credential deflation

Choosing Democracy: This is a tough budget; CBP

Well California can certainly do something to help people in this crisis. A start would be enacting laws that require jobs in city and state government to be open to those with a high school degree. Rollback the BA if no one can get one.  And if a high school degree gets you nothing, why should kids complete it?  There are absolutely no incentives here but lots of legal harassment.  If the entire K-12 compulsory education gets one nothing, we have a broken system.

Credentialism as exclusionary tactic has a long history but there has always been pushback against that in the US.  I sat with many parents at a Rethinking Education conference many years ago discussing this very topic. We will have to be clear about the difference between education and schooling as well as between education and credentials in order to make changes.  If we do not understand these core concepts, we cannot make policies that are coherent.

The high school diploma was a credential and if that credential loses all value,  then the entire K-12 path is called into question.  If two years of college is required or desired, then there has to be a path for people that is provided for all, as public schooling has been, since the decline of agricultural work. But this one isn't yet another easy extension to the ever-growing number of years of schooling as the length in and of itself is starting to impede the learning it tries to facilitate. It becomes a weeding out process rather than a social service.

And that's not good.

background post
how is requiring a BA legal?