The Credential Society - An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification

Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-0-231-19234-7
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 328 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 666 g

Reihe: Legacy Editions

The Credential Society by Randall Collins is a classic on higher education and its role in American society first published in 1979. Forty years later, it remains an essential text for understanding the reproduction of inequality. Its controversial claim that the expansion of American education has not increased social mobility, but created a cycle of credential inflation, has proven remarkably prescient.

Collins shows how credential inflation stymies mass education’s promises of upward mobility. An unacknowledged spiral of the rising production of credentials and job requirements was brought about by the expansion of high school and then undergraduate education, with consequences including grade inflation, rising educational costs, and misleading job promises dangled by for-profit schools. Collins examines medicine, law, and engineering to show the ways in which credentialing closed these high-status professions to new arrivals. In an era marked by the devaluation of high school diplomas, outcry about the value of expensive undergraduate degrees, and the proliferation of new professional degrees like the MBA, The Credential Society has more than stood the test of time. In a new preface, Collins discusses recent developments, debunks claims that credentialization is driven by technological change, and points to alternative pathways for the future of education.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Collins, Randall

Weitere Mitwirkende

Cottom, Tressie McMillan

Stevens, Mitchell L.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Pädagogik Geschichte der Pädagogik, Richtungen in der Pädagogik
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Schulen, Schulleitung Universitäten, Hochschulen
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Pädagogik Pädagogische Soziologie, Bildungssoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Soziale Gruppen & Klassen

Über Autor(innen)

Randall Collins is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (1998), Interaction Ritual Chains (2004), and Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory (2008). He is a former president of the American Sociological Association.