How often have you seen job advertisements stating that some type of degree, diploma, or certificate is necessary? Performing a job or task often requires an applicant to have the pre-requisite knowledge or at least some kind of affinity and ability for the task and work being applied for. If this is so, why are so many job positions asking for so many qualifications?

Students across the world are beginning to question the necessity and value of college education as the cost of such training has risen by 110% over the past 20 years, median family income has risen by only 27% (New York: The College Board, 2001)[1].

Have you ever wondered if the requirement of qualifications and credentials has always been so prevalent? The reality of the situation is that back in the post World War 2 economy of the industrialized countries (Europe, North America, etc) there was a shortage of labour (people to take up jobs) so the qualifications necessary for these positions was often waived or learned on the job, and the employer paid training option was often implemented.

Contemporary Tight Labor Markets

Indeed, as Wikipedia points out, labor shortages were felt in [during and after WW2] agriculture, even though most farmers were given an occupational exemption and few were drafted. Large numbers volunteered or moved to cities for factory jobs. At the same time many agricultural commodities were more needed for the military and for the civilian populations of Allies (Wikipedia, 2009).

Before the war, there were not enough jobs to go around, hence the depression. As America geared up for the war and then got involved, two things happen which would have a great effect on postwar America. The first, to produce what was needed for the war, America’s manufacturing began to grow at a fantastic rate. Secondly, there was rationing, so as workers started making money again, there wasn’t a lot for them to spend it on. So, they saved lots of money.

With this tremendous boom there was a severe need for employers to fill positions which now require “qualifications” that were often learned on the job. Also, many new industries were created along with new job titles, so naturally academia and the college industrial complex jumped on the bandwagon to cash in on the increasing numbers of people looking for work as the economy tightened and contracted with the crises seen in the late 70′s to early 80′s and has not stopped since then.

It can be supposed that a certain element of this preference for a University degree is related to the local labor market conditions (supply and demand of people with certain qualifications), but the reality of the situation is that many people who come out of colleges are more suited for the working world due to the fact that it is more vocationally oriented training rather than the pervasive theory taught in Universities. It is true that Universities purportedly produce workers more suited for managerial or “abstract” thinkers, but it is more likely a matter of class and status and the epitome of the specialized economy’s need to compartmentalize people into specific roles.

The Rise Of Credentialism

University degrees were, up until recently (50 to 60 years), strictly an affair for the wealthy and well connected in society, while those at the lower rungs were relegated to community colleges and technical colleges. As many professions became regulated and bureacratized, Universities came into the fold as the necessary qualification to be completed to qualify for positions such as Nurses, Lawyers, Doctors, and other traditional occupations usually occupied by the wealthy of society and their offspring.

Back in the 1960′s to early 1970′s, high school graduates were able to enter teacher’s college directly from their previous level without having to attain a University degree in a specific or general subject. They could just literally become teachers out of high school and were encouraged to attain a University level qualification during their teaching career.

Similarly, concerns about the commercialisation of universities began to emerge during the debate of the late 1970′s about the safety issues surrounding the then-new recombinant DNA technology. The concern centered on the potential influence of the commercialisation of university research on the university as an institution (Kenney, 1998 & Science in Africa, 2002).
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According to a Statistics Canada report released a day after the 1998 “students’ budget,” students are paying more than ever for their university education. After inflation, tuition fees have leapt 62 per cent since the beginning of the decade, while family incomes have dropped by 5 per cent. Fees for undergraduate arts students increased in all provinces but Quebec. With yet another rise slated for the 1999-2000 academic session, students can prepare themselves for fee hikes well into the 21st century.

The sharpest rise in costs occurred in Newfoundland where, on average, students paid 18 per cent more than in earlier years. By comparison, Ontario had a jump of 10.1 per cent. In other provinces, the tuition surge ranged between 1.7 per cent in British Columbia and 8.3 per cent in Alberta. The national average was 9 per cent. Employment incomes of those aged 20 to 24 have fallen by 21 per cent during this period.

At the same time, average loans from the Canada Student Loans Program remained constant and because it has not kept pace with changing realities, students are left having to do much more with less. But youth aren’t exactly foregoing the post-secondary option due to the fee hikes. The proportion of 19- to 24-year-olds enrolled in university grew consistently from 1975 to 1995. That growth stalled in 1993 and then dropped slightly in 1996, but it is once again on the rise. So who is paying for these changes? Check out the numbers: the average undergraduate debt after graduation in 1982 – $5,260; in 1990 – $8,690; in 1995 – $17,000; in 1998 – $25,000.

Academics, teachers, and other so-called “role models” keep chanting the “need for formalized education to get a job” mantra because our economy apparently needs skilled workers, they say, but is the connection between formalized education and just “getting a job” that clear? Most people in semi-professional roles require skills such as exercising considerable judgement and certain specialized skills.

It would seem that before enrolling in and barely scraping by to complete a life draining 4 year degree, it would be more advantageous and cost efficient to offer more University or community college programs 2 years in length rather than the former. Indeed, many community colleges already offer 2 year programs that should be sufficient to compete for positions such as those offered in the business field such as marketing, business analysis and so on. After all, most of what you’re going to need to know is going to be learned on the job anyway.

The statistics and facts seem to be falling on deaf ears with childrens’ role models, teachers, and parents because in the last 30 years the percentage of positions/jobs requiring college/University education has more than doubled while the job responsibilities and tasks have remained the same or have been deskilled (ie. eliminated or replaced by new, argueably less skilled) by technology. Indeed, according to most “role models,” if students do not plan to pursue college education, they will often be threatened with flipping burgers for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately now that the degree obsession from employer human resource departments has expanded into society, lack of a college education often not make it past human resource departments’ clerks’ eyes (or computers).

