(2017-07-02) Dorn Credentialism And Its Discontents

Sherman Dorn on Credentialism and its discontents: reviewing Cottom McMillan's Lower Ed ISBN:9781620970607

Recent boom and bust of for-profit higher education has been a direct result of economic dislocation.

McMillan Cottom concludes that for-profit colleges and universities fill a space that no other social institution fills, either in education or in other realms. Faced with economic anxiety about their future, adults consider for-profit education as one of a small handful of routes to individual economic mobility. She views for-profit students as neither dupes nor sophisticated consumers; they are navigating economic anxiety with the best tools they see, and Lower Ed explains how for-profit higher education has fit into that toolkit.