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The Forum > Article Comments > Creeping credentialism > Comments

Creeping credentialism : Comments

By Mercurius Goldstein, published 14/7/2006

Universities are trying to make modern-day philosophers out of gormless middle-class children.

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Well said. We would not have the skill shortages we do if at least half of the school leavers sent to universities had a 'proper' and useful job, instead of barely making the grade in some useless, Mickey Mouse university degree, just so they can say,"When I was at uni'", and give a lift to their parents's egos
Posted by Leigh, Friday, 14 July 2006 10:58:50 AM
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I'd have to say I agree with the thrust of the article - I know of one university that is re-assessing their physics degree largely because 75 per cent of the graduates failed.

I tend to think that the solution is not restricting access to the elites, rather, aiding the most number of people to actually enter university courses, while making them substantially more difficult.

This will have the effect of having large graduate intake initially in the first years of degrees and casting a wide net, while culling those that are only there to get a pretty piece of paper with their name on it.

It sounds expensive, but that needn't necessarily be the case.
If the first year classes are treated as more of a trial period and most of the funding is reserved for those who make the cut I'm sure a more effective system of higher learning can be attained.
Posted by TurnRightThenLeft, Friday, 14 July 2006 11:02:07 AM
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Good article, and for once Leigh, I agree with you. I've got a mickey mouse degree, in Politics and History, but I have a passion for that and have used those skills in my professional life, the amount of students in my classes who couldn't givea rats and were, like you said, only there for their parents egos was astounding.

Our Universities should be there for the educational elite, not the middle class masses or financial elite. We seem to be going the way of the American college system, where all the white middle class kids go to college whether they deserve it or not, and the smart poor kids get a choice bewtween Maccas and the Marines.
Posted by Carl, Friday, 14 July 2006 11:06:34 AM
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I find this post disappointing and a little misguided. The fact that “life” rather than tertiary educated individuals make highly valuable contributions to Australian society is no argument that education is futile. Education lifts the capacity and standards of those who undertake it. Raising education standards among the bulk of the workforce improves the capacity of the bulk of the workforce.

I don’t think anyone has ever suggested that holding a degree allows you to cruise through life without effort, commitment or “hard work, inspired intuition, social skills and not a small measure of rat cunning”. However, holding a degree allows you to enter industries that would be otherwise inaccessible, such as engineering, architecture, teaching, nursing, science, law and medicine to name but a few.

Parents (ideally) want their children to achieve and contribute more to society than they can. This is a form of social mobility that university education can and I would argue does contribute to. Broad scale education benefits all Australian’s. University is about more than getting a job and (if you pay attention) will provide you with more than just the wherewithal to enter the workforce.

Do you mind me asking what the "Mickie Mouse" qualifications are in?
Posted by Kveldulv, Friday, 14 July 2006 11:31:28 AM
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Do they still have philosophy degrees at uni?

Can't show gormless folk how to use their brains now can we?

I have never met an expert on Mickey Mouse. Why would you study a an animated mouse?

Gormless folk have right to try their hand at brainy stuff, if they choose. Of course, that is unless this is really a mickey-mouse democracy.

Education in a democratic, capitalist society is the right of everybody who has the money. I think it should be the right of everybody. There is nothing more stimulating than being on night shift in a dirty meatworks with a BA (majoring in philosophy).
Posted by rancitas, Friday, 14 July 2006 3:15:34 PM
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I have to agree as well. Sending more kids to get degrees that mean less is pointless. It is a difficult view to express without being accused of intellectual snobbery. I believe that people who genuinely are interested in pursuing tertiary education should have the opportunity, if they make the grade. Fully funding less places with higher standards is better than increasing the cost for students and allowing more people to enrol, especially for people from poorer backgrounds. And Carl, I think people who call History and Politics 'Mikey Mouse' degrees are mistaken (although must confess to being a Ancient History and Philosophy graduate myself) - the research and particularly analytical skills these degrees produce are of use in many circumstances where the subject matter is not. If you want my opinion on Mickey Mouse degrees, look at Marketing and HR - call me a snob but these subjects belong in the realms of colleges, not universities.
Posted by Nathan Joel, Friday, 14 July 2006 5:03:41 PM
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Some job activities do require training. Would you like to be cut up by a surgeon who learnt his trade by trial and error on the job?

