The Diploma Disease: Education, qualification and development - Softcover

Dore, Ronald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0854734988 ISBN 13: 9780854734986

Publisher: Institute of Education, 1997

Synopsis

Schools used to be for educating people, for developing minds and characters. Today, as jobs depend more and more on certificates, degrees and diplomas, aims and motives are changing. Schooling has become more and more a ritualised process of qualification-earning. Professor Dore traces the underlying causes of this change through the educational histories of Britain, Japan, Sri Lanka and Kenya. He shows how the ‘late development effect’ makes what is a worrying problem for the rich countries in the North a disaster for the poorer countries of the South. The first edition of this book was published in 1976. In this second edition Professor Dore reviews the thesis in the light of economic, technological and political change over the past 20 years. The extensive preface draws on a body of research conducted in various countries since the publication of the original edition and on the contributions to a special issue of the journal Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice (Vol. 4, 1, 1997), titled The Diploma Disease: Twenty Years On.

About this title

Review:

Sometimes you read a book that transforms your life. My book was not an inspirational novel or a grand Shakespearian tome. It was an ordinary textbook for my undergraduate degree course in Development Studies at the University of East Anglia in 1978. It was called The Diploma Disease. (Professor Heidi Safia Mirza, Institute of Education, University of London Race, gender and educational desire)

About the Author:

Ronald Dore began his academic career over 50 years ago with a study of Japanese Confucian education. The idea for this book took root during visits to Sri Lanka'a schools at the time of the 'youth insurrection' of 1971. This unusual background produced a provocative book of unusual scope and originality whose underlying thesis has stood the test of time.

About this edition

• Publisher: Institute of Education
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0854734988
• ISBN 13: 9780854734986
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 214