. This is the status quo already; true for whatever industry you care to discuss; and not particularly important when considered in the context of an overall raising of that baseline.
I agree that the strange attitude of some parts of US EMS where poor education is not only accepted, but somehow glorified and actively pursued will be a very difficult thing to manage.
