The Credential Cartel: How degrees replaced competence — and scarcity replaced skill

👇
https://curmudgeonlycanadian.substack.com/p/the-credential-cartel-how-degrees

The Credential Cartel: How degrees replaced competence — and scarcity replaced skill

Degrees, licences, and the hidden economics of gatekeeping, where modern work rewards credentials more than competence, and legitimacy costs years, debt, and permission

A new essay: The Credential Cartel
It explores a question that has become harder to ignore: when did credentials stop being narrow tests of competence and start becoming broad mechanisms of access control?

The piece examines:

degree inflation
occupational licensing
labour mobility barriers
competency vs institutional filtering
the productivity costs of over-credentialing

The core argument is not that standards should disappear. It’s that we should be more honest about what many credential requirements are actually doing — and more willing to distinguish real public protection from simple gatekeeping.

If you work in education, hiring, workforce policy, regulated professions, or labour economics, I think you’ll find something here worth debating.

👇 Read Essay:
https://curmudgeonlycanadian.substack.com/p/the-credential-cartel-how-degrees


#Credentialism
#DegreeInflation
#LabourMarket
#PublicPolicy
#HigherEducation
#Gatekeeping
#OccupationalLicensing
#FutureOfWork
#Skills
#Competence
#LabourMobility
#Workforce
#Productivity
#EducationPolicy
#Meritocracy