Diploma Disease: Rethinking the Pursuit of Higher Education as a Mediation for Upward Mobility

Abstract

This paper is rooted in the sociology of education and focuses on the following question: Can a higher degree contribute to upward mobility and resolve class inequality? Thus, the main purpose of this paper is to analyze the meaning and implication of credentialism and its social functions, and to attempt to understand what kinds of hidden factors contribute to and construct the meanings of the ”diploma disease” in everyday life. As discussed in the literature review, the positions that are argued in this paper agree, to a significant extent, with Bourdieu's arguments about the distinctions, based on class taste, between the middle and working c1asses-distinctions that result from habitus, capital, field, and so on; however, Bourdieu's holistic viewpoint for class distinction seems very problematic in answering the question of why the working class has a dual logic in their everyday lives. That is, working class parents still do their best to offer resources for their kids by using all possible strategies, much as the middle class does when faced with similar educational concerns. Thus, whether we belong to the middle class or the working class, all of us struggle with a diploma disease, which in turn gives rise to different implications. Higher-degree diplomas for the middle class are-rather than operating as a source of upward mobility for the working c1ass-representative consciously and unconsciously of class-based entrenchment. Paradoxically, the priority that the working class sets on gaining paper credentials hypostatizes the idea that a diploma is the best chance for their children's upward mobility. This suggests Bourdieu's concept of allodoxia: that the working class could cross the socio-economic boundaries to arrive at the ”new” class location through either educational mechanisms or great economic transformations; but it is particularly difficult to cross moral and cultural boundaries. Although it is possible for some working-class people to complete the ”objective” requirements for upward mobility into an upper-middle-class location, they still perceive themselves as situated in an ”alien” cultural location: they cannot come to be culturally comfortable in their new educational homes. In conclusion, this paper argues that developing a response to the perpetual question of how to break away from the social construction of credentialism may become a new mission in the pursuit of social justice.