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The Diploma Disease twenty years on: an introduction

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The Diploma Disease twenty years on: an

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Angela W. Little

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 Assessment in Education, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1997

The Diploma Disease twenty years on:

an introduction
Angela W. L i t t l e
Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H OAL,
UK

Assessment in Education: principles, policy and practice is concerned with the several
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roles of assessment. These include: assessment for formative feedback on learning;

assessment for summative evaluation; assessment for the monitoring of standards;
assessment for certification; and assessment for selection. Such roles often act in
competition with each other and assessment systems in different countries empha-
sise each to varying degrees (Broadfoot, 1996; Little & Wolf, 1996).
This special issue of the journal—'The Diploma Disease: twenty years on'—
focuses on the role of assessment in the selection of young persons for further
education and employment. As such, it addresses the two worlds of assessment for
selection—the world of education and the impact which assessment has on guiding
the process of teaching and learning; and the world of work and the use made of
assessment information for the allocation of occupations and life chances generally.
It examines whether there is a contradiction between the role of assessment in
allocating life chances and its role in promoting learning.
The Diploma Disease is the title of a controversial book written 20 years ago by
Ronald Dore. The original cover expressed the nub of the book's thesis:
Schools used to be for educating people, for developing minds and charac-
ters. 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. (Dore, 1976)

The Thesis and Related Research

Dore traced the underlying causes of the shift in the aims of and motives for learning
through the educational histories of England, Japan, Sri Lanka and Kenya. Central
to his analysis is the concept of 'late development', a concept whose implications he
explored originally in relation to processes of industrialisation (Dore, 1972). The
essential idea is that there is a relationship between the point in world history at
which a nation begins its drive towards modernisation, the extent to which educa-
tional certificates are employed for job allocation, the quality of the process of
learning and teaching, and the potential of education to develop skills relevant to the
needs of developing societies:
the later development starts (i.e. the later the point in world history that a
country starts on a modernisation drive) the more widely education

0969-594X/97/010005-17 ©1997 Journals Oxford Ltd

 6 A. W. Little

certificates are used for occupational selection; the faster the rate of
qualification inflation and the more examination-oriented schooling be-
comes at the expense of genuine education. (Dore, 1976, p. 72)
The book became very well known in the field of development studies and inter-
national and comparative education. The Japanese translation had sold out before
reaching the book shops in Tokyo. In many countries the term 'Diploma Disease'
and 'Qualification Escalation' slipped into educational vocabularies. The book
received less attention in the educational mainstreams of Europe and North America
in the 1970s, in part perhaps because assessment was low on the policy agenda of
countries in the North at that time, and in part because many in the North
considered the educational problems of countries in the South to be separate and
different. Global interdependence was not at the forefront of most analyses of
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education in the 1970s. Yet, 20 years on, the global educational assessment scene
has changed. Test tyranny, exam league tables, an explosion of qualifications and
the assessment business generally—all point to the possibility that some of the
fundamental tenets of the thesis hold good in the industrialised countries of the
North as well as the so-called 'developing countries' of the South.
The eye-catching title no doubt helped the publisher sell his product in an
American marketplace. But it also distracted readers from much of the fundamental
argument. Readers' imaginations were caught by the descriptions of qualification
levels escalating relentlessly as more and more educated persons competed for jobs.
For many, this constituted the diploma disease, a misinterpretation which Dore
explores subsequently in this issue. The manuscript's original title 'The Scourge of
the Certificate' was probably more apt, less distracting and less misleading. It
focused attention on the whip-like effects of the certificate on the process of teaching
and learning. It reflected Dore's central concern with the low quality of education
experienced by millions of children worldwide and his belief that the quality of
education was determined in large measure by the widespread use of certificates for
job allocation:

Everywhere, in Britain as in India, in Russia as in Venezuela, schooling is

more often qualification-earning schooling than it was in 1920, or even in
1950. And more qualification-earning is merequalification-earning—ritualistic,te
and imagination; in short, anti-educational. (Dore, 1976, p. ix)

The role of assessment in simultaneously providing information to employers for

occupational allocation and in providing a goal for learning, and its implications for
both education and employment more generally, is presented schematically in a
number of places [1]. Figure 1 presents the thesis schematically in its original form.
The use of certificates for job allocation is placed in the centre of the argument; its
implications for learning fan out to the right of the figure and its implications for
social demand, costs and employment to the left.
The term 'disease' has misled many and outraged more. Is the disease something
which all educated and certificated individuals, especially those in developing
 The Diploma Disease 7

Intolerable Neglect of Impossibility

pressures on primary in of developing Exam-
educational favour of 'relevant' oriented
budgets secondary/ terminal primary learning
tertiary education education

Ritualisa-
Intense demand tion of
for schooling/ Use of certificates
certificates for job allocation learning
process

Deformation
Educated Qualification of minds/
unemployment escalation characters
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of the
'successful'

FIG. 1. Schematic representation of the Diploma Disease argument [source: Dore (1976, p. 141)].

