After Credentials

December 2008

A few months ago I read a New York Times article on South
Korean cram schools that said
Admission to the right university can make or break an ambitious
young South Korean.
A parent added:
"In our country, college entrance exams determine 70 to 80 percent
of a person's future."
It was striking how old fashioned this sounded. And
yet when I was in high school it wouldn't have seemed too far off
as a description of the US. Which means things must have been
changing here.

The course of people's lives in the US now seems to be determined
less by credentials and more by performance than it was 25 years
ago. Where you go to college still matters, but not like it used
to.

What happened?

_____

Judging people by their academic credentials was in its time an
advance. The practice seems to have begun in China, where starting
in 587 candidates for the imperial civil service had to take an
exam on classical literature. [1