Vocational Credential Inflation

A guest post by Sheldon Handler

Bet On It reader Sheldon Handler sent me this thoughtful email on the spread of credential inflation. Reprinted with his permission. Enjoy!

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Dear Professor Bryan Caplan,

With regard to your work on credential inflation, it appears that even vocational education has credential inflation. The requirement of a Federal VET Diploma for certain jobs in Switzerland is an example. Or in America, people are stuck with their employer on a lower wage dependency until they earn their Department of Labor–certified Journeyman Certificate in their apprenticeship. Occupational licensing also ties in here, with some European countries making vocational or apprenticeship diplomas also serve as occupational licenses. In America it is often difficult to get an apprenticeship, so people use trade school as somewhat of a signal.

According to Reddit sentiment, trade school is nowhere near as good as actual on-the-job experience, and is comparatively not so effective compared to a job. The plan to increase vocational education like in Europe would lead to credential inflation, as already happens with European vocational qualifications.

In your work The Case Against Education, it should be noted that there should be as little schooling as possible, focusing only on English, Math, and Science. Vocational education also has the same credential inflation, harming entry-level job access.

For the record, regarding people starting their lives earlier, people should start working at age 12–13, and marry at age 15–16. That is the correct way according to biological clocks and historical norms. What you have today is delayed adulthood. And when people wait around to get married and have kids, especially women, infertility risk goes up. If schools only focused on those three subjects, they could reach EQF Level 4 (roughly Calculus-level math, college-level English, and AP-level Sciences) simply by focusing on these three subjects alone from a young age, rather than spending time on useless material.

Also, I would want a self-paced, on-demand retake system for these three subjects. Even easier, abolish high school and make the GED America’s official secondary school qualification, which people would on average earn at age 11–12. The new EQF Level 4 would be an American baccalaureate with only these three subjects and ought also to be an on-demand, retake-anytime qualification like the GED. People should on average be ready for university by age 12–13, but most should choose not to go unless they really want a specific profession.

The whole education system is a nightmare for working parents in college—the so-called nontraditional students. The system does not accommodate time poverty well. And for all the talk about poverty and education, no politician has ever brought up the issue of time poverty and the difficulty of juggling schoolwork with childcare while supporting one’s family.

The college system needs to be restructured to make working parents the expected student profile. People of college age these days, biologically, should already have had their first child. Also, the cost is partly due to wasteful spending on things like fancy campuses and administrative bloat.

As for Germany, the Swiss system is better. Switzerland has a Passerelle exam for vocational graduates, which can bridge such vocational people to enter university later in life. So one is not stuck at a young age in Switzerland even with the Federal VET Diploma track. But the problem is credential inflation with vocational qualifications in Switzerland, with people being discouraged from switching employers until the diploma is completed.

Thank you,
Sheldon Handler