Credentialism
Apr 29th, 2007 at 6:23 am by Susie
A couple of interesting posts.
I may have mentioned before that during the time of Bush I, there was a bill ready for his signature that would make it illegal to deny employment to someone on the basis of whether or not they had a degree - unless the degree was legally required for a certification. He was going to sign it, but backed off after the education lobby pressured him.
“How can we tell kids they should go to college if they can get a job without it?” was his explanation.
The irony, I suspect, was lost on him.
As my regulars know, I’ve run into a lot of trouble finding real jobs because I don’t have a college degree. I’m the only staffer working on this campaign without a college degree, and the only reason is that the candidate doesn’t have one either, and was a lot more open to the idea that I might know a thing or two, anyway. (By the way, despite his wealth and success, he’s often criticized for… not having a college degree. Which would mean what? He’d have twice as much money? The whole thing makes my head hurt.)
The only reason I finished college was because it was the only way I knew at the time to keep from being killed by LBJ short of jail or leaving the country.
As the late southern comedian Brother Dave Gardner said, about segregationists trying to shut down public schools to avoid desegregation, “Why not let the little chirren go to school? We did. We didnt learn nothin.”
Prior to getting my PhD I worked over 20 years in trucking.
While not denegrating academia and the scholarly achievements of my peers, nor overly pumping up the folk wisdom of my furniture-moving buddies, I’ll shout out an amen to the idea that a BA doesn’t “prove” anything.
The lack of a degree kept me limited to manual labor positions under the supervision of a bunch of pompous, ex-frat boy dolts who had somehow managed to put down their beer mugs and bongs long enough to be awarded a business degree at some fourth tier college.
Today, I have a vested interest in encouraging young people to go to college (or else my classes will be canceled and I’ll be back toting pianos and sofas up and down stairs all day). But I still can’t get over the fact that some of the dumbest people I’ve ever met had a “BA” after their names.
Yeah, people often say to me, “You don’t have a degree? But you’re so smart!”
I always respond, “You say that as if every college graduate you ever met was smart.”
I was so disillusioned with Ivy league academia that
I dropped out and went to night school.
The only reason that I eventually went back full time
was that the draft board had come knocking,
and I figured that four more years of college
was better than three years of the army.
I wound up taking ten years to get a five year
degree, and had more than 200 credits at the end.
But I’m an aberration.
My daughter, who is about to graduate, has gotten
a superb free education in the CUNY system,
made great friends, and seen much of western
and central Europe in her semester abroad.
There’s good higher education, OK higher education,
and lousy higher education available out there.
Well, I’ve got plenty of credentials, but frankly I don’t think they should be treated so seriously.
One problem, mentioned above, is that for people who *really* want to learn, college is great, and you’ll learn a tremendous amount.
Then there’s the ones that want to squeeze by with just-passing grades, because to do otherwise would interfere with their carousing.
But both get the same piece of paper, saying they got a college degree.
Even saying “they went to an excellent school!” isn’t enough. Need I point out a certain Yalie with a Harvard MBA, who happens to be ignorant and proud of it?
Employers being lazy with hiring decisions are the real problem here, but where there’s a labor shortage and having good employees really matter (cf. Silicon Valley), employers or their hired headhunters, find it to their advantage to get the best people, whatever their credentials.
Need I point out a certain Yalie with a Harvard MBA, who happens to be ignorant and proud of it?
You do him a great disservice, sir.
He doesn’t just happen to be ignorant —
he works
very conscientiously at it.
In this case, cultivating ignorance, like being
president, is hard work.
He’s proud of it because he’s worked harder at that
than anything else in his life. Please don’t take that accomplishment away from him.