George Stevenson´s Rocket was partly designed by his son Robert who George had insisted do an Engineering degree. Why? Because Locomotion was running out of steam on the hills and George realised that the design of these new railways needed the assistance of maths and physics.

Perhaps what we need is a bigger range of choices. The old CAEs provided an alternative form of education for those who thought differently from the conventional academic stream. Also the traditional trades have become more complex with new knowledge. What we need is variety in education. I don´t care whether you call them Schools, Universities whatever. Or what you call the qualifications. What matters is that we educate our people in ways that will help them improve their lives.

Anyway the middle class will always find something to be snobbish about and will always be ambitios for their children. So what?
Posted by logic, Friday, 14 July 2006 9:13:38 PM
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Sorry. I incorrectly spelt George Stephenson. Stevenson was the spelling of the family of lighthouse engineers who trained as engineers with degrees from Edinburgh.
Posted by logic, Friday, 14 July 2006 9:41:34 PM
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You simply cannot get a job these days without either a degree, an apprenticeship or the appropriate experience. Not many employers are willing to train unless they can be assured that the person they are training will commit to the job for a number of years. In the meantime, they want experienced personell who are ready to do the job (under a Howard government, that means importing workers rather than provide the training).

Alternatively you can run your own business, but without the necessary qualifications or experience it is doomed to failure like the 9 out of ten businesses that do fail.

While qualifications are important, people need to also make sure there is a demand for what they are training in. For instance don't get into an industry that is full of cowboys like graphic design.

Most people with limited education don't get well paid jobs, and struggle all their lives. A degree (or an apprenticeship) opens up doors.
Posted by davo, Friday, 14 July 2006 10:35:22 PM
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when society has more people than jobs, parents give their children whatever edge they can. when employers are overwhelmed with applicants, why not chose from the otherwise apparently equal the person with the best initials after their name?

society has deep structural problems, the heritage of our history and our genes. 'creeping credentialism' is just a superficial manifestation of these problems.
Posted by DEMOS, Saturday, 15 July 2006 10:26:15 AM
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Instead, we have bloated, notionally egalitarian degree-mills that try to make modern-day philosophers out of gormless middle-class children.

Yes, and those who want to become teachers after failing marketing and PR.
Posted by Rainier, Saturday, 15 July 2006 4:06:20 PM
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I believe Mercurius Goldstein [what a brilliantly stunning name] is completely correct.

Anecdote - I recall discussing with a high school maths teacher a few years back, how I had read an employment advertisement for a junior forklift driver - "must have Higher School Certificate"! I thought it was the most ludicrous thing I'd ever read. Why would a forklift driver need a Higher School Certificate? Particularly at the time there was a glut of youth unemployed. However, the teacher thought that it was very right and proper. I was aghast.

Any half-smart kid can drive a forklift and very well too, there really isn't much to it. I know, because I've had occasion to use one. But now you need a licence to do it. That's over-qualification.

This is the price we have to pay, for the recession we had to have and the instigator of this nonsense, Paul Keating, his Labor Party and his "Clever Country" or whatever it was all called. Space restricts a fuller essay on the whys and wherefores of the matter but Mr Goldstein's article correctly identifies the silly results. A nation full of mediocre clerks, administrators and middle managers with graduate degrees in attendance, even some with honours - they showed up more than the others.

Meanwhile, there's lots and lots of very clever, skillful people, who are now unemployed because they don't have qualifications to do the most simple and basic tasks that they used to do without them, like house painting and bookkeeping and cooking. Now everyone's got to be "qualified". And now nothing's as good or reliable as it used to be when people without qualifications used to do them.

Australia doesn't have a skills shortage at all. It has a shortage of people with rubber-stamped paper credentials - so-called qualifications that aren't worth the paper they're written on.
Posted by Maximus, Saturday, 15 July 2006 4:48:28 PM
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Ah, Mercurius, your two articles here on OLO amount to a shameless attempt to claw back some recognition and self-determination for teachers. This needs to be nipped in the bud.

It’s very naughty of you to point out that the conservatives, who claim to value decentralised power and promote decision-making at the lowest possible level, are leading the charge to have centralised curricula, standardised testing and cardboard-cutout benchmarks: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4597

It’s subversive of you to question the value of qualifications, when everyone knows that these are the only real value propositions in our education system. University degrees are rungs on the ladder of prosperity. Questioning them risks reducing the value of other people’s investments in marketable qualifications.

And it’s downright seditious to undermine the values of our aspirational middle class.

