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Essay Credentialing vs Educating

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The article “Credentialing vs. Educating” by Jane Jacobs showed the credentialing’s purpose in higher education and how the credentialing affected Americans’ perspective of their future’s life. Additionally, she gave explanation about the appearance of “credentialing [as] an indirect legacy of the Great Depression of the 1930’s” because people noticed that credentialing was the vital prerequisite from rising out of poverty. (pg. 167) People wanted to get a degree for a better job. Jacobs illustrated that education was truly significant and undoubtedly acted as an investment for the students’ prospect in 1920’s. During that time, everyone’s life was good. Children were educated and adults had jobs. Then, the author described the …show more content…

In today’s world, young people think that if they continue their tertiary education, they can access a better job, no matter which subject they take. This situation indirectly causes a huge enrollment of students into universities and colleges, which may drop off the quality of education. As the author says, “quantity trumps quality” (pg. 168) which certify that the environment is skipped from education to jobs; meanwhile, the knowledge part is ignored by the students. In detail, they do not expect to learn something but just to get a degree which acts as “a passport to consideration for a job”. (pg. 164) This condition gradually turns credentialing into the norm. Everyone only cares about the degree that they will receive rather than concerning about what they will learn and develop through their subject’s material. It was not true that “the push towards credentialing reflected an overall decline of American culture”, which mentioned by Jacobs. With this being said, students in this day and age can widen their interpersonal relationship when contact with people who come from unique backgrounds, customs and beliefs in a huge class. Students can learn and share different ideas or opinions, and hence promoting their communicating skills and acute judgments. They will gain knowledge on how to compete with others in order to survive in this realistic era. Secondly, professionals and experts who exist in large

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