Our family is not good at filling out forms. It’s just not our thing. Life would be easier if we had an enthusiastic stenographer in the tribe – someone who loves a form and a deadline – but such a creature doesn’t exist in our immediate bloodline.
Every engagement with bureaucracy appears to be last-minute, and consequently, stressful. This leads to intense – but blissfully short and ultimately entirely inconsequential – arguments about why we aren’t more organised.
It also means we tend to pay over the odds for everything because we are the people who make decisions late, and so we are the vulnerable prey of rapacious airline-pricing models and the like.
Recently, we nearly missed the CAO deadline for the same chaotic reason that no one really remembered it. One of our family friends, horrified that we might imperil the future of one of the children, galvanised us into action and into the system.
The experience got me thinking about the system, particularly the process. By this I mean the college process and what could be termed Irish “credentialism”.
Credentialism matters in a world, or more accurately an economy, where everyone needs a credential bestowed by “qualified” others, such as certified institutions. Credentials are the reward given to the individual who jumps through a series of educational hoops.
We are living in the world of credentials. Most Irish parents are prepared to believe that having a credential – a piece of parchment – will render our children more prepared for the outside world. The credential is some sort of careerist dynamic that may propel them forward, leaping over someone else or at least offer a quasi-professional protection against the vagaries of the working world.
This certainly was the case when I was younger, when a third-level credential served as an entry into a rarefied white-collar world. All data backs that historical link between third-level education and pay and conditions. Looking forward, there are reasons to believe that this will not be the case.
Could credentialism be the enemy of creativity?
Revolution in ideas
In 1447, a German tinkerer called Johannes Gutenberg unveiled a contraption that would change the world: the printing press. This led to a revolution in ideas that sparked a re-evaluation of God, the heavens, and science. The printing press reset the world by massively reducing the cost of knowledge.
Between 1450 and 1500, the cost of books in Europe dropped by 60 per cent and continued to fall. For example, in the late 14th century it had cost the equivalent of 208 days’ wages, which given the medieval proclivity for holidays and festivities was well over a year’s wages, to pay a scribe to write a single prayer book for the Bishop of Dublin. By the 1640s, in England 300,000 popular short books were being sold, each about 50 pages long, costing just two pence each.
At the time, the daily wage for an unskilled labourer in England was 11 pence. It was about half that in Dublin but those wages would rise dramatically as construction of Georgian Dublin started in the late 17th century. By the time Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver’s Travels, books were affordable and easily within range of the average Dublin, English-speaking, tradesman.
This dissemination of information changed the world. The ancient was replaced by the modern, mysteries by science, absolutism by the Enlightenment.
When you liberate the brainpower of so many people with books, an enormous human energy is created, as lights go on in so many curious human brains. As problems are solved, everything is thrown into question and the world begins to spin. Such massive disruption to the old order destroys the old economy and creates a new one.
Fast forward to today and consider what connectivity is doing to our brains, our world and our economy; Today’s connectivity is the new printing press.
In the past the link between education and income was based on the value of the stock of knowledge you had in your head. If you were educated to university level, you had a stock of knowledge that not many others had, and therefore it was valuable. From this reasonably exclusive value, a stream of income was derived.
Add to that networks, experience and structure and, over time, you have permanent income.
Therefore, the credential process was the gatekeeper to this scarce knowledge. If you didn’t jump through the hoops, you didn’t have the knowledge. University was like an 18th-century guild – a bit like being a barrister today. The guild set the price, and once you were in the club, your income had a pre-ordained floor. The ceiling was up to you.
Today, the value of the stock of knowledge is falling because anyone can access it online. Connectivity is liberating millions of brains and giving brilliant people access to knowledge that used to be the preserve of the few. It matters less whether an institution blesses you or not.
The stock of knowledge is being debased. Education is no longer about access and credentials but attitude, character, and a willingness to keep learning all your life.
This means that we all have to embrace risk, but credentialism is all about avoiding risk. In fact, the professions have always been about laying-off risk. It is all about de-risking, about insurance rather than risk.
For many, third-level education is an insurance policy. It promises something permanent in a world where connectivity is making income transient, loose, and unstable. Is it a false promise?
Credentialism seeks to generate a permanent stream of income from a finite stock of knowledge – or at least that was the understanding. That is the logic underpinning the great Irish CAO hysteria, all the grinds, the mocks, and out-sized pressure imposed on teenagers.
Don’t get me wrong: some pressure is good, and hard work and application are the making of any person.
But as I look at the global economy, credential-ism strikes me as yesterday’s idea.
howdy.
