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No, the real reason was that country wasn't producing enough jobs for the expanding labor force so we artificially created a new requirement to keep young peopl

• CincinnatiMan 6y ago
  I don’t know that there’s any groups deciding on something but rather individuals acting in their best interest, getting a degree, that ruins it for everybody else. An arms race among individuals.
  • dnautics 6y ago
    > I don’t know that there’s any groups deciding on something Credentialism is exactly that. If in the pre-covid era you went to Washington, DC, you will see huge illuminated ads in the metro stations for companies, for example "graduate school" (literally the name of one company I saw) which offer super sketchy master's degrees. This is because if you have a master's degree, you get a mandated pay bump in your salary as a civil servant.
    • veilrap 6y ago
      That sounds like bad regulations and bureaucracy more than credential-ism, but I agree that is horrifying. A blanket pay bump for "Master's" degrees written into the code? Clearly that's going to be gamed. If any auditing actually went into the source and value of the credentials then they could be appropriately valued or ignored, depending on the case.
      • jacobr1 6y ago
        > If any auditing actually went into the source and value of the credentials Except that already is case. You need a degree by an accredited institution. The Department of Education regulates the accreditors, which audit the universities. So we could have better or more aggressive regulation here, either at the DoE or the accreditors. Or even have the department accredit directly, but I suspect these institutions will still likely game the system. Usually the bargin-basement universities do actually have worthwhile material, the poor ones just don't provide you with the full support to succeed, and often overstate the value of their program relative to alternatives (or cost). I mean, you could just buy textbooks on Amazon and do self-study. And for some folks, that might even be a good program! Good universities provide a lot more than just the lectures and textbooks, but I suspect setting standards to assess those properties is difficult. Even going to a well-respected state school, I had a few classes that were very poorly run. In one case, my dorm-mates and I created a study-group and basically taught ourselves the material. But I shudder to think of a whole university consisting of classes like that, though I suspect they would meet baseline audits of the curriculum. An alternative approach would be to assess the outcomes of students, but looking at the can worms that raises in primary eduction, I don't think that is a good approach either.
      • dnautics 6y ago
        > "If any auditing actually went into the source and value of the credentials" Pray tell how would one prevent gaming of the auditing. As an aside, my dad worked at the VA. There was a person who was supposed to be promoted to CIO and then they did an audit and found her undergraduate credentials were not correct (don't remember what the exact circumstances were). As a result she got canned instead of promoted. There are positions in the federal government system where you are required to have a college degree or else you are not eligible, no matter how competent you are.
    • WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
      Holy shit, it just made sense why so many students in my Master's Degree are operating out of Virginia and Washington, DC.
  • pnutjam 6y ago
    Kind of like what's been happening with housing in the places with jobs. It's too bad there isn't some sort of system where we could all have a voice to regulate these sort of things. Kind of like the US had before the Managementism replaced Capitalism and Corprotocrocy replaced deomocracy.
    • jacobr1 6y ago
      What would you describe as the key differences between Managementism and Capitalism?
      • pnutjam 6y ago
        simple, capitalism is where things are run by owners of capital. Managementism is where the managers of companies run things because ownership has been diluted and ignored. This idea is from a book by Frederick Lewis Allen. "The Big Change", published 1952. http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500881h.html http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500881h.html " With potential opposition melting away through the sales exit, the management is very much in the saddle--and in most of these larger companies it is virtually self-perpetuating. How else could things be run in, let us say, the American Telephone Company, which has over a million shareholders, no one of whom owns more than one-tenth of one per cent of the stock? Looking at this segment of American business, we would almost find it appropriate to call our present economic system "managementism" rather than "capitalism." "
    • CincinnatiMan 6y ago
      What sort of regulation would you propose to handle credential inflation?
      • pnutjam 6y ago
        We're talking about cost overruns.
  • debacle 6y ago
    Look at the quickly expanding credential requirements for nursing staff. Over the last decade or so in my state, the requirement has gone from no degree, to associates degree, to bachelors degree, and now there is talk of requiring a masters degree or a 5 year degree.
• _red 6y ago
  I think your analysis is right, but there is another pernicious issue. We now inhabit a world where no one is encouraged or even expected to do a trade (well except for the modern slave caste: illegals). The result is lots of HS grads who should be getting an Electricians degree instead trying to do a 4 year program. The result not only inflates tuition cost, but also leads to 'degree inflation', that is everyone now has a degree. Therefore, this amps up the arms race so a Bachelors is no longer special, thus maybe a Masters or PhD is needed. The colleges are all too happy to force kids into a lifetime of debt to sell them useless basket weaving and gender studies degrees.
  • hinkley 6y ago
    We are all looking for guarantees. Degrees were insurance, but they begin to resemble protection money. And while it's definitely true that lifetime income expectations are higher for salaried people, I wonder if they're high enough to offset the negative compound interest most people are saddled with during their 20's. I think we may be playing fast and loose with our comparisons elsewhere too. There's sort of an image that going to college for 4 or 6 years is a huge investment of energy in your future, and the alternative is to just take 1 year of trade school and then skip to the post-graduation part of on-the-job learning. Like we paused the clock for the college people to catch up? If someone put half the time and energy into trade school + life skills + finances that we expect of college students, I think they'd turn out pretty okay. Stressing about money is expensive. Starting your nest egg eight years late is also expensive. If you make your early lead count for something, I don't expect too many regrets later on.
  • lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Electricians/plumbers/HVAC/carpenters usually all have problems with mobility by the time they hit 50s, and they work in terrible environments and have to drive all day. How much is one’s health and ability to move around in older age worth? How much is it worth to not have to drive around all day and come home on a regular schedule?
    • ntsplnkv2 6y ago
      "Go to a trade!" is the new advice people like to spout out to others but will never do themselves.
• creato 6y ago
  > Credentialism is a tool governments/businesses use keep control of the labor situation. If this were the only factor, then businesses that simply stopped requiring a college degree would have a huge advantage over those that didn't. They could hire more employees, more cheaply. So why isn't that happening? There has to be more to the story than all businesses and governments colluding to require college degrees.
  • ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    White collar labor simply doesn't scale like blue collar. The problems don't get easier with more people anymore. As you go up the chain quality is more important than quantity.