Akkari, Hamed: Credentialing

Today, no one denies that credentials became a must to prove credibility. The article, Death by Degrees, emphasizes the impacts of credentials on society nowadays as well as on individuals. On the other hand, it points out how important it became to confirm “acquired” knowledge through the obtainment of a degree along with the consequences of such a process.

            In the article, the editors discussed how credentials became an obligation to get access to workforce. Using the example of the Chinese imperial assessment that gradually became harder in response to the increasing number of the exam takers, the editors mentioned that a corrupt environment surfaced as a result. The large turnout for such assessment was justified by the expected steady salary for successful candidates. However, the large turnout for college education nowadays is justified not only by the expected steady salary for credentialed degree holders compared to the expected salary for positions that do not require credentials, but also by the prospective role and position in society. The non credentialed are those who work on a full-time basis in positions such as cashiers, cooks, bartenders, dishwashers, desk clerks, taxi drivers, or real estate agents. It is an undeniable implicit truth that these non-credentialed workers are the servants of individuals, whereas credentialed workers affect individuals by teaching them (professors), curing them (doctors), and building bridges or developing technological gadgets (engineers, scientists); therefore, they are the servants of society. Furthermore, the credentialed became the ones mostly responsible for prosperity by inventing and contributing to society. They are the ones whose opinions matter most. As a result, credentialing lead to elitism. The editors identify elitists as bogeymen that support social hierarchy by believing that credentialism is totally inevitable, which forces individuals to become credentialed in order to live an ideal life. According to the editors, as long as access to work force is controlled by a bachelor degree, students will pay more and the more the bachelor degree become democratized, the master degree becomes indispensable for advancement.

In my opinion, this results in lowering the chances of having an alternative for credentialing in the near future. Although, there are alternatives of credentialing these days that are becoming popular such as the website www.coursera.org that exhibits free online courses in different subjects offered by major universities such as Yale, Princeton, and Stanford.