Comments

I think Cowan may also be off the mark.

About four decades ago, my dad (an academic, teaching philosophy of education) wrote a book suggesting that the US was rapidly approaching the functional equivalent of 100% high school graduation rates.

The primary value of a high school diploma, he suggested, had little to do with the intrinsic value of the education, but rather as an indicator which employers could use to distinguish and discriminate among potential hires. The value of the diploma lay strictly in the fact that some people got it--and some didn't. If you hired the former, assuming some linkage between the act of graduating and later success, no one would argue with you.

He predicted that, having achieved saturation at the high school level, what American society would then do is ratchet up the same function to the college level. And sure enough, that's exactly what we've done.

Tom, do you realize you probably couldn't get a job teaching business in a satellite campus of a state business school in Appalachia? Much less an Ivy League or Stanford rank of school. Why? Because academia is so enamored of its own credentialization. You, Tom Peters, for all your books and McKinsey and experience, would get ranked below some grad student with a DBA, because to do otherwise would threaten a social structure--that of the faculty.

It's not just academia, either. Lately the field of "coaching" is becoming rabidly credentialized. The best coach I know is not credentialized--except by life, and years of experienced getting paid by real business people to do real coaching. Worth nothing, of course, to those who "certify" coaches.

A philosophy major can get a management trainee job at GE faster than can someone who works for four years as a trainee in a machine shop or overseas in a corporate environment. Because, of course, (s)he doesn't have the credentials.

After we achieve universal education at the college level, what next? At what age is someone ready to begin contributing to the real world?

If Cowan blames education for the growing gap, he's off the mark. We should look at a society that values status-quo driven, pull-up-the-ladder-after-I've-got-mine social conservatism that doesn't grant any value to performance, results and practical experience. We're credentializing ourselves into destroying human lives and wasting social capital.

Posted by Charles H. Green at May 18, 2007 1:14 PM

Responding to Charles, credentials aren't that difficult to get if you are motivated - so perhaps the latent indicator is "motivation". TP could soon earn the requisite credentials if he wants to teach academically. He could be a graduate student teaching the undergraduates for three years. By then he would have earned his Doctorate and probably picked up a Master's degree on the way (as I did at age 40 at U. Chicago).

Posted by Mike L at May 18, 2007 4:55 PM

Mike L,

I think you miss my point. At least, I hope so.

If Tom Peters (who is now age 60, not 40--i.e. representing 20 years more of productive experience) were to offer his services to, say, Harvard Business School, I would argue they would be insane to say to him, "first, be a graduate student and teach undergraduates for three years while waiting to get your DBA."

As it happens, Tom already has an MBA and a PhD, (admittedly only from Stanford, but still...). He was a McKinsey partner. Fortune calls him "the ur-Guru of management." And let's not even mention a little thing called "Pursuit of Excellence."

My question is: is it possible, in theory, at all, in academia these days, to get "credit" for real-life experience and impact? Or is credentialization so narrowly defined as to exclude absolutely everything except a blessing from those who own the credentials?

I don't know if Tom's PhD is in business or not, and I don't know what HBS would actually say if he offered to teach there (hopefully, "when can you start?"), but in general, most institutions would insist on a DBA in such a case. And I would argue that is an absurd response in the face of someone with such a record of achievement.

Certainly motivation is always an issue. But so, I would argue, is the social conservatism inherent in such a protectionist view of credentials.

Posted by Charles H. Green at May 19, 2007 9:51 AM

Charles, I agree. I have been saying over and over that this generation's college degree is last generation's high school diploma. Society has definitely raised the bar on what is expected.
As far as credentials go, I simultaneously see the merit in them (s/he gained that education, and is therefore more intelligent for it), and decry the necessity for it. Learning in the real world (fail forward fast, rapid prototype) is, in my humble opinion, much more valid. Also, I feel that credentials are rapidly becoming commoditized. Schools are becoming more like business institutions (focused more on their endowment) than educational institutions (focused on the education of their pupils). As an ivy-league grad, this frustrated me throughout my entire undergraduate career. Enough so that I may have crippled myself in the business world by realizing that I no longer wanted to get any more of my education from "certified" institutions, but rather from living life itself.

Posted by Nick Adams at May 21, 2007 8:18 AM

Warren Bennis and James O'Toole, writing in HBR a couple of years ago, pointed out that the course in production management was once (many years ago) taught by the manager of a nearby GM assembly plant but that:

"Virtually none of today's top-ranked business schools would hire, let alone promote, a tenure track professor whose primary qualification is managing an assembly plant, no matter how distinguished his or her performance."

Posted by david foster at May 21, 2007 5:20 PM