What is the relation between the new economy and its focus on credentialism and the expansion of for-profit colleges in higher education?
The slow and insidious creeping of credentialism into
today’s modern workforce has its roots in the failure of the traditional higher
education establishment. Prior to the explosion of college degrees, higher
education was rarely a necessity in the workforce. Many students could get
solid, decent middle-class wage jobs directly from high school thanks to
unionized industrial jobs. However, with the rise of college enrollments and
the subsequent boom of higher education campuses across the 50 states, came an
increasing demand for college-educated staff. This was tied with the transition
from an industrial production economy to a service economy. It was the “golden
age” of higher education, where a college degree was a ticket to nice
middle-class work. Unfortunately, rising enrollment and college credentialism
lead to an excess in the supply of degrees. Anything in oversupply quickly
loses its value and the college degree soon became the equivalent of a useless
participation trophy in the 21st century. This normalization of a college
degree meant that employers no longer saw college graduates as a possible pool
of specialized labor. College applicants became just one of many job applicants
looking for jobs. It also spelled disaster for those without a college degree
because it superficially lowered their worth. Even though an employee with only
a high school education still had the skills for the job or the years of
experience, they were placed beneath college graduates because of their lack of
“academic credentials.”
As the college degree quickly lost its value, market forces
and employers looked to other metrics to sort their pool of job applicants.
These shifting metrics became the ever-growing list of must-dos for college
students if they wished to be employed in their industry right after
graduation. Items on this new list ranged from internships to volunteering. The
problem with these ever-growing lists of “must-dos” was the inflexibility of
the traditional college structure as well as a broad generalization of learning.
Learning for learning’s sake was no longer the top order of business. Jobs and
employment rather than education became the running issue. General programs of
liberal arts and studies not geared for a specific profession lost out as they
could offer no concrete benefits. This conundrum was especially severe for
adults coming back for a college education as they came to education to build
stronger foundations for their already tenuous careers. The result was the
proliferation of private, for-profit colleges that appealed to the sentiment of
education as workforce preparation. They were also bolstered by their ability
to sidestep issues like low SAT scores and poor school preparation because they
cared more about the profits rather than low retention scores. Thus, we enter
the new economy of education for credentials with the hope of finding jobs
using said credentials. Born from the decreasing value of traditional college
education, and the plight of desperate returning adults, for-profit colleges
capitalized on the collapse of the old economy.
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