22/09/2021
In this essay, I contend that the increasingly prolific role of ‘credentialing’ by employers in industrialised societies, is placing exacting pressures upon older workers (those aged 40+) who are, both directly and implicitly, required to validate their experience and skills via the mode of formalised educational credentials. In an increasingly globalised and thus competitive workforce, many older workers are engaging in ‘defensive’ educational credentialing, despite misgivings about both its practical value in performing their jobs, and the effects upon the stratification and perceptions of inequality amongst workers within the organisation in which they operate....
Despite the accumulation of experience and skills, many older workers feel obliged to upgrade their skills through formal educational qualifications...