Congrats on San Diego piece and here again you have raised your game, Keep it up there.
The internet is today’s printing press when equated to dissemination of knowledge.
However physical work takes practice to perfect and so a surgeon must hone skills as much as a lawyer , a bricklayer or a plumber.
Trade school certification and professional training are needed more than ever was the case before.
Watching a discussion about RTEs hospital trolley abuse/ crisis on tv3. People on prime time with degrees have been trying to figure it out for years. The data tells us that Ireland spends 30% more but are 9000 hospital beds short of the oecd average. Every night they discuss how to stop people going into hospital or how to move them out of hospital. The last thing they want to face up to is that we are short 9000 HOSPITAL beds. Qualifications are useless in a culture that ignores data and logic. Data and logic are ignored for political reasons.… Read more »
In the US journalists are fond of “death of … ” announcements. There’s always some truth abut these claims,nut mostly they are exaggerations. For instance, the big talk of the 90’s was the “death of” the 30 second commercial on TV, and by extension the death of TV as the way to reach customers. But what “death of” really meant 3as that 30 second TV commercial would no longer reign as the sole or even most dominant way to reach customers. Similarly, there will be no “death of” credentials and credentialism. But credentialism will probably not dominate as much as… Read more »
12 years of propaganda followed by 3-4 years of indoctrination produces a generation after generation full of opinion but incapable of debate or rational thought, and that is the result of “education”. “””. The blame lies squarely with bankers and financial policy writers who make development and capitalism work for them, not the rest of us or the environment we live in. In this context, considering how much positive change the BRI has and will bring to the most poverty-stricken areas of the world, upper middle-class Vancouverites accusing China of human rights violations and climate change denial is something that… Read more »
Too true David, the advent of the MOOC (massive open online courses) are literally making third level education obsolete. I put my two through the system, with all the accompanying expense, but wouldn’t dream of it today. My lad is doing a masters in AI but tells me he learns far more from open courses and the net then he ever does in lectures and so on.
Excellent article David, going right to the heart of today’s youth unemployment issue – too many degrees and too little ‘instinct’ to make it in this uncertain world. Thank you for sharing your insights and keep them coming!
Based on my own working life’s experience –
An education gives access to the second step on the ladder
Without it, you start on the first step.
After that “Success is 99% persperation and 1% inspiration” and you can’t have one without the other unless you win the lotto.
The US got it half right with “Work smarter not harder”.
My modified version of the above is –
“Work smarter AND harder”
I know I’m interpreting the US version differently to the way it was intended.
But if everyone is working smarter then go figure.
Credentialism doesn’t depend on limiting access to knowledge. It didn’t go away when books were invented, and there is no reason to think it will go away with the new connectivity. (It might go away for other reasons). I have science degrees from a course at a physical university, another delivered online but with physical attendance for exams, and a masters degree delivered entirely online including exams (but with “viva voce” Skype interviews to ascertain that you did the work yourself). I also have done numerous online non-credentialed courses. The first thing to observe is that these degree courses weren’t… Read more »
I just spent the hour plus required to view this video on early childhood development and the function of the brain in later life. it is already posted but semi buried in a reply section where it may not be readily observed. With your forbearance I post it again here. It is worth the time taken to view and then reflect on the consequences of handing our children over to state sponsored controlled education in the first 7 years of formative life. The success of the future generations lies in the hands of todays parents and even grandparents.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQLgQayNMYI
If you are in your 40’s and happen to find that your ‘industry’ and therefore your career has been made obsolete through disruptive technology, and you start anew in search of a new career, you will quickly find how out-of-date the vast majority of courses are in third level, 10-15 years lagging behind the reality of the market place. Universities seem so archaic and fuzzy in face of the reality of short-lived industries and career turnovers. A person who lives in the reality of today’s market place needs to know how to acquire skills in the least amount of time… Read more »
Would you want to be operated upon by someone who did not have a medical degree? Would you want to fly in an aircraft designed by someone who did not have a degree in aeronautics? I design non-invasive medical devices and you would be suprised at the places they get stuck up to qualify as non-invasive. We are all lucky when in extremis, as we all will be at some stage, that I have several degrees as have my collegues.
Uni’s provided cushy employment for the selected few. During the eighties sixty per cent of Dit grads emigrated.With the housing market set for a crash as big as 2008 within two yrs,our expensively overeducated youth better get used to a lifetime of overseas living.The more time spent in education,the less entrepreneurial a person becomes. Can’t believe that the same policy of zero per cent interest rates is still in place. The euro is a disaster for Ireland.
OPTICS for the EU.
