First off, what are “deschooling and diploma diseases"? Illich wrote a book to critique the practices and systematic institutionalization of schooling, comparing schooling as a package service for consumerism. According to his point of view, schooling not only kills creativity but also confuses people about the purpose of education. People start to accept that schooling is inevitable, and it becomes a socially and culturally normalized and accepted formal channel for learning. It is faulty and he called for a ‘deschooling” society. By “deschooling”, Illich meant learning does not have to be from traditional schooling. He argued that some certain learning is channeled through certain teaching in school; most, however, is from outside school. Moreover, he proposed individual learning and short training instead of compulsory and expensive schooling which is usually meaningless and ineffective. On the other hand, “Diploma Disease” is a critical concept to the social practice of normalizing credentials of academic achievement for ranking individual learners. Societies depend so much on the certification of academic qualification, known as a diploma, and use it as the main criterion for categorizing individuals’ skills and ability, especially for entry into employment. He considered this practice as a disease that causes more schooling and unnecessary degrees which some jobs had not previously required.
Going back to my experience, I notice two things relevant. First the job I applied for required a bachelor’s degree in “any major”. In fact, the credential degree itself does not play any role in performing the assigned tasks. However, the requirement was more driven by what Dore called “‘bureaucratization”. The actual skills were acquired by specific training, not the school qualified certification. Another remarkable fact is about the meaning of schooling. It could be argued that learning does not have to be from formal schooling while one could do the tasks within a short period of training. It is not a rare case, moreover. Some of my friends who graduated in International Studies ended up working as media officers, and some bank-major graduates worked as a receptionist in a bank, which had nothing to do related to what they were taught in school. However, it is worth noting that without the degree qualification, they could not have been recruited. This raises two questions: if schooling is still relevant while many jobs do not really require what schools provide, and why a diploma is still required.
While my story might be true and go alight with what Illich and Dore argued, it is hard to reject schooling and academic credentials. Schooling is expensive and time-consuming, and academic credentials do not accurately measure an individual's skills; both, however, still play important roles in contemporary societies. More complicated jobs are emerging which require more critical competencies to deal with. Although schooling does not and will not provide the best single package solution, it builds a foundation and fundamental skills and abilities to further utilize the abilities to cope with challenges. Moreover, I also argue that although my ability to perform my work after a short period of training, the ability itself was not totally built by training merely. There were various factors that contributed to my ability, some of which were from my academic background and knowledge. For instance, the ability to understand mathematics and proficiency in the English language I had learned contributed to my ability to understand and perform the works. Therefore, instead of “deschooling” and disregarding academic credentials, societies should be able to create more learning opportunities in different channels, not just relying on formal schooling alone. Lifelong learning becomes relevant in the contemporary world where it is recognized that learning can take place from birth to grave, and it does not have to be from formal learning settings. Informal and non-forming learning should also be promoted and recognized.
