The Old and The New Approaches to the Educational Requirement in Employment

The modern society is known as educational credential society in which the chance of employment and status attainment are mostly determined by educational credentials. Thus, why are such educational credentials so important in employment and status attainment? The answer to this question has been attempted by various theories like techno-functionalism, human capital theory, screening theory, training cost theory and conflict theory etc. However, this paper points out the deficiencies of these traditional approaches, and trys to illustrate the importance of employing the perspective of education as an institution and institutional isomorphism in which John Meyer is a pioneer, to explain the educational credentialism. In orer to review these various traditional approaches, we start with examining two presuppositions (metatheories) of the traditional approaches. First, it is the presuppositions of school effect (theory of educational credential supply) and it will be categorized into socialization model and allocation model. Second, it is the presuppositions of employment (thory of educational credential demand) and it will be categorised into efficiency model and control model. With the help of combining these two presuppositions we can clarify the features of these traditional explaining theories and at the same time show their deficiencies. Then we illustrate the effectiveness and uniqueness of the institutional approach which has different presuppositions of the school effect theory and theory of employment. Finally, in light of the institutional approach, the direction and possibility of empirical studies of evolution of the educational credentialism in Japanese society will be suggested.