Teachers are paid to do a job, and that is to teach what they are told to teach. Departing from the script, declining to give students career advice, and suggesting that teaching kiddies to climb the social ladder is less important than teaching them to think is professional negligence. Teachers who dare to question the received wisdom, or worse, encourage their students to think critically about the system, should be sacked unconditionally.

It’s a blessing that you haven’t made it into the education system yet. We’ve spent years grinding teachers down, so we certainly don’t want any uppity characters like you influencing our young folk. Hopefully your influence on your fellow trainee teachers can be contained, otherwise they might end up thinking like this bloke: http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/2006/07/14/unending-conversation/

Then we’d have not only uppity teachers to deal with, but thinking students as well.
Posted by w, Sunday, 16 July 2006 6:12:06 PM
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w, thanks for the blog ref. Michael Oakeshott, quoted in the blog, was one of my teachers at LSE. At that time (1961-64) about 6% of each cohort went to uni. Most of those who taught me were, like Oakeshott, leaders in their field, and still get cited. You can't have that quality of teaching in a vastly over-expanded tertiary system. In a recent economics paper, I slated a UQ paper, of which the head of a Qld uni economics dept was a co-author. The lead author is now at LSE, I sent him my draft for comment; he accepted all of my criticisms, and says he now laughs at his Qld experience, he's given far more responsibility at LSE and says he's learned a great deal there. Those such as Labor MP Craig Emerson who advocate even greater expansion of university entry need to explain exactly how this will benefit the students and society.
Posted by Faustino, Sunday, 16 July 2006 9:15:47 PM
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With all the middleclass kiddies getting degrees what next shock horror the dirty working class and poor kids as well!! I suppose the idea of an egalitarian society is a bit too much, where everybody has access and ability to use the same skills and knowledge ( I dont know about U of S but every other university teachs skills) The idea that university is another tool in the endless competitive rat race called life is ludicrous, it makes a mockery of the idea of academia and the universal pursuit of knowledge. The authors objection of course centres around that neo-con bug bear, critical thinking. Australia is a better society when all its members have developed the skills to add meaningful debate on subjects of national importance. Not all of us have the luxury to lecture to young children and expect mindless obedience. Now that the education is teaching critical thinking in schools maybe our authour is already seeing that getting his degree is redundant.
Posted by BITMAP, Monday, 17 July 2006 11:56:13 AM
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The historical development of Uni education as the 'new' vocational training we have to have, is now starting to be challenged by smaller uni's offering liberal arts degrees where one gets trained to think.

Whether employers value the fact that such students have gone to learn for the sake of learning - at their own expense - and whether these same people are better critical thinkers and potentially better employees for more specific vocational training will be interesting to see.
Posted by Reality Check, Monday, 17 July 2006 4:39:41 PM
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The whole purpose of life is to learn... and to keep learning - life after life after life...

People will continue to learn, even in a future when universities no longer exist. Access to the internet will change things dramatically for everyone.

A "top" skill in an overly-informed world will be the power of discernment. Often taught at tertiary level.
Posted by K£vin, Monday, 17 July 2006 8:00:29 PM
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I hope that when you actually complete the excellent degree that your university offers you may know a bit more about sociology and the role of education in liberating the disadvantaged. Hopefully you will look back in shame at the absurd and simplistic interpretations you put on these things - maybe more time on your studies would help.

Of course, maybe you are just trying to protect your own position in the orer of things.

If you believe in a natural social order why are you entering teaching? to ensure it stays that way?
Posted by Voice, Tuesday, 18 July 2006 6:51:16 AM
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Unfortunately this argument is based on a total misconception, namely, that universities exist to enable graduates to be "successes" and to make money. The fact that such a notion has taken hold is a testament to the utter bastardising of the idea of a university in this country - and by no means only here. Australian universities in general are now one big disaster zone, having followed the degenerate American model which decrees that anyone and everyone, no matter their intellectual (in)capacity, should have a "college degree", so that now there are thousands of institutions calling themselves universities (prize examples Liberty; Bob Jones) handing out "degrees" to certifiable morons.
Here now almost anything seems entitled to the name "university" and almost any course or "degree" qualifies for "university" status. No doubt we have appropriate courses in tap-dancing, raffia-work, and Ludo. Having worked in many universities around the world, in better and more honest days, I am now very glad to be retired.
Posted by oldpro5, Tuesday, 18 July 2006 12:01:51 PM
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Thanks again to everyone for commenting. Thought-provoking as always.

