This thread reveals so many biases and urban ‘ticks’ that it’s hard to know which one to focus on.

The penchant for “licenses” and “credentials” is the most glaring of these ticks, if you ask me. I’m amazed by it for a host of reasons.

1. America has had a “do-it-yourself” revolution in home repair, decor and design. Home Depot does not check for a “license” before selling us its lumber, ABS pipe or lawn sprinklers. Why the concern, now?

2. Grade and degree inflation has degraded the value of college credentials for decades now. Outside of the hard testable sciences, credentials in the social “-isms” are soft and ill-defined, and usually accrue no hiring advantage to their holders outside of academe, media and government. They represent saccharin cubes handed out to penned livestock.

3. Standards of all kinds – from base lending criteria to elementary schools’ Physical Education class requirements have been relaxing for years. As the value of physical prowess and competitiveness dropped, so have the denigrated skills along with them. This leaves the relaxing institutions’ assorted awards meaningless, and the institutions, as well as their graduates, flabby and moribund.

As the financial meltdown has shown all who want to see, the possession of a credential from Yale, Harvard or Berkeley in no way guarantees that the awarded knows better and performs better than a freelancer does.

All the credential signifies to me anymore is that some people will pay a lot of friggin’ money simply for the right to say that they are better than the next guy, and hundreds of hyper-wealthy universities will step in to assist them in their arrogance – for pay.

This psycho-pathology appears to afflict city-bound social climbers most of all – thus my relegation of the disease to the category of “urban tick.” It’s like a nervous, twitching eye-lid, or adult nail-biting. People should look hard at the habit and quit it.