The worst form of management is one that sets targets without providing methods.
https://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://amp.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/frankfurt-focusing-on-the-optics-of-banks-dud-loans-36640423.html&ved=2ahUKEwjCmIGg9-zZAhWNN8AKHbEeChcQFjAAegQIBhAB&usg=AOvVaw20PMSjdq3TOXfmHakTABju&cf=1
This is the reason for multiple EU failures. Immigration targets without housing methods. Failed Bankers targets without proper debt restructuring methods.
The EU ignore logic and data.
When Ireland bailed out the failed irish bankers it was left with an economy that had 150,000 mortgages not meeting the needs and objectives of customers.
Restructured debt should not be recategorised as non performing.
Tonight on the 6 o clock news the ptsb guy gave a lecture about selling restructured loans for the safety of the banking system. After being bitten and bitten by failed Irish bankers we are always obliged to measure a bankers logic. The restructured loans are no threat to the banking system. The bankers want faster and larger profits. They even tell you that its for the “tax payer”. 2.9 % and 2.6% net interest rate margins cost irish couples 6000e per year extra on their mortgages. When a restructured 300000euro loan is sold to a vulture fund for 140000e,… Read more »
Some thoughts on your article: “Credentials are the reward given to the individual who jumps through a series of educational hoops.” – credentials are also a good indicator that someone is a hard-working, persistent individual. I can safely say in my experience that the credential is a reminder to the students of their own autonomy, and can be a significant source of self-esteem for the people who have achieved the credentials. “Could credentialism be the enemy of creativity?” – Good question, I wish you had discussed it a bit more. “Most Irish parents are prepared to believe that having a… Read more »
And talking about education “After nearly two generations of being brainwashed into believing that gold is a meaningless relic, western citizens have lost all concept of gold’s crucial monetary importance. If it turns out that the United States does not, in fact, possess and own the gold it claims to, the monetary, fiscal, economic, and humanitarian fallout will be unprecedented in its destructiveness. Unfortunately, the people have no idea what is at stake.” http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1520428800.php “During the campaign, Trump claimed that the 2016 election provided the American people their “last chance” to turn the nation around. The key word was “chance;”… Read more »
For those interested in getting an education about the basics of the world economy and the transfer of wealth from you to the orient and Russia, here is a good interview from Bill Holter of JSmineset.com
https://www.jsmineset.com/2018/03/15/latest-x22-interview-bill-holter/
Tony, I don’t get agitated, perfectly relaxed here by the sea, a brisk 27 at sunset (exactly 6pm now)
It’s just a shame that you spend so much of your productive time on a gold obsession that doesn’t really do anything profitable for you.
Maybe it’s just your hobby then, and that’s fine.
Business is good for me, I have my fingers in many pies.
I was reading this today:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/07/11/rare-stamps-a-better-investment-than-shares-property-and-gold/
Which inflation rate do you believe is correct.
The government at 2%
The shadow stats rate adjusted from 1990 at 8% or
the 1980 adjusted date at 10%
I’d like to know your personal experience of inflation. My guess is closer to the 8% but could be 10% for food and housing.
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
The government likes the 2% figure as they can keep interest rates low and pension and benefit payments COl adjusted is at 2%.
Just to educate Adam!! {:-)
The expansion of honest money grows in the US
“”With the adoption of HB 103, Wyoming joins all its bordering states (South Dakota, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska) and more than 30 other states that do not assess a sales tax against precious metals.””
http://www.gold-eagle.com/article/boom-wyoming-ends-all-taxation-gold-and-silver
Interesting that nobody participating in this discussion came up with the idea that the reason why education counts less on the job market is that there are too many people in higher education, and usually, where supply increases dramatically, the demand decreases dramatically. At the same time, a dramatic increase of people in higher education caused a decrease in the quality of that education – because they had to accommodate the hoi polloi: in the past, a person taking A-level exam had to know how to spell correctly (i.e., in my primary school, you were only allowed 3 spelling mistakes… Read more »
I had a grand laugh at the Irish Times article:
Irish writers and the pub: a dying tradition;
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/irish-writers-and-the-pub-a-dying-tradition-1.3427230
All the shenanigans of Brian O’Nolan, Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh and Anthony Cronin et al at the Palace and McDaid’s.
It does not seem to occur that the aforesaid produced a better IT sans Brendan, pissed out of their minds than the current occupiers do sober.
