Diploma association

Thousand cranes meditate? 165438+1October 14

Diploma association

Jingsi from He Qian.

00:0026:00

9 1 19 words /26 minutes

Diploma is essentially a cultural currency,

It is a balancer of interests,

Conflict terminal,

Privileged firewall.

Speaking of the importance of academic qualifications and diplomas to each of us, I'm afraid no one will deny it. But when it comes to the devaluation of diplomas in recent years, I'm afraid everyone of us has a personal experience. People are not surprised by the bachelor's degree, and the master's degree and doctor's degree have lost their former aura. Although the devaluation of diplomas has become an assured fact, there are still a steady stream of people who try to increase their competitiveness in the job market through postgraduate entrance examinations and even exams. The demand for diplomas in our society has also increased.

Knowing that diplomas are becoming more and more "worthless", why should everyone be so obsessed with diplomas? The book Diploma Society gives a systematic explanation.

The author of this book is Randall Collins, a famous sociologist. He believes that modern society needs a diploma, not because it can measure a person's knowledge level, but because of its social function. Generally speaking, academic qualifications and diplomas do not represent a person's technical ability and knowledge level. To solve the problems caused by the devaluation of diplomas, we must abolish the diploma system and completely separate diplomas from our education.

You will hear:

1. Why didn't diploma education cultivate the skills that society really needed?

2. Why do larger and more complex social organizations require higher academic qualifications?

3. How are diplomas used to compete for cultural leadership?

4. Why are lawyers so elite in America?

5. Why is it better to abolish diplomas than devalue them?

Book information:

Title: diploma society: education and stratified historical sociology

Original title: academic society: a historical society in which education and technology are compared.

Publishing House: Peking University Publishing House

Translator: Liu Ran

Category: Sociology

Publication year: 20 18-6- 1

Page count: 378

Pricing: 59.00 yuan

Binding: paperback

Series: Janus Think Tank

ISBN:978730 1292686

About the author?

Randall Collins, a famous American theoretical sociologist after World War II. He graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree, 1964 with a master's degree in psychology from Stanford University, and 1965 and 1969 with a master's degree and a doctor's degree in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and then stayed in school to teach. Now he is an honorary professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Representative works include Conflict Sociology, Diploma Society, Four Traditions of Sociology, Philosophy Sociology, Interactive Ritual Chain, etc.

About this book?

Published in 1979, Diploma Society: Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification is an important work in Randall Collins's early academic career. In this book, he puts forward a subversive view: technological change is not the driving force for diploma improvement. In order to confirm this view, he carefully reviewed the process of the rise of diplomas in American history and combined with the sociological analysis of large organizations.

Core content?

Collins believes that modern society needs a diploma, not because it can measure a person's knowledge level, but because of its social function. For example, a diploma can be a "cultural currency" for people to improve their social status, an excuse for social organizations to allocate resources, a weapon for different ethnic groups to compete for cultural leadership, and a tool for political struggles of different social classes. But in general, academic qualifications and diplomas do not represent a person's technical ability and knowledge level. To solve the problems caused by the devaluation of diplomas, only the diploma system can be abolished, so that diplomas and diplomas can be completely divorced from our education.

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Hello, welcome to listen to a book every day. What I want to interpret for you is a sociological work that specializes in analyzing the phenomenon of academic diplomas. Its name is diploma society, and its subtitle is "Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification". The core point of this book is that academic qualifications and diplomas do not represent a person's technical ability and knowledge level. To solve the problems caused by the devaluation of diplomas, only the diploma system can be abolished, so that diplomas and diplomas can be completely divorced from our education.

From childhood to adulthood, each of us will receive education. No matter what school you have attended, what courses you have taken and what exams you have taken, there will be a certificate waiting for you at the end of the long road to study. Of course, this is not an ordinary paper. This certificate will identify you as a junior college, undergraduate or graduate student, and classify you as a science, liberal arts or engineering class. This paper largely determines what kind of job you can find and what kind of life you can start. This paper, we gave it a name, called diploma; At the same time, according to the different values of paper, we divide them into different grades, and we also give this grade a name, called academic qualifications.

