| The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification Contributor(s): Collins, Randall (Author), Cottom, Tressie McMillan (Foreword by), Stevens, Mitchell L. (Foreword by) |
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ISBN: 0231192355 ISBN-13: 9780231192354 Publisher: Columbia University Press OUR PRICE: $29.70 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: May 2019 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Education | Higher - Social Science | Social Classes & Economic Disparity - Education | History |
| Dewey: 306.43 |
| LCCN: 2019000688 |
| Series: Legacy Editions |
| Physical Information: 1.1" H x 5.5" W x 8.5" (0.90 lbs) 328 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The Credential Society is a classic on the role of higher education in American society and an essential text for understanding the reproduction of inequality. Controversial at the time, Randall Collins's claim that the expansion of American education has not increased social mobility, but rather 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. |
Contributor Bio(s): Cottom, Tressie McMillan: - Tressie M. Cottom is an assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is the author of Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy (New Press, 2017)Stevens, Mitchell L.: - Mitchell L. Stevens is Associate Professor of Education and of Sociology at Stanford University. He is the author of Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites (Harvard, 2007), and the coauthor, with Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Seteney Shami, of Seeing the World: How Universities Make Knowledge in a Global Era (Princeton, 2018).Collins, Randall: - "Randall Collins is the Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is, most recently, the author of Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory (2008). Interaction Ritual Chains (2004), and The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (1998). He was president of the American Sociological Association from 2010 - 2011." |