This article is spot on in my experience. I have worked in a company where there was a mix of college graduates and people that had worked hands on with the hardware. The people that had the hands on experience had learned things in a different way to the graduates and it showed, they were far more efficient and performed better than the graduates. I have also witnessed self-educated programmers in university that never showed up to classes, they would come to the labs for a few minutes to complete continuous assessment assignments that took the rest of the class… Read more »
Jonathan Pilbin Bowman, son of the well-known broadcaster, died young but he had the right idea in avoiding university. I had an epiphany towards the end of my final year when a fellow student showed me his dissertation about US-China relations in WW2. It was unreadable. I realized there and then that, in a way, I had been wasting my time. He got a third but still got the degree. Now, with much higher participation rates, it has to be much, much worse. You only have to read or listen to many of these academics while the students are lost.… Read more »
People of Ireland – Peter Hitchens has just stated that northern Irish accent is a fake Etonian accent: https://twitter.com/ClarkeMicah/status/974623856982986755
What would Mr McWilliams’ wife say to that???!
https://www.niparcels.com/blog/40-things-only-northern-irish-people-do/
Andrew McCabe is fired from position as Deputy of the FBI. Is the swamp actually being drained?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/andrew-mccabe-fired-1.4580944
A Bridge too far ?
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1 of 3rd Level Education Sector’s Most-Esteemed Values Today ;
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“Positive Discrimination for Female Power in traditionally Male-excelled Fields”
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e.g.s
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Philosophy
Civil Engineering, & Mechanical Engineering
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http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/03/15/delingpole-great-news-barbara-socrates-oxford-university-has-feminized-its-philosophy-course/
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https://twitter.com/HenryMakow/status/974635970808119296
March 16, 2018 – Academics reeling as market discipline comes to the University of Wisconsin – By Thomas Lifson – INTRO ; If you are sick and tired of professors indoctrinating students in politicized classes that teach nothing of any use in real life, and hate the idea that tenure immunizes them from accountability, the next decade or so is going to provide some relief. The reckoning is coming, as shocked professors at a University of Wisconsin campus just discovered. – ///////////////////////////////////////////////// – ANOTHER EXCERPT ; It turns out that you can’t earn a living teaching subjects that students aren’t… Read more »
I wonder how common the likes of this academic freedom curtailment is within other jurisdictions ?
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https://www.mintpressnews.com/arizona-state-university-asks-palestinian-academic-to-sign-contract-not-to-criticize-israel/238717/
George Soros is targeting Ireland – e.g. – He is funding for legalising of Abortion [ Murder of Pre-born Babies, & Infant Babies ] – But, were a nation to try to defend itself from him by revealing the truth about him ; ==> one risks the umbrage of certain sensitive university foreign academics. – – INTRO ; I recently returned from a three-month stay in Budapest, where I was a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study of the Central European University—a splendid graduate school of social sciences and philosophy founded by George Soros, which the government of Viktor… Read more »
Academic Freedom ? – – – When does one become an Academic ? ; Is their a fine line ? Does it depend on what one’s field or anti-field is ? inter alia – ////////////////////////////////// – Iconoclastic “Frankfurt School Bolloxology” Utterances by Academics are defended under the Right of Free Speech – – – But, how about Freedom to Scream when u are being murdered ? – – https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/abortionist-babies-cant-scream-while-i-abort-them-because-i-cut-their-vocal?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com&utm_campaign=356db5560a-Daily%2520Headlines%2520-%2520U.S.&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_12387f0e3e-356db5560a-400674377 – /////////////////////////////////////////////// – The truly great historians active now & in the future will judge the bulk of the [ Pseudo ]-Intelligentsia [ incl. 3rd-Level & 4th-Level Academics ] of our… Read more »
Prescription opiods are real killers
http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/why-does-modern-medicine-have-a-big-problem-with-natural-health/
“6.5 million jobs available in US and 75% do not require a college degree.” QuoteMike Rowe of Mikeroweworks foundation on Watters World on FOX TV
Metropolitan Hillbilly “You may remember some nonsense about banks ‘losing money on trackers’. Yes. Everybody remembers. Bollix about being solvent banks to Brian Lenihan also. Bankers lie and break the law. The term used in the movie The Big Short for failed bankers mortgage products that did not meet the needs or objectives of consumers was ” dog shit”. Failed Irish bankers with dog shit cvs were put in charge of restructuring the dog shit mortgages. The failed Irish bankers stonewalled restructures and wrote back npl provisions as profits. The spin was “those that could pay for dog shit and… Read more »
14 th March ptsb guy tells Ireland he has no choice but to sell npl’s A true hero.
https://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.rte.ie/amp/947262/&ved=2ahUKEwi8sPDt7_PZAhWELMAKHUvSB1YQFjACegQICRAB&usg=AOvVaw0sQkPS8cpFUBeAiaVfXfya&cf=1
15 th March ECB says guidelines are for newer mortgages. Irish failed bankers are bullshitting again.
https://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.rte.ie/amp/947586/&ved=2ahUKEwjmqt7j2fTZAhXBCMAKHV3lATwQFjABegQIBBAB&usg=AOvVaw1In3lwrcGsM0pksw1NgWNM&cf=1
Pillar Banks want to sell “buy to let mortgages” to vultures and pass on vulture profit margins to Irish tax payers.