But when it comes to the devaluation of diplomas in recent years, I'm afraid everyone of us has a personal experience. People are not surprised by the bachelor's degree, and the master's degree and doctor's degree have lost their former aura. In today's job market, a master's degree is the bottom line for many employers to recruit, and a degree that can only be obtained after ten years of cold window like a doctor, without some overseas experience, is embarrassed to enter the door of a key university with a resume. Although the devaluation of diplomas has become an assured fact, there are still a steady stream of people who try to increase their competitiveness in the job market through postgraduate entrance examinations and even exams. The demand for diplomas in our society has also increased.

Then, knowing that diplomas are becoming more and more "worthless", why should everyone be so obsessed with diplomas? Sometimes we say that academic qualifications and diplomas are stepping stones, which can help us find a good job and gain a higher social status, but is this really the case?

The book Diploma Society points out that although diplomas are important, they have nothing to do with specific job skills. With the continuous depreciation of diplomas, it is becoming more and more difficult to change fate through diplomas. This book was first published in 1979. At that time, it analyzed the problem of diploma devaluation that was common in American society at that time, and then associated it with the phenomenon of diploma devaluation in many countries in recent years, which can be said to be quite predictable.

The author of this book is Randall Collins, a respected old scholar. He is a leading figure in postwar American social theory and is now an honorary professor at the University of Pennsylvania. As a scholar who grew up in the 1960s, he had a unique rebellious temperament and idealistic feelings at that time, and he had a fierce criticism of the old and rigid college system and various social injustices. But rebellion belongs to rebellion. As a sociologist, Collins still bases his social concern on rational thinking. The radical viewpoint of "abolishing the diploma system" put forward in his book is not a fantasy, but a conclusion drawn after careful investigation and rigorous analysis of American history.

Next, I will walk into this book "Diploma Society" with you. Let's see what Collins said about diplomas, and whether his view of subverting common sense is reasonable. Specifically, this book focuses on three issues:

The first question is, why didn't diploma education cultivate the skills that society really needed?

The second question is, since a diploma is useless, why is it important?

The third question, since diplomas carry important social functions, why does the author advocate abolishing diplomas?

first part

Let's look at the first question first: Why isn't diploma education a skill that society really needs?

Every year, we hear those college graduates who have just entered the society complain that "what they learn at school is useless". I believe everyone who has been to school will feel the same way. Many times, the job we are looking for has nothing to do with our major. Our professional level and working ability are basically learned on the job after graduation. Imagine, if you are a patient waiting for surgery and have the right to choose your own surgeon, would you choose a high flyers with little clinical experience but a diploma from a top medical school, or an old expert with an average education who has completed numerous operations? I am afraid the answer is obvious. That is to say, in quite a few cases, education and a person's knowledge and practical ability cannot be equated. Just like an excellent graduate of this top medical school, his degree certificate does not automatically qualify him for major surgery. If you want to become an attending doctor with superb medical skills, you have to go through years of experience and gradually accumulate clinical experience. In other words, from a purely technical point of view, a diploma is useless.

In fact, not only for a person, education has nothing to do with knowledge level. Sociologists compare data from different countries together. When controlling other variables, they will find that there is no significant correlation between a country's economic development level and its education level. In other words, whether a society is rich or not is not necessarily related to the education level of its people. At the same time, authoritative sociological survey data show that the value created by people with higher education level is not necessarily higher than that of ordinary workers, and sometimes these highly educated people have lower work efficiency. And our so-called modern society actually doesn't need so much knowledge and technology. There is no evidence that 20 18 requires higher skills to find a job, such as being a barber, a taxi driver or a hotel chef, compared with 19 18.

In the whole society, despite the rapid development of science and technology, the proportion of high-tech jobs and low-tech jobs has not changed significantly as expected. To prove this point, Professor Collins also cited the data of the American job market in the 20th century. Data show that from the early 20th century to the 1960s, the proportion of unskilled manual labor and service jobs in the United States only decreased by 15%. In other words, compared with the production speed of diplomas, the growth rate of high-tech jobs in the United States is much slower, which shows that our society can maintain normal operation without issuing so many diplomas.

the second part

If all kinds of sociological investigation evidence point to the theory of "the uselessness of diplomas", then the question comes back: since Collins thinks diplomas are tasteless and a pity to discard, why do people still want to believe in their functions? How does this beautiful imagination of "everything is inferior, only reading is high" weave and convince everyone? This involves the second question to be discussed in the book Diploma Society: Since the author has pointed out that diplomas are useless, why are diplomas important?

