Credentialism and the crisis of the university

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While Professor Cote is speaking mainly about Canada, this certainly applies in other countries as well:

Grade inflation is mostly nonexistent for the classes I have been taking. All my classes I worked hard for the grade I earned; a 3.37 cummulative GPA in computer engineering.

I then know other students who only take professors that are easy and curve heavily. They then have a good 3.5 by scrapping by with the least amount of effort. These students are then thrown financial aid while I try to do it in the way that I know will prepare me for graduate school.

These lazy students make the honors society while I study harder and harder to successfully raise my GPA above a 3.5 before my Junior year. I agree that this is a serious problem. Many people in the university don't deserve to be there. But society threatens them with a dead-end job.

What is going to happen is that so many people are going to go to college that the tuition will skyrocket to the point that it will be impossible to afford. Less people will attend. Only the students who want to work her or his butt off will be able to successfully get financial aid; rising above the average students. The law of supply and demand will make it so only those few people can afford college (because they work hard to get financial aid) and will be able to get a degree. The value of the degree will go back up as successful graduates go down.

The University is already a daycare center with - so far as I have seen in a longish academic career - four clear missions:

1. keep the unemployment statistics looking lowby giving people something to do besides be in the work force

2. provide remedial education for the smallish percentage that will actually eventually get educated

3. provide certificates of employability for the large percentage who will really not need an education - or at least not tghis one

4. provide indoctrination to keep the people convinced of the party line.

I wish it were otherwise.

This is exactly what happens when people who aren't meant to go to college are forced to in order to find decent employment. Society is made of up all kinds of people. There are those who research new scientific principles in material and building design, those who actually use these principles in putting together a design, those who take the blue prints and use them to actually build the factory, those who produce goods in the factory, and those who clean and maintain the factory.

The ones who research and come up with new scientific principles are the ones who actually benefit and need the college education or equivalent. The people who put together the design may benefit from having a degree, but one is not really needed to do this. The people who build the factory do not need a degree. They need on the job training. The same applies to those who work in the factory making the things we want or need. Those who clean the factory do not need degrees either.

Unfortunately governments at the behest of big business have decided to work to enslave the working class with so called "free trade" agreements that allow such business to enslave those without degrees. Those who do not need a college degree to be able to learn a job are now forced to get one in order to obtain any kind of decent pay. Instead of college being there to teach those who are curious, they have instead become a place to obtain work permits. The purpose of colleges have been hijacked, and as long as this continues, colleges will produce mediocre results.

States have made it so that many jobs that used to be learned by on the job training now require a degree or some other form of government mandated "education." This is done by passing laws that require a license in order to work in a particular field. Nursing is a primary example of this. It is also the reason why prices for basic services are sky high. In Florida, P.S.A., one needs government mandated education in order to install roofs, do electrical work, plumbing, driving a truck, etc. The days of a father passing his trade to his son or master passing a trade to an apprentice are long gone. In order to obtain decent employment, a person must "go to school" and be saddled with military service, student loans, or many other unnecessary burdens. Things won't change until licensing is done away with and replaced by certification.

In addition, large companies are no longer willing to invest in training employees. They would rather make the employee pay for their training or "education." With such burdens placed upon those leaving primary or secondary school, it becomes necessary for them to take shortcuts in order to be able to do the job they like.

One of the first classes I taught there were two girls - roommates - who clearly did not belong. Not that different from a lot of undergraduates, but what were they doing in MY class?.

I asked. One of them said she was hoping that in four years she would find the ight guy to marry and settle down to be a housewife with. The other said she was there because her parents did NOT go to college and she was their only child and a symbol of achievement.

It is a crying shame.

Its all about making money unfortunately. Its a self-serving cycle.

In the US:

A high school diploma used to certify that the graduate can read, write, do math up to algebra and entry calculus/physics level and has problem solving and reasoning skills.

Today it only means the kid attended class.

The next step was college/university. To get in the kids needed to get a certain score in the SAT exam.

Before, the SAT score decided what program the student could enter and there was a minimum score required to even be eligible to enter any university.

Today the SAT can be skipped in favor of college-specific 'tests' called CPT (college placement test) that is (amazingly) a severely dumbed down version of the SAT. If you can add , read a paragraph and write your name you pass it.

Senior year in university was another milestone.

Before, students could be denied taking high-level courses if their score on pre-req. classes was deficient and their overall GPA low.

Today the universities 'widen' the acceptable courses to satisfy graduation requirements to include non-major related classes. After all, a credit hour paid is a credit hour paid.


The only thing that has not changed yet is entrance to Masters programs. If your GPA is garbage there's no chance in hell you'll get into any Masters program.


Jobs that literally used to require only a high school diploma now 'prefer' a university graduate simply because the graduate can be exploited for more productivity at less pay than before. For example: being a manager in a fast food restaurant does not need a bachelors degree in management but having the manager with that degree, paying him the same amount a high school graduate would be paid, allows the restaurant to make him do the job of manager, human resources and basic accounting for the place.

I used to do hiring for a travel agency and I was routinely told to hire those with marketing degrees over those with travel/tourism degrees because the marketing people could be assigned 'special projects' which were pretty much the bulk of the agency's marketing efforts... so rather than pay them the $18 an hour marketing coordinator pay they would have the same work done plus have them do travel sales for a mere $9 an hour.

Very good points so far.

It is indeed important to recognize (and has been pointed out) the material base for this phenomenon of credentialism and declining university standards. Up until the 1970s it was possible to get a good-paying job without any post-secondary qualifications (thought it's important to remember this was more so for men than for women, though the point is true for both genders). But the good blue collar jobs have largely disappeared, and many white collar jobs that used to be done by high school graduates are now often (if not always) filled by those with college degrees, since this is what employers generally prefer.

As a result, a lot of students don't want to be there. If good jobs were available for young adults, they'd take them and not attend at all. But since that isn't the case, universities are filled with disengaged students and most students are mainly interested in the piece of paper that will get them a good job.

Everyone who enters was apparently "always a good student" - and indeed in Ontario, where I teach, 40% of high school graduates now graduate with an 80+ average (compared to 5% in the early 1960s). Since high school grades are pretty meaningless, when these get a C or even a B on a paper, they'll complain about it and insist they "deserve" a higher grade. Often this is on the grounds that since they're paying tuition to the university, they are somehow entitled to a certain grade.

Around third year, your typical B/B-/C+ student realizes that it's time to start thinking about what they're going to do with their life, the immense pressure to change grades begins, as many come to the conclusion they "need" to go to graduate school. This is when we have to break the news that their chance of getting to any of the graduate programs at our university, or any decent graduate program, is practically nil. So far, graduate programs and professional schools (law, medicine, etc.) are pretty good at exercising quality control.

But to the OP, yes, this is a huge problem. Canada and the US have slightly different versions of the issue.

In Canada, kids want "bang for their buck", but it's still relatively cheap and footed mostly by taxpayers. So essentially, kids either go to school on mostly the taxpayer's $, or they don't and pay a lot of tax dollars to higher-ed anyway. There's absolutely 0 reason for them to not "try it out", and Canada probably gets a lot of real prizes in their schools.

In the US, it's still expensive as crap (in fact, it's ultra-expensive, the only reason it's not at $15-$25K where it should be is because demand is so pointlessly high). Of course, kids have stafford loan money out the ass, and enroll anyway. It's sad that school will never be the big deal it used to be.

Just talk to professors and see if any of them have research you can be involved in. If you show and interest and it's clear that you are at least reasonably competent, professors will likely be willing to give you a chance.