A new essay: The Credential Cartel.
It’s about degree inflation, licensing barriers, and how credentials increasingly function as gatekeeping devices rather than narrow tests of competence. The core question is simple: when a requirement is defended as necessary, is it actually protecting the public — or mostly protecting access?

https://curmudgeonlycanadian.substack.com/p/the-credential-cartel-how-degrees

#Credentialism
#DegreeInflation
#PublicPolicy
#Gatekeeping
#OccupationalLicensing
#Skills
#Competence
#LabourMobility
#Workforce
#Meritocracy

University: "You need our stamp to prove you're educated."

Also university: Teaches 19th-century economics while collecting payment in fiat currency that proves the curriculum is fiction.

The irony writes itself.

#Education #Economics #Credentialism #SelfEducation

Real expertise: "Here's how this mechanism actually functions."

Phantom expertise: "I have credentials (unspecified), institutional validation (from those I defend), and sophisticated language (that pathologises your recognition)."

The second sounds more credible.

The first is actually useful.

Learn to tell the difference.

#Expertise #Credentialism #CriticalThinking #AppealToAuthority

A higher seat at the table of an unjust system, an illusory diversity among the ruling class, is not progress, it is a bribe!
― Muirén Ní Sídach

Chris Hedges and Catherine Liu, author of “Virtue Hoarders: The Case against the Professional Managerial Class” discuss the rejection of liberalism, and the credentialed managerial class war against the working class.
#CatherineLiu & #ChrisHedges
#Culture #Economics #Politics #ClassWarfare #Neoliberal #HyperIndividualist #Credentialism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuIb4j_hxSw

Please feel free to share this visual representation of how various aspects of identity contribute to #power and #privilege in our society.

Highlighting the complexity of social experiences & the disadvantages for those without power should help those with power to understand how they attained it without any effort.

#Ableism #Classism #Credentialism
#Discrimination #Homophobia #Intersectional #Linguicism #MentalHealthStigma #NeurodivergentDiscrimination #Racism #Sexism #Sizeism #Transphobia

#Credentialism and #Meritocracy in the United States of America

> Reducing reliance on credentials is also more likely to increase diversity, even when it’s not a stated objective.

/cc @epilepticrabbit @dajb @donpresant

https://hyp.is/abpVzCczEe-D2TdJcYnCbg/www.nytimes.com/2024/06/10/business/corporate-firms-meritocracy-elite.html

"I don't expect anybody with no musical background to get it. I took classical piano for fifteen fucking years, theory, composition, the whole thing, and I'm getting so fucking tired of people saying, 'Oh, it's a rock 'n' roll guy fucking around with electronic music.' That's bullshit. One of these days I'm gonna pull my degrees out and say, 'Does that make me legitimate?' But I don't wanna do that because that's horseshit too."—Lou Reed

#Credentialism is excessive reliance on credentials, especially academic degrees. The term originally was applied to over-reliance on credentials in hiring, but its use has broadened.

Credentials are third-party acknowledgments that the holder possesses the requisite knowledge and clearance relating to a specific field of knowledge. Most are educational in nature, usually a diploma indicating the completion of a specific course of study.

#RationalWiki
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Credentialism