On this issue, Collins' point of view is that the importance of a diploma is not that it can endorse a person's knowledge level, but that it lies in something beyond the knowledge level.

If we want to get to the bottom of the question "What is the real importance of diplomas?", we should not just talk about diplomas, but put all kinds of phenomena related to diplomas into a larger social environment. In this way, diplomas are no longer just knowledge and technology, but related to various social forces. In Collins' view, this is the biggest secret behind the existence and importance of the diploma system: the diploma system actually meets the needs of a considerable number of social organizations and is a pawn in the game between different social classes and nationalities. In different historical periods, some people will use "diplomas" to make a fuss, whether they support or oppose it, all for their own purposes. As a result, with the changes of different social forces, the diploma system has developed slowly and has an unbreakable social status.

In Diploma Society, Collins mainly takes the United States in history as an example to talk about the different roles that diplomas play in different times. In the author's view, the development of American higher education and academic system has actually seized various opportunities in American history. For example, in the19th century, the diploma system gained its own existence position mainly with the development of social organizations such as large enterprises and government agencies. After entering the 20th century, the diploma system took advantage of the common immigration problems and racial conflicts in American society and ushered in the golden age of its large-scale expansion. Whether in the19th century or the 20th century, the widespread class contradictions gave the diploma system the opportunity to expand its influence.

Generally speaking, diplomas have played three important roles in history. Simply put, for large institutions, diplomas are "interest balancers"; For ethnic groups of different cultures, diplomas are "conflict terminals"; For different social classes, diplomas are "firewalls of privileges". In the author's view, American higher education has played the role of interest balancer, conflict terminal and privileged firewall in different periods and under different circumstances. Next, let's take a look at it separately.

Let's talk about "interest balancer" first. The so-called "interest balancer" means that diplomas can be used as an effective "excuse" for the distribution of social resources and interests. Diplomas first made this thing back to the industrial revolution. With the transformation of the United States from an agricultural country to a highly developed industrial country in the19th century, an important change has taken place in American society, that is, its social organization has become more and more complicated in both production and life. For example, large commercial companies gradually replace individual traders, factories replace family production workshops, and government agencies are growing. What does this have to do with diplomas? Sociologists have found that the larger and more complex social organizations are, the higher the requirements for academic qualifications are. Why is this?

The answer to the question is actually hidden in the operating rules of large social organizations. As you can imagine, members of social organizations of different sizes plan their careers in different ways. For example, when a person just joined the entrepreneurial team, because the company is still relatively small and colleagues are in an equal and cooperative relationship, everyone may be more worried about "how can the company survive?" However, with the improvement of the company's performance and the expansion of its scale, the question that a new employee usually ponders is likely to become "How can I squeeze out my colleagues and sit in a higher position?"

For a social organization, the larger the scale, the more resources there are, and the more priority is given to the issue of distribution over the issue of resource acquisition. This has led to the competition for certain positions becoming a normal state in large institutions. At this time, diplomas and academic qualifications can provide a natural excuse for the personnel arrangement of a public institution or company. Every large organization will carefully shape its own positions, and one of the ways they shape their positions is to set some thresholds for these positions and put forward some access requirements for certain positions. Professional diplomas and academic qualifications can just meet this demand, because they are objective, neutral and useful, which is what "interest balancer" means. In Collins' view, the reason why large institutions value diplomas and talk about diplomas is actually that they regard diplomas as a political means and exclude some people, such as manual workers, from the channel of career promotion under the banner of fairness and justice.

The second function of diploma is called "the terminal of conflict". We often hear a saying that "whoever controls education will control the future". "Conflict terminal" also means this. It means that diplomas and the education system on which diplomas depend can provide a standard answer about "how should we live". Whoever has the right to issue diplomas can master this "cultural interpretation right", thus taking the lead in the game of values. It's a bit like the historical saying "holding the emperor to make the princes", and the diploma is the "emperor" that everyone grabs. Education instills "objective" knowledge into every student. Please note that the objectivity here is actually quoted, because in the real society, different nationalities or political factions will inevitably take different positions. But it is precisely because this kind of knowledge seems to be objective and neutral that it will become very powerful and can be the standard for judging right and wrong.