Pillar banks have a duty of care to restructure and rehabilitate their own dog shit buy to lets.
Countries need banks to fulfill a basic middleman function. Earn a basic margin. .5% margin for domestic 25 yr fixed mortgages. Good for consumer and bank. Sustainable long term balance.
1.75% for savings. 2.25% 25 yr fixed mortgage rate.
Thats it.
No big margins that feck up domestic economies.
We need a return to boring banking.
Get the failures off the aggressive profit growth cocaine that unbalances
economies.
Aggressive profits for bankers equals economy failure. The wheel wobbles and crashes.
@ Grzegorz,
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No doubt that many of Poland’s Embassies will soon enough be reading these 2 links :
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REFORMAT EACH LINK ACCORDINGLY SO AS TO OVERCOME DEFAULT CENSORSHIP
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https://fitz
info.wordpress.com/2018/03/10/putin-dossier/
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https://fitz
info.wordpress.com/2018/01/06/trump-dossier-2018/
Of course, physical schools of all types — kindergarten, primary, secondary, tertiary — are increasingly used as theaters for false flag events so as to serve political strategy of The Elite ; x] REAL False Flag events Real Events with falsely “falsely” attributed main exponent[s] & motives AND Real Victim[s] or y] FAKE False Flag events Fake Events with falsely “officially” attributed main exponent[s] & motives AND Fake Victim[s] – TWEET Henry Makow @HenryMakow – This is what I’ve been saying – Parkland School Shooting,”It’s The Cops!” Parkland student on cell phone calling mother and states the active shooters are… Read more »
What they will not teach u at aul Trinners
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Re ; World Puppet with 2 Fathers ;
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And, he has campaigned for murder of Pre-born Babies, & Infant Babies of populace [ Irish Aborigines, & Foreigners ] in Irish State.
But, our universities’ associated intelligentsia did not stand up against him for doing that.
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https://twitter.com/HenryMakow/status/974965770974388224
MERE COINCIDENCE ?
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ALL OF THE BELOW ARE WIDELY AGREED TO BE EVIL
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Lest yee be intimidated by her status of having a big fat arse & being a woman in power of education, she reveals that she achieved her rank because of her skin colour ;
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https://twitter.com/HenryMakow/status/975081553859633157
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Hi David,
I just logged in for a quick look and once again found myself sifting through the avalanche of shit put up here by truthist. Wasn’t there something about keeping on topic and not insulting people?
Michael.
THE SMART OX-BRIDGE DON FOLLOWS THE GEO-POLITICAL DEALS ! Ref. Brendon O’Connell whom Grzegorz is very impressed with – – Any university Geo-Politics’s department worth its salt keeps up-to-date with Brendon O’Connell’s writings & interviews & videos. – He is for sure now a very important man-on-the-international-ground engaging with many local perceptive interlocutors with aim to unravel what is really happening. – This is not to say that he has got it correct at each phase when he thinks he has. But, his reflections are always worth contemplating. – In an era when the likes of an all-too-common pampered ass… Read more »
Everybody is entitled to their opinions and I believe it is important that everyone should be given a platform. If I wished to bar everything I do not agree with I would never have any friends at all.
Mr Hillbilly, what’s the best type of mortgage to go for putting aside all the bullshit ones you mentioned in your post a moment ago?
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/03/19/can-nuclear-war-avoided/
Russia is being demonized as the reincarnation of the Empire of Evil. Putin can do no good deed. In the last while Russian military technology reportedly is vastly superior to the Us and Western allies.
Is this report accurate?
http://www.voltairenet.org/article185860.html
Trump talks trade tariffs. Touts free trade but works agin it. Globalism divides and conquers to gain control over the Plebs. The wealth gap is at all time highs comparable with industrial England in the 1820′ to 60’s. Bankers ruled the day (Bank of England) then as they do now (Fed Reserve). “The biggest cause of our economic problems is the Federal Reserve. America’s experiment with fiat currency has enabled a system based on private and public debt. This makes trade imbalances inevitable as the US government needs foreign investors to purchase its debt. Foreign investors get the money to… Read more »