Conscious Choice: Education by Degrees

February 2001

Education by Degrees

Are We Too Impressed with Official Credentials?

by Deborah Straw

As recently as thirty or forty years ago people could acquire stimulating, professional work without the benefit of an advanced degree. Experience, skills, and general intelligence counted for more than test scores alone. Some people with only a high school diploma became famous through their endeavors — even in the sciences.

In 1957, when Jane Goodall was invited by the pre-eminent anthropologist and paleontologist Louis Leakey to become his assistant and study chimpanzees in the field in Africa, she had absolutely no college background to do so. Goodall was in her early twenties, living in England. She had attended secretarial school and had worked at a documentary film company and as a waitress. Her qualifications? She had always loved animals, and she wanted to live in Africa.

As Goodall writes in In the Shadow of Man (1971), "Although it was the sort of thing I most wanted to do, I was not qualified to undertake a scientific study of animal behavior. Louis, however, knew exactly what he was doing. Not only did he feel that a university training was unnecessary, but even that in some ways it might have been disadvantageous. He wanted someone with a mind uncluttered and unbiased by theory who would make the study for no other reason than a real desire for knowledge; and, in addition, someone with a sympathetic understanding of animals." (She did obtain a Ph.D. in ethology in 1965 from Cambridge University, but she began her field work without one.)

We all know the outcome of Goodall’s pioneering work with chimpanzees. She has been studying these primates in Africa, and now in captivity around the world, for more than forty years. She still travels ceaselessly, educating others as to their value, and has written a dozen books about the animals and her life. Louis Leakey certainly made a wise choice; Goodall is considered by many a hero, and most others see her as an extremely gifted and intelligent woman. She has changed the face of chimpanzee study and has helped save some of the species.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau did not attend college either. Born in 1910 in Cubzac, France, he entered the French Naval Academy in 1930, serving in the Far East. He also trained as a Navy flier. Cousteau was a sailor, explorer, inventor, author, filmmaker, and savvy businessman who was more comfortable on water than on land. He is co-inventor of the aqualung and considered by many "the father of modern sport diving," a world-famous environmentalist who worked almost until his death at age eighty-seven in 1997. As a 1999 article in Time magazine notes, "...professional scientists questioned the credentials of this self-taught oceanographer, [but] their carping paled next to Cousteau’s towering lifetime achievements — crowned by his induction into the prestigious French Academy in 1989."

May Sarton, the poet, memoir writer, and novelist who lived from 1912 to 1995 and produced more than fifty books, graduated only from high school. She went on to act and direct in the theater, travel extensively, and write for a living. To help support herself before she earned enough royalties to live on, she taught students at such prestigious schools as Wellesley College, and was writer-in-residence at Lindenwood and Agnes Scott Colleges. All this without so much as a B.A., to say nothing of an MFA. What was her training, her preparation? In Sarton’s elementary school, she was taught the value of language and of poetry; she had to memorize hundreds of poems, which she retained to her dying days. Both her parents were scholarly; reading was honored at home. She spoke and read two languages; she was equally comfortable in Europe and in the United States. She first published her poetry at age seventeen. And she was an intuitively wise woman who observed the world and people closely.

I knew May Sarton when she was in her seventies and eighties, and I can say without hesitation that she was one of the most passionate and encouraging people I have ever known. She never took a course in teaching methods. Her methods were love of the subject matter and enthusiasm. They worked.

These three examples come from another generation. The numbers of Ph.D.s awarded skyrocketed in the 1950s and‘60s, as the United States tried to catch up with the Soviet Union’s space program and as the cold war escalated. According to the New York Times, between 1958 and 1995, the numbers leapt from 8,773 to 41,610 a year. Approximately 40,000 Ph.D.s are still awarded annually. In fact, the country is producing too many Ph.D.s in several fields. Only those with the best grades — and probably the youngest years — are likely to get a job in their fields, and not enough academic jobs exist for all the graduates. According to a recent report in U.S. News & World Report, "fewer than half of today’s Ph.D. candidates will find full-time, tenure-track professorships." This is undoubtedly one reason that employers have upped their ante regarding qualifications for so many positions; the Ph.D.s are out there and looking for jobs.

One factor that has changed the entire professional picture and the educational equation is technology. Almost everyone who wants professional work of any sort in North America now needs to understand and to use computers and the Internet, at least on a rudimentary basis. And while garage-dwelling geeks have touched off some of the most impressive innovations, most people learn how to use technologies through formal training programs. As Maxine Greene wrote in Releasing the Imagination: Essays on Education, the Arts, and Social Change: "...parents and educators are becoming more and more aware of the changes in technology and communication that are making unprecedented demands where training and education are concerned." It seems, then, that the ubiquitous nature of degrees and certificates has spawned the expectation that educated people hold them.

I am not against formal education. I hold a Master’s degree. I teach at a community college and recognize the value of disciplined learning. I’ve seen that students often find their long-silenced voices and their passions in the classroom. They refine their skills and learn new ones. They learn to think more clearly and deeply.

I favor a liberal arts education as an appropriate background for almost all fields, and I know that a B.A. today is in some ways equivalent to a high school diploma in 1970. I know that some fields such as medicine, engineering, and psychiatry require long years of precise and supervised study. I also know many people who simply love learning; they become life-long learners on their own and continue to acquire degrees, too.

But I believe that not all professionals require an M.A. or a Ph.D. in order to make a serious contribution to their field. The values of experience, age, and a self-taught mind "uncluttered and unbiased by theory" still count for a lot. My own extensive reading and writing, combined with empathy for my students, have helped me much more in the classroom than most of the theory I attained in graduate school. And I know that, without the Master’s degree, those assets wouldn’t stand up on a resume today. And without the resume, I’d have to earn my credentials the hard way — by somehow making a name for myself at an occupation no one would hire me to fill.

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