This feature of diploma makes education the focus of racial conflict in American history. As an immigrant country, there has always been a fierce cultural conflict between the various ethnic groups that make up American society. Especially in the 20th century, with the large-scale influx of immigrants, there have been contradictions between whites and colored people, between Protestants in Britain and Germany and Catholics in Italy and Hispanic whites. In the process of "competing for cultural leadership", all ethnic groups actually want their own ethnic groups to have a higher social status, while those ethnic groups that have occupied a higher social class hope to maintain this status by monopolizing resources. In this sense, whether or not to receive education and what kind of education to receive are not only as simple as "improving the quality of the people", but also related to a person's political stance.

Therefore, in this process, education has become a very effective means for Protestant white Americans to maintain their own cultural values. In the long historical period, white Americans of British and German descent belonged to the upper-middle class in the United States. They set up schools all over the United States, and instilled the virtues of Protestantism, such as diligence and temperance, as the value benchmark of the whole society to the next generation of Americans. No matter which ethnic group you belong to, if you want to be the elite of American society, you must go to college and receive higher education. Once you receive higher education, you will naturally agree with the mainstream culture of the United States and live according to the lifestyles of British and American people and German-Americans, because you will unconsciously regard the set of values taught by higher education as objective truth and standard answer.

Diploma system is not only the terminal of racial conflict, but also the firewall of privilege, which is the third function that diploma can play. Privilege firewall means that diploma is actually a tool for a social group or social stratum to seek various privileges, such as industry monopoly or elite status. In Diploma Society, Collins illustrates this point by taking the high-tech profession of doctors and lawyers as an example.

As we all know, in the United States, there are two professions with the highest income and the best reputation: one is a doctor and the other is a lawyer. The process of establishing their social status in these two professions is actually accompanied by the process of establishing a "professional access system", including establishing a special medical school or law school in colleges and universities, taking a medical degree or a law degree as a stepping stone, becoming a qualified doctor instead of a charlatan, or entering the elite lawyer circle. But you should know that you don't have to stay in school to take credits to become a doctor or a lawyer, and you don't need to get a degree to become a doctor or a lawyer for most of the time before the19th century. Then why do these industries take diplomas as a prerequisite for entering the industry?

The answer lies in the need of industry and class monopoly. In Collins' view, the requirements for diplomas in medical and legal professions are not so much the result of knowledge-driven, but rather the result of interest-driven. Take the medical industry as an example. /kloc-in the second half of the 0/9th century, the elite medical association was established by the physicians of the upper class in the United States. Through the operation of the association, they monopolized the right to issue medical licenses and gave this right to various medical schools affiliated to universities. The situation in the legal profession is similar. Compared with the doctoral profession, the process of "diploma" of the legal profession actually has a more obvious "class firewall" attribute, which can be called "elite counterattack".

Specifically, after the American War of Independence, with the democratization of American society, the situation that a handful of elite litigators monopolized the right of court defense in the United States was broken, and law firms blossomed everywhere for a time. Moreover, with the influx of urban immigrants, many people at the bottom of society have entered the legal profession, which has put pressure on the original American middle-class legal elite.

But from the1870s, things began to change: as the American economy was fully controlled by big companies, a number of well-known lawyers and law firms appeared in China. These elite lawyers have gradually formed a social force. For the sake of protecting professional purity, they all want to restrict lawyers' right to practice. At the same time, due to the deepening class contradictions in American society at that time, the conservative political forces in the United States hoped to use the demands of elite lawyers to suppress the upward flow of the bottom class and immigrant groups in order to maintain the rule of the traditional elite over the United States. Results The Bar Association successfully raised the threshold of professional access and linked the legal practice qualification with legal education. To this day, the elite temperament of American legal profession is still very obvious, and a closed legal elite circle has been formed between Ivy League law schools, elite law firms on Wall Street and American judicial authorities.

The above is the second question to be answered in the book Diploma Society. We talked about three uses of diplomas as interest balancer, conflict terminal and privilege firewall. It is precisely because of the emergence of large organizations in American history and the opportunity of cultural and class conflicts that the diploma system has won its position.

the third part

If what I discussed with you before was the past of diploma, how should we view the present and future of diploma? This leads to the last question I want to share with you: Since diplomas carry important social functions, why does the author advocate abolishing diplomas?

