Academic Inflation is a process of inflation of the minimum job requirement where too many college education individuals compete for too few jobs requiring these qualifications. This condition leads to an intensified race for higher qualification where a bachelors degree of today is no longer good enough to gain employment and an inflation in the minimum degree requirements to the level of masters degrees, PhD's and post-doctoral levels, particularly in areas where advanced degree knowledge is completely unnecessary to perform the required job. Academic Inflation is similar to inflation of paper currencies where too much currency chases too few commodities.^[1]

Academic inflation occurs when university graduates take up work that was not formerly done by graduates of a certain level, and higher-degree holders continue to migrate to this particular occupation until it eventually becomes a field known as a 'graduate profession' and the minimum job requirements have been inflated academically for low-level job tasks.^[2]

The institutionalizing of professional education has resulted in fewer and fewer opportunities for young people to work their way up from artisan to professional status (eg. as an engineer) by 'learning on the job. Academic Inflation leads employers to put more and more faith into certificates and diplomas awarded on the basis of other people's assessments.^[2]

Donald Hoyt (1965) reviewed 46 studies of the relationship between college grades and subsequent work achievement, and concluded that college grades are not a predictor to adult achievement.Taylor (1965) concluded that even medical school grades appear not to predict future proficiency as a general practitioner.^[2]

[edit] See also

• Education economics
• Educational devaluation
• Grade inflation
• Open admissions
• Widening participation

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
• How To Stand Out from the Herd, 2007