The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification

Randall Collins

Published by Columbia University Press 2019

The Credential Society

An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification

Randall Collins
Preface by: Tressie McMillan Cottom and Mitchell L. Stevens

In the series Legacy Editions

https://doi.org/10.7312/coll19234

Overview
Contents

About this book

The Credential Society by Randall Collins is a classic on higher education and its role in American society. Forty years later, its controversial claim that the expansion of American education has not increased social mobility, but created a cycle of credential inflation, has proven remarkably prescient.

Author / Editor information

Collins Randall :

Randall Collins is the Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is, most recently, the author of Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory (2008). Interaction Ritual Chains (2004), and The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (1998). He was president of the American Sociological Association from 2010 - 2011.Randall Collins is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (1998), Interaction Ritual Chains (2004), and Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory (2008). He is a former president of the American Sociological Association.

Reviews

From the foreword by Tressie McMillan Cottom:
This important book is an antidote to atheoretical work in contemporary studies of higher education and is a critical complement to the study of stratification. Technology has changed much about how we work. It has also changed a great deal about how our higher education institutions are organized. This book speaks to why those two domains are interrelated. Moreover, it provides a roadmap for the systematic study of higher education and inequality.

Paul DiMaggio, New York University:
Randall Collins's The Credential Society is a theoretical and empirical tour de force, a brilliant study of the expansion of schooling in twentieth-century America that goes well beyond its central topic to illuminate connections between educational change and the world of work, the nature of status, and the role of knowledge and technology in modern life. Discovering it in graduate school was a transformative experience, and I'm delighted that it is available once again to inspire new generations of students and scholars as it inspired me.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface to the Legacy Edition Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Foreword Tressie McMillan Cottom Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Foreword: Educational Entrepreneurship in a Changing America Mitchell L. Stevens Publicly Available Download PDF	xvii
1. The Myth of Technocracy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. Organizational Careers Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	29
3. The Political Economy of Culture Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
4. The United States in Historical Time Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
5. The Rise of the Credential System Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	120
6. The Politics of Professions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	174
7. The Politics of a Sinecure Society Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	242
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	271
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	291

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;

eBook

Published: June 17, 2019
ISBN: 9780231549783