Why would this be? Well, according to his book Executive Blues, G. J. Meyers warned of the “academic stench” that can often label an applicant “over-qualified” for many of the jobs available in today’s economy. Maybe what attracts employers to college graduates is their ability to sit for unbearable lengths of time at a desk staring at computer screens, or maybe it is the fact that after a college education that many students run up debts to which they will likely never repay in their lifetimes.

Where is the accountability?

In the Ontarian schooling system (in Canada), the Universities, colleges, and post-secondary institutions are empowered under an enabling act and are bound by provisions of different provincial statutes (ie. The Expropriation Act). In addition, because these institutions receive public funds directly in trust (by way of endowments), there are therefore restricted by the rules of accountability. This essentially means they are accountable to the public for demonstrating where the public funds were spent for the goals intended, and to see that it is spent in an efficient and economical manner. However, as all pundits of economics know, and what the economic and historic models show, is that government is not capable of being effective when power is taken away from individuals.
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This means that University administrations are supposed to be responsible for the management of the public funds they receive for collective purposes (very broadly for education and research), but who watches the watchers? Supposedly the board of governors serve this function, but the reality of the situation is that this board is largely a controlled aspect of University Chief Executive Officers’ preferences with no real stated process for reporting their effectiveness to taxpayers. Indeed, the MUSH sector (Municipal, Universities, Schools, and Hospitals) does not guarantee public accountability of funds with regards to University effectiveness (or lack thereof). This fact is so credible that even the Ombudsman of Ontario admitted it:

“Ontario has fallen behind in oversight of non-governmental organizations providing critical public services referred to as the “MUSH” sector – municipalities (except for the ability to investigate complaints about closed meetings in some cases), universities, school boards, hospitals, nursing homes and long-term care facilities, police, and children’s aid societies (Ombudsman, Ontario, 2008)

It would seem that the problem in education starts much earlier than previously thought; it starts in earnest during the grade school education paradigm where students are socialized into specific patterns of social and scholastic thought. The education system has been patterned after the “outcome based” education model where it promotes curricula and assessment based on constructivist methods and discourages traditional education approaches based on direct instruction of facts and standard methods.

Though it is claimed the focus is not on “inputs”, OBE generally is used to justify increased funding requirements, increased graduation and testing requirements, and additional preparation, homework, and continuing education time spent by students, parents and teachers in supporting learning. (Wikipedia, 2009). Could the outcome based education model be preparation for the post-secondary treadmill racket we call Universities and colleges? All signs would point to “yes.”

Some solutions

In his famous presentation, “The problem with rock tumblers: Why Canada’s education system is in urgent crisis and how to fix it,” Tod Maffin outlines the need for education reform from a system where students are encouraged to have their individualities nurtured, developed, and focused into specific areas of study and vocation. Under the current system of outcome based education as outlined above, students are thrown into a public school with over crowded populations, assigned over worked teachers, and expected to come out of this Marxist factory with direction in life.
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What Mr. Maffin compares this system to is a “rock tumbler” where “you take all the students at the beginning of the cycle and toss them into a rock tumbler. You turn on the switch and tumble them for about 12 years.” Essentially this system is meant to form all students into generalists who do not have the chance to develop their individual skills as they should. The nice stones that come out of the tumbler are like the students that come out of the current education system, which he believes creates a bunch of generalists. “Everyone comes out being able to do everything generally well … Few people come out doing one thing extraordinarily well” (Leader Post, 2006).

Parents realizing this disturbing trend are increasingly enrolling their children into private schools, or in many cases, are teaching them at home in an individualized, nurturing environment — guided by Christian or other religious teachings — often not offered in public schools where students of marginalized situations often find themselves ostracized by fellow students, which ultimately defiles their educational experience and dooms their educational future.

Indeed, the US Department of Education’s report “shows that approximately 1.5 million children (2.9 percent of school-age children) were being homeschooled in the spring of 2007, representing a 36 percent relative increase since 2003 and a 74 percent relative increase since 1999.[2] One private researcher estimates that as many as 2.5 million school-age children were educated at home during the 2007-2008 school year.[3]”
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Jesus calls on Christians of all denominations to call into question the current public education system that their children attends as secular schooling has been stripped of all value and meaning when He has been taken out of the curriculum. Without God or Jesus, students become lost in the wild of secularism and often adopt secular ideals. Phil Brennan of Newsmax.com has exposed this secularization of the schooling system stating that “”government schools must stamp out love of country and the family must be viewed as the enemy: ‘As long as the child breathes the poisoned air of nationalism, education in world-mindedness can produce only rather precarious results. As we have pointed out, it is frequently the family that infects the child with extreme nationalism. The school should therefore use the means described earlier to combat family attitudes that favor jingoism’”" (Newsmax, 2003).

References:

(1) The College Board, Trends in College Pricing, 2001 (New York: The College Board, 2001).

[2]U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, “1.5 Million Homeschooled Students in the United States in 2007,” December 2008, at http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009030.pdf (January 6, 2009).

[3]Brian D. Ray, “Research Facts on Homeschooling,” National Home Education Research Institute, July 2, 2008, at http://www.nheri.org/Research-Facts-on-
Homeschooling.html (January 6, 2009).

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