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"Things got bad when credentialism surpassed education as the primary function of college. If you want evidence of this, consider the criteria for the US News &
by hc 17y ago
"Things got bad when credentialism surpassed education as the primary function of college. If you want evidence of this, consider the criteria for the US News & World Report college rankings: Peer assessment, student selectivity, faculty resources, graduation and retention rate, financial resources, alumni giving, and graduation rate performance. Notice anything missing?
Are colleges not ranked in order of how much students learn because that would be impossible to measure? Or is it because no one cares?"
if you think about it, this doesn't make sense. the us news college rankings are used by high school students and their families to select colleges to attend, not by (most, i assert) employers to select employees to hire. they list credentials of colleges, not college graduates. so they are not evidence that "credentialism" is a function of college at all.
employers care about the difference between schools in regard to what their students learn---and these differences surely exist---and they assess schools with this criterion using empirical data they gather from interviewing and hiring people.
- Alex3917 17y ago"the us news college rankings are used by high school students and their families to select colleges to attend" That was my argument. Students don't choose their college based on how much they think they will learn. And so colleges have no incentive to make sure they do. No one cares if students aren't learning, not the students, not the colleges, because learning is no longer the point.
- hc 17y agoi don't believe you have shown that how much students think they will learn doesn't play a role in their college choices. they choose based on the information they have available; the criteria you mentioned contribute to an idea of how effectively schools can teach students. alumni giving/financial resources, for example, allow schools to buy better faculty and equipment, which make students learn better. graduation and retention rates are evidence of a decent educational environment. sorry to directly contradict you on this, but i also don't believe this was your original point. you were trying to show that a degree serves mainly as a credential. students may select schools on the basis of their rankings, but it doesn't follow that the rankings are the motivation behind their selections. to use an analogy, i may use reviewer ratings to select a computer to purchase; it doesn't follow that i select brands _for_ the prestige of owning a computer rated 5 stars by cnet.