Manifest and Latent Conflict of Credentialism: Contradictions and Complementarity of Theories in Interpreting Labor Market Stratification

The credential phenomena in the labor market have been given competing theoretical interpretations in the sociological literature, notably structural-functionalism and the conflict theories. Education as an institutionalized form of socialization allocates people with differential talents into appropriate positions, motivating achievement in meritocratic selection. Yet the functions of education also produce the unintended consequences of inequality along the axis of credentials, which gives rise to conflict as a dysfunction within the social system. This paper uses a paradigm of manifest and latent conflict in explaining credential stratification, using three empirical phenomena -credentialist hiring, the “sheepskin effect,” and credential inflation -in the analysis of labor market inequality. Statistical tests of the empirical phenomena are formulated in supporting the conflict theories of credentialism. It is found that occupations higher in the prestige scale require higher credential attainment in entrance than occupations lower in the scale; the sheepskin effect is larger for some minority groups while it is inversely related to the rate of higher-credential holding; minority groups are predicted to adopt different patterns in credential inflation in response to labor market conditions. The study of the credentialist phenomena shows that structural-functionalism and the conflict theories offer competing and yet complementary interpretations of credential stratification.