Voice’s comments puzzled me. Voice made some anodyne remarks about "the role of education in liberating the disadvantaged." Well yes, that is true in other contexts and times and places. But my article referred to current middle-class attitudes towards higher education in Australia - a quite specific context, and one in which I made the case that it is not so liberating. Voice has yet to address the case, except by repeating the myths which I was questioning, and which have led us to situations such as the below:

What would Voice say to the year 12 kids I dealt with at a south-western Sydney public school this year, most of whom believed their lives held no real opportunity because they were headed for a UAI of about 40? They seriously thought that missing university next year means their life is over. They did not get these beliefs from nowhere. They got them from well-meaning people placing a ridiculous over-emphasis on higher education, and under-valuing the fulfilment, inspiration and confidence one gains from carving out one's own path. As a result, these kids’ experience of education had been anything but 'liberating'.

And of course I don’t believe in a “natural social order”. The phrase is oxymoronic. “Natural” and “social” are mutually exclusive. In any case, how does my personal position affect the validity or otherwise of the case I presented?

And no, I certainly don’t want things to stay as they are. I don’t want kids in SW Sydney to continue thinking that their 12 years of education were wasted because they graduated without a UAI score sufficient to gain university entry. If that is where current attitudes have got us, then it’s quite reasonable to question the assumptions many people hold about tertiary education.

I will however take Voice’s advice to spend more time on my studies in education and sociology. Who knows, it might help me bridge the gap in my grades from their current high distinctions to something higher.
Posted by Mercurius, Tuesday, 18 July 2006 3:13:21 PM
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Meanwhile, davo’s statements provided the very answer to the problem he raised. As Davo said, you need “a degree, an apprenticeship or the appropriate experience” to get a job. The statement is true, obvious, and trivial. Who in their right mind would hire a person who had neither a formal qualification, a vocational qualification, or relevant experience? My article was lamenting the current over-emphasis among the middle-class on the former, at the expense of the two latter options, and the counter-productive effects this has wrought.

But I will always hold a special place in my heart for BITMAP’s submission, whose circuitous ramblings I was hard-pressed to navigate, but which led me to think at one point that I was being pegged as neo-conservative. Over the years I have, for my activities on various social issues, been called bleeding-heart, do-gooder, elitist, latte-sipping and leftist. So I will take BITMAP’s comments and frame them on my wall, as proof that there will always be someone more fringe than I.

Still, if I’ve got the conservatives calling me a bleeding-heart, and the leftists calling me a neo-conservative, I think I must be getting something right after all.

As for the teaching of critical thinking in schools, has BITMAP noticed the all-out political and media assault that is now taking place on the critical curriculum? “Critical thinking” will need strong defenders in the decades to come, so I don’t think my degree is going to become redundant any time soon.
Posted by Mercurius, Tuesday, 18 July 2006 3:15:03 PM
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Call it counter productive, call it unwarranted, but do not call this debacle a myth. A degree guarantees a job to any young person prepared to mow grass for the city. Failure to have one guarantees unwarranted discrimination, if not unemployment. The fix is in. The myth is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You suppose that education is for social mobility. You are a materialist. Why not recognize that the all-powerful education industry is too sacred cowish to fix? A Catholic bishop once said, “Give me the mind of a child when he is five, and I will keep it for all his life” or something to that effect. The priests of education (teachers) install the myth year on year from age 5 to adulthood. You are now acquiring a vested interest in a voracious beast, but you kick against the goad, will soon be a marked man. You are up against the beast that feeds you.

The education industry is to serve like any and every other industry. It is too critical to leave to teachers, just as justice and health are too critical to leave to doctors and lawyers, but look at how these professionals prosper themselves when the citizenry cedes control! Watch as service to the public declines.

The industry is selling ‘social mobility’ and failing to deliver? No. They assuredly deliver in relative terms, but there is a terrible price. The people who don’t have the degrees must not be allowed to buy or sell, for they do not bear the mark of the beast (a degree). They deliver by lowering the common denominator. It is a class thing.

Until we demand objectivism, we cannot speak of objectives. We cannot control the cost or the product. Soon you will cede to the cult or be marginalized. This cow is sacred and needs no purpose at all. It is a cause of its own. Education for the sake of education. The means justifies the end.
Posted by Jim19, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 12:53:30 PM
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