The Credential Society¶
Collins, R. (2019). The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification. Academic Press.
Cited by¶
4 citations across 4 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Gresham's Law
- In education and credentialing, uniform certification across institutions of differing rigor drives the price-floor of all credentials downward.
This sourceDocuments credential inflation — uniform credentialing across institutions of differing rigor driving down the value of all credentials.
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
Publisher description documents credential inflation and credentialing closing professions, but not that uniform certification across differing-rigor institutions lowers credential value.
“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, …”
- In education and credentialing, uniform certification across institutions of differing rigor drives the price-floor of all credentials downward.
- Signal Devaluation
- Credential inflation. Roles that once required no degree now require one, and roles that required a bachelor's now require a master's, without corresponding skill changes — a positional arms race in credential acquisition.
This sourceFoundational analysis of credential inflation as a positional arms race in which jobs demand ever-higher degrees without corresponding skill change.
- Credential inflation. Roles that once required no degree now require one, and roles that required a bachelor's now require a master's, without corresponding skill changes — a positional arms race in credential acquisition.
Mechanisms¶
- Credential or Certificate
- Its central failure mode is inflation and mills: when tokens become easy to buy or the standard quietly erodes, the badge stops separating types while everyone still pays to hold it.
This sourceIt marks the boundary where a credential stops signaling and becomes a toll.
- Its central failure mode is inflation and mills: when tokens become easy to buy or the standard quietly erodes, the badge stops separating types while everyone still pays to hold it.
- Credentialing and Peer Review Process
- Credentialism is treating the certificate as the thing itself, so it stands in for competence
This sourceExplains credentialism as reliance on formal credentials as proxies for occupational competence.
- Credentialism is treating the certificate as the thing itself, so it stands in for competence
Verification¶
Does it exist? Confirmed. This work's DOI resolves to a registered record, which fixes its identity. That is all it fixes.
Does it back the claim? Read against the text for 1 of 4 citations: 1 supported in part. Each verdict is shown under its citation below, with what in the work backs the sentence.
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Links previously used in the corpus¶
Before the registry existed this work was also linked 2 other ways.
- https://search.worldcat.org/title/The-Credential-society-%3A-an-historical-sociology-of-education-and-stratification/oclc/4641936 ×1
- https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.7312/coll19234/html ×1
Registry ID ref:fd2a29ac3af6 · see in the full table