Salon

Interesting, but poorly titled, article in Salon about credential inflation.

I have a bachelor degree in engineering but no post-graduate (or "graduate" if you are American) qualification.

This, together with over 10 years of experience, was sufficient for me to become a chartered engineer (the British equivalent of being a licensed engineer) as well as a CITP and a MBCS.

Incidentally I only applied to become an MBCS but ended up with the other two as well. And two days later I ended up in intensive care (unrelated).

Nowadays I would need a master's degree as a minimum.

What has changed?

I suspect that partly this is due to the quality of degrees plummeting. Certainly this is the case in the UK. And universities are now just businesses turning out as many graduates as they can.

Also, there are more people taking degrees. Not just those in the Western world but also in the BRICS. The competition has increased.

And actually in the West we can't compete with the high number of top graduates coming out of India and China. Even if we improved the quality of the degrees we just don't have the population of graduates needed.

Many people are now going for MBAs and there are also more people going for doctorates - note the plural: in Germany if you have two doctorates you may require people to call you "Herr Doktor Doktor Mustermann".

There must be a better way to differentiate yourself.

Not sure what it is though.