Increasing Enrollment Causes Educational Inflation and Credential Depreciation, Not Labor Market Empowerment
An American myth emerged in the 20th Century that claimed that higher education guaranteed a path out of poverty and into middle-class comfort. It is an individualistic argument and observation: people who get college degrees tend to earn more income than those who don’t. This is totally true. But, this individual proscription is not a solution to societal inequality. Not everyone can simply go to college and thereby rise out of poverty.
John Marsh’s book Class Dismissed offers this analogy: imagine that some individuals attending a theater performance cannot see the stage. They can gain an immediate advantage by simply standing up—all of a sudden there are no barriers to their view. But, as more and more people attempt the same strategy, the advantage begins to disappear. Ultimately, everyone in the theater could eventually stand, thus eliminating any gains it initially offered a few. Marsh’s point is simple: even if it was conceivable that every person could attend college, this would not address inequality. It’s not the college education itself that offers opportunity or advantage in a labor market. It’s the fact that a college degree is a mostly-rare commodity. If everyone got a college degree—or even got the highest possible degree, like a PhD—this would not solve the problem that some workers would continue to be paid more than others. Toilets still need cleaning and ditches need digging, even if PhDs are the ones doing the labor. Lowly paid workers would just be the people whose PhD isn’t from a fancy Ivy League college.
A college degree is what sociologist Randall Collins refers to as an educational credential. The piece of paper you receive upon graduation—or even the line on your resume or vita—is not important because of the kind of paper it’s printed on, or even which particular skills, knowledge, or experience you accumulated to acquire the piece of paper. What matters is the relative, perceived value of credential. As more and more people are expected to get college degrees—because they’ve heard the myth that college delivers people out of poverty—the value of that credential depreciates. Thus, jobs that required a high school degree decades ago, now require a college degree. And jobs where a bachelor’s degree was good enough, now require a graduate degree. It’s an arms race called “educational inflation”.
This problem is most acutely impacting working class students who are expected to attend college to get jobs that used to not require a college degree. And they will almost surely go into debt to pay for that degree. Until inequality is seriously dealt with, this problem will persist. Until shitjobs are paid well, or until shitjobs are transformed into good jobs, some people—surely those with “less reputable” degrees—will be expected to endure them. Until society decides that everyone deserves a basic universal income, people will continue to use college as a meas to an end, with ever-competitive motivations, and scarce prospects for success.
We cannot allow our universities to be complicit in facilitating this exploitation and moving goal-post that targets society’s most disadvantaged members.