To answer this question, we should return to the relationship between diploma and society. As we mentioned earlier, the number of diplomas issued by our education system actually greatly exceeds the needs of this society. Why is this happening? In Collins' view, this is because our current education system actually bears an important social function, that is, to adjust the job market and prevent the unemployment rate from rising by letting some school-age laborers stay in school for education. At the same time, too many diplomas can also create a large number of unnecessary "idle departments", which will also help reduce the unemployment rate and ensure employment. Many positions that require academic qualifications, such as office staff who meet the needs of mountains and seas every day, and positions in many institutions and systems, are not entirely set up to improve production efficiency, but to let more people in this society have decent jobs and let this society not collapse in the face of the unemployment crisis brought about by technological upgrading.

This function of education, if named as just now, can be called "employment rate regulator". In fact, there are two opposing views on whether education should assume the function of employment rate regulator. One view is that a diploma can be regarded as a macro-control tool similar to money. Collins called this view "diploma Keynesianism". As we know, a core view of Keynesianism is to regulate the economy by controlling the amount of money issued in the market, and in the labor market, the number and structure of the employed labor force can also be influenced by properly controlling the number and types of diplomas issued.

However, excessive issuance of money in order to stimulate the economy has a side effect, that is, it will cause currency depreciation and even inflation; Similarly, excessive issuance of diplomas in order to stabilize the job market will also bring side effects of diploma depreciation. Facing the problem that the value of diploma is getting thinner and thinner, Collins thinks that there is no good solution within the framework of diploma Keynesianism. There is only one fundamental solution, and that is to abolish the diploma system.

In fact, the idea of abolishing the diploma system, a slightly titled party, does not mean abolishing education, but that school education should return to its original intention, that is, providing truly valuable knowledge training, instead of blindly selling diplomas and treating it as a business. In the author's view, taking diploma as a regulator of employment rate is contrary to the value carried by education itself.

Like universities and other educational institutions, their original function is to train workers with qualified work skills for this society. However, with the establishment of the diploma system, as it becomes more and more complex and assumes more and more social functions, such a goal itself has begun to be alienated, which shows that the specific content of education has become less and less important. No matter which major, degree, education and content, it is becoming less and less important. The so-called is to get this diploma, and then use this diploma as a stepping stone to get a higher diploma, or as a stepping stone to find a good job, get a promotion and salary increase, and earn a higher status.

In my opinion, it is precisely because people regard diplomas as business and ignore the process and content of education that diplomas lose their original meaning and value and begin to become "worthless". Only by separating the diploma system from our whole education system and returning education to education itself can our education not be lost in all kinds of utilitarian temptations and what education provides us will be preserved for a long time.

abstract

Well, speaking of which, the core content of the book Diploma Society is almost covered. Do you remember the main points?

First of all, we mentioned that diploma education has not cultivated the skills that society really needs, and a paper diploma cannot reflect a person's knowledge level and technical ability. Then, we talked about three important roles that diplomas have played in history: the balancer of interests, the terminal of conflicts and the firewall of privileges. The diploma system takes advantage of the emergence of large organizations in American history and the opportunity of cultural and class conflicts to develop and grow, making our society a diploma society. Finally, we mentioned that with the diploma system becoming huge and complicated, it began to deviate from the original intention of diploma setting. Abolishing the diploma system can help school education return to its original intention and provide truly valuable knowledge training.

In recent decades, there have been many books on education in the field of sociology. Some studies on the influence of education, especially higher education, on the class solidification and social mobility of our society can be called classics, such as French sociologist Bourdieu's Heir and National Elite. In Collins' view, the problem of our education lies not in education itself, but in the form of education. Our education is conducted in the form of diplomas and academic qualifications. Collins thinks this form is problematic. It will make our education more formal than content, and even let form replace content. In this sense, although the diploma society is talking about education, its focus is actually not education, but a certain aspect or an appearance of education, but the name of this appearance is diploma.

Nowadays, in China, being admitted to a university is equivalent to carp yue longmen, graduates of famous universities sell pork into news, middle school teachers begin to ask for doctoral degrees, and diplomas depreciate. These are nothing new. And that's why, although Collins wrote this book at the beginning to address the various ills of American education, we are not unfamiliar with it today, or even feel deja vu. Although they are different societies, the role played by the diploma system is actually similar. Expressing the reasons in the professional language of sociology, let us understand how the diploma came from and why it has such a position in people's minds, which is still the greatest value of the old book Diploma Society.

Zhao Chao wrote it.

Brain map: Ada

Report: Cheng Ya

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