ABSTRACT
In this excerpt from a book that is not nearly as well known as it deserves to be, Ronald Dore proposes a conception of education and of educational expansion that is broadly similar to Collins’s theory (Selection 32). Unlike Collins, however, Dore is especially concerned with the process of educational expansion in the Third World. Dore argues that modern educational systems have become highly oriented toward what he calls “qualificationism,” by which he means that education has come to be less and less about learning for its own intrinsic rewards and more and more about the attainment of educational certificates that can be exchanged for particular kinds of jobs. This is essentially the same as what Collins and others call “credentialism.” Dore argues, though, that qualificationism and its effects are far worse throughout the less-developed world than they are in the advanced industrial countries. He notes that the educational systems of the industrial countries generally have long educational histories and traditions that have allowed them to retain at least some semblance of learning for its own sake. The less-developed countries, on the other hand, typically have educational histories with no real time-depth at all. These countries have constructed educational systems only in the twentieth century, and have done so rapidly and without any real conception that education should at least in part be devoted to learning for learning’s sake. The educational systems that have been constructed have thus been almost purely qualification-oriented. Dore has a name for this whole process, the “late-development effect”: the later that economic development starts, the faster the growth of school enrollments and the more naked and unashamed the pursuit of educational credentials. Another negative consequence of this late-development effect is the creation of a massive problem of “overeducation.” Because educational enrollments develop so rapidly, they greatly outstrip economic development, and thus the supply of persons holding educational certificates becomes much larger than the availability of jobs for which these certificates might be appropriate. This is a perverse form of irrationality to which strongly credentialized educational systems are highly prone.
