Jim D writes: Terry McDonough wrote: > We know why we do 2 [credentialing]... This is forgivable but not > particularly defensible. The real question is why society bothers with it.<
>I don't think anyone decided to "bother with" credentialing. At some point, somebody started bragging about going to college or a "better" college and employers decided college degrees were a simply way to separate the good candidates from the bad. That meant that more and more people had to have them. That erased a lot of the differences among job candidates, so new and higher credentials had to be invented or used. It's a self-propelling process. Also, some credentials do have meaning. I'd rather have a surgeon with an MD than one without.< I'm not critical of all credentialling. Some of it we can agree is useful and some is pernicious. And Jim is right that it arises from historical processes for determinant historical reasons. What I'm wondering about is credentialling that no longer perhaps serves any function, pernicious or otherwise. Here in Ireland the marking system does distinguish the able from the non-able student to some extent. Nobody gets to continue to grad level without a 2.1 which is about a B++. Some professional programs are instituting entrance exams because even this is becoming increasingly unreliable. The entire range of grades below this draws distinctions which are pretty meaningless. Working hard to get into university and then meeting a pretty minimal set of expectations over a multiyear period may serve to distinguish the middle class from the working class proper (a distinction which is mostly invidious anyway), but this could be done with a job interview upon leaving secondary school which could give you as an employer other important information or by just looking at the secondary leaving test results without bothering with the subsequent 3-4 years. The process we participate in is very expensive. Most students learn less than a comparable period in "the real world" would teach them. Is it simply inertia that keeps it going? Or is it that all the people involved (students, faculty, administration) have an interest in bamboozling the public about the value of these degrees? Terry _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
