In a society where equality for all is a fundamental principle, but where “positions” are endowed with very unequal advantages (in terms of salaries, working conditions, etc.), it is a question of distributing these in such a way that the hierarchy of jobs is considered legitimate by all. This is a real challenge.

There is general agreement that allocating positions based on skills is both fair and effective. But assessing skills is far from straightforward, and the educational institution is entrusted with this responsibility, formalizing its judgments with a diploma.

It is hard to imagine how we would proceed without this classification by diploma: whether places were inherited or drawn by lot, society would appear even more unjust… However, are these academic verdicts still relevant in a context where the level of qualifications is progressing much faster than that of jobs?

The diploma as a guarantee of qualification?

Diplomas are supposed to guarantee the “true” professional value of individuals. This is particularly true in France. In the late 1960s, experts developed classifications that matched the level of education with job qualifications. Although revised in 2019, these classifications are still valid today for access to competitive exams, but also as a common reference, encouraging us to consider it normal to access management positions from level II (bachelor’s degree, now level 6), to become an employee or skilled worker when you have level V training (CAP-BEP, now level 3), etc.

In doing so, it is implicitly assumed that certain types of training are necessary to occupy a position, that years of study provide directly professional skills, with the consequence that people without a diploma could only occupy positions labeled as unskilled. This approach anchors in people’s minds the idea that a diploma necessarily qualifies for a job, that a diploma of a certain level leads to a job of a certain level, according to an “adequacyism” denied by the facts.

Indeed, the significant gap between the spectacular rise in education levels and the less marked growth in the level of qualification in jobs undermines the validity of these equivalence relationships between diplomas and jobs . What one obtains with a diploma, and therefore its market value, tends to fall over time, depending on the abundance of this diploma in relation to the jobs that are supposed to correspond to it.

And because of the rise in educational attainment, the same jobs are being filled at higher educational levels: in thirty years, the percentage of people with at least a baccalaureate has risen , for example, from 0 to 23% among unskilled workers. Can we really consider these jobs as unskilled, and people without a diploma as lacking any qualifications?

Furthermore, less than half of students find work in their field of training and, in the population as a whole, the profession practiced corresponds to the training received in only a third of cases .

These discrepancies erode the confidence we might have in diplomas. Of course, they remain “profitable”: the unemployment rate decreases as the diploma rises and, conversely, the salary is higher. And that’s why the race for educational paths that lead to the most profitable ones is so fierce…

But this raises questions about what the diploma really attests to: a technical skill, a “human capital”, as many economists would have it? Or is it above all, as some others argue, the signal of a relatively vague set of qualities not necessarily guaranteed by their diploma  : dynamism, motivation, or more broadly everything that is now referred to as ”  soft skills  “ …

Faced with young people whose qualifications, more widespread, make it less distinguishable, employers value a more open range of skills; this may also be to take into account changes in certain jobs. In any case, the valuation of skills specific to certain tasks or professional situations once again blurs the adequacy between diplomas and qualifications, which seemed to be somehow guaranteed.

The diploma as a token of recognition…

But defending the value of diplomas and the adequacy of training and employment is not just economic rhetoric; it serves the corporate interests of certain professional groups. Without any need to speculate about what the diploma is supposed to certify, it simply functions, in many cases, as a formal requirement for access to employment.

Necessary and sufficient, the diploma then constitutes both a barrier and a guarantee for rights and benefits negotiated by professional circles. It protects those who have the appropriate diploma and excludes all others. The precise “technical” content of the diploma is less important than its distinctive and exclusive value.

This helps to preserve the cohesion of the professional group by recruiting people trained at “the same school”, which guarantees complicity, a pledge of cultural proximity and mutual trust, social considerations that are all the more important as the technical skills required by the positions are vague.

Beyond its technical, functional value (which can be more or less important), the diploma also has a symbolic value that is more or less important. The value of the diploma is always more or less the value of the graduate: this is how the value of the diploma at the time of integration is modulated by social origin or gender . Thus, young women with a diploma in professions considered “masculine” will often have difficulty having their skills recognized. Another example: a polytechnician will be recruited even if his high level of knowledge in mathematics is of no use, because we know the selection process he has overcome. This is what Pierre Bourdieu called “the consecration function of the diploma.”

Therefore, the value of the diploma is not always indexed on skills, but as much or more on the completely different qualities that it is supposed to certify…

It is this halo of representation that, beyond the technical value of the diploma, gives it a symbolic value. And as with any symbolic good, this value only exists and is maintained because we believe in it, as long as we believe in it…

On the one hand, the market value of the diploma on the job market is relatively uncertain, and depends, in addition to the relationship between graduate profiles and job profiles, on the economic situation. On the other hand, its symbolic value is also eroded. But the diploma nonetheless certifies, to this day and in our country, the value of the person while legitimizing the social hierarchy.

Not without “collateral damage”, notably a race for diplomas which makes students fundamentally utilitarian by crushing the educational dimension of studies and which leads to considering as worthless all the skills other than academic ones demonstrated in their work by these “unqualified” people whom the school has judged incompetent…

In this respect, the rise of the notion of competence and the proliferation of on-the-job or career-long training, which in some way disintegrate the very idea of ​​a qualification valid for life and whatever the tasks (which the diploma claimed to guarantee), constitute interesting developments. Without imagining that we can do without diplomas, we must undoubtedly put their influence into perspective .

Author Bio: Marie Duru-Bellat is Emeritus University Professor of Sociology, Center for Research on Social Inequalities (CRIS), at Sciences Po