It’s graduation season and so the chattering classes have taken their annual turn towards dissecting what’s right and wrong with the American educational system. This year, as it has for a while, the subject of choice has been the cost of a college education and whether it is worth it.
I have refrained from addressing the cost issues of college head on. Readers Continue reading
The Credential Society: A Historical Sociology of Education
and Stratification
Randall Collins
Credentials. It has such an authoritative ring, doesn’t it? You can almost hear the man asking to see yours.
And why shouldn’t it? The root–cred–is from the Latin credere which means to believe. So you get all those great, strong words: creed, credulous, credulity, even street cred. It all boils down to the same thing: it’s safe for you to believe in the idea or the person at hand.
Randall Collins might ask, is it really? More specifically, he might ask that Continue reading
An Honest Con 