The Diploma Disease: Education, Qualification and Development

Schools used to be for educating people, for developing minds and characters. Today, as jobs depend more and more on certificates, degrees and diplomas, aims and motives are changing. Schooling has become more and more a ritualised process of qualification-earning. Professor Dore traces the underlying causes of this change through the educational histories of Britain, Japan, Sri Lanka and Kenya. He shows how the 'late development effect' makes what is a worrying problem for the rich countries in the North a disaster for the poorer countries of the South. The first edition of this book was published in 1976. In this second edition Professor Dore reviews the thesis in the light of economic, technological and political change over the past 20 years. The extensive preface draws on a body of research conducted in various countries since the publication of the original edition and on the contributions to a special issue of the journal Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice (Vol. 4, 1, 1997), titled The Diploma Disease: Twenty Years On.