Fun with Excel: Credentialism III

I have added some depth and made a few adjustments since I shared my last spreadsheet. Previously, I treated credentials as a reliable measure of who exceeded a certain skill level. In the real world, skill in a subject is not the primary source of success in obtaining credentials. Usually, obedience and conformity are far more important.


The new spreadsheet can be found at: Credentialism III.xlsx

I have added two new columns. One shows ability to succeed in school. The other shows who would be credentialed if success required an ability level above 50% for both the skill desired and schooling. The column previously used for signaling has been renamed to reflect that above 50% in the skill qualifies but is not actually signaled. The idea behind these changes is to acknowledge that people who learn outside of schools are effectively being punished in a credentialist society.

The results of this spreadsheet are quite predictable. If a business took applications from the 50 people most interested in a job, filtering by credentials would reduce the pool to a much higher average. As a consequence of this approach, they might miss out on the best applicant. This can be seen in the decline in the maximum.

Like before, I included a related measure where an employer can filter down to just 10 applicants based on interest and requirements. You can see the same thing here, with a comparison between the 10 most interested overall and the 10 most interested who are credentialed. Again, the averages shown are higher for individuals who are credentialed. The maximum, on the other hand, is lower. This would effectively prohibit the best person for the job from getting that job.

Admittedly, this spreadsheet is still flawed. It assumes that learning in school is essentially the same as learning outside of schools. I'm not done with this spreadsheet yet. I still need to factor in the inefficiencies that schools introduce into the educational process.