countries, have caught? The title does not dispel that idea and frequently creates an
understandable emotional reaction which has prevented some from examining the
depth of argument contained between the book's covers. Dore deals with this point
in some detail in the first article in this issue, where he presents a summary of the
diploma disease argument. A careful reading of the text suggests that the disease
metaphor is especially useful when understood as a pathology of societies, rather
than of individuals. If the pursuit of certificates is the socially legitimate way to
improve one's life-chances in a society where resources are scarce and income and
status differences great, then it is highly rational for individuals and their families to
engage in their pursuit. Dore acknowledged this basic individual rationality. What he
questioned, in an uncomfortably radical way, was the underlying social (not individ-
ual) rationality of this system of social and economic allocation. Is it rational for
societies to allocate life chances based on educational certificates? It was this more
fundamental question that framed the second part of the Diploma Disease book. In
the 1970s, developments in the education systems of Cuba, Tanzania and China
appeared to be pointing the way to alternative forms of social allocation. An analysis
of these, combined with Dore's own 'modest proposals for reform', led him to
suggest that the scourge of the educational certificate could be and indeed must be
tempered if millions of the world's children are to have some chance of a meaningful
education.
Between the publication of the original book (Dore, 1976) and its second edition
(Dore, 1997), there have been several collections, reviews and films designed to
explore the validity of the original thesis and to extend or revise it. A systematic
programme of research in developing countries, coordinated from the Institute of
Development Studies (IDS) at Sussex, on qualifications, selection systems and the
quality of education, generated a wealth of research output in the late 1970s and
1980s [2,3]. The focus of much of this research was on how employers in developing
 8 A. W. Little

countries used educational qualifications for recruitment, selection and promotion,

on the one hand; and on the extent of examination and qualification orientation of
educational institutions on the other.
A second programme of research, launched in the mid-1980s, explored the
relationship between motivations for learning and motivations for working. The
thesis had assumed that orientations to learning developed within educational
institutions transferred to the workplace. Assessment-oriented schooling was, Dore
suggested, antithetical to innovation and creativity in the workplace. The examin-
ation of this relationship involved a series of studies by the Students' Learning
Orientations Group (SLOG) and the Work Orientations and Behaviour (WOB)
programme. The research pointed to a range of orientations to learning and working
including but extending those described in the original thesis and to patterns of
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relationships between them which varied by country [4]. This research underlined
the difficulty of establishing universal relationships between learning orientations
and orientations to work. Specific cultural and historical considerations frequently
over-rode more general cross-country relationships. And orientations to learning and
working, which, in the original analysis, had focused on the motivations of individ-
uals, needed to take on board relations between the self and 'significant others',
especially family members, which in some societies outweigh considerations of the
self alone. This programme of work led to a further extension in which the effect of
different types of assessment on learning orientations was explored [5].

The Novelty of the Thesis

The novelty of the original thesis lay in its creative combination of ideas about
assessment and education on the one hand, and about employment allocation and
creation on the other. Discrete elements of the thesis (e.g. the backwash effects of
examinations on curriculum and pedagogy and the tendency for qualifications for
the same job to rise over time) were not new.
The novelty lay in the synthesis of familiar but hitherto unrelated ideas. Dore
drew together contemporary work on qualification inflation and labour markets,
qualifications and earnings and labour market signals with an age-old educational
concern about examination-backwash. He did so in the context of increasing social
demand for and rising costs of education [6].

Critique of the Thesis

The dual concerns of the thesis with pedagogy and labour market practice attracted
critical review in a range of social science journals and encyclopaedia, including
those in political science, sociology, development studies, area studies, education
and labour economics [7].
The plaudits focused on the 'elegance', 'precision', 'wit', 'vigour' and 'brilliance'
of the argument. The criticisms focused on the expressed disadvantages of
certificates. Dore suggested that qualifications often fail to signal competence; that
they constrain the possibilities for 'genuine education' and steer curricula and
 The Diploma Disease 9

pedagogy in undesirable directions; that they create a meritocracy in which only a

few can succeed; that they undermine the potential of education to produce skills
useful for self-employment; that they undermine motivations for learning based on
task or interest; that the educational process and certificates add little value to the
stock of underlying talents of individuals.
Critics suggested that many of the above disadvantages were exaggerated.
Certificates in many areas of professional skill signal competence and protect the
public against incompetent and dangerous practices (e.g. in medicine). Examination
orientation can introduce students to life-enriching curriculum and pedagogy.
Certificates provide the means for social mobility in a meritocracy. Alternatives to
certificates will require widespread social legitimisation if they are to survive. The
substitution of one job selection criterion for another does not solve the underlying
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problems of job creation or growth in an economy. Learning to do a job and learning

to get a job, are not necessarily antithetical. One can learn transferable skills in the
pursuit of certificates. Educational assessment designed for selection purposes can
provide a useful framework for classroom pedagogy, especially among inexperienced
and relatively uneducated teachers. Education is not simply a screening mechanism
for employers; most schools in most countries do add some value to the knowledge
and skills which students have on entry. Young educated people who rise up against
government sometimes have very real grievances. They do not protest simply
because of an aggregated mismatch between expectations and opportunities.

This Journal Issue

This journal issue presents an overview of the original thesis and an assessment of
its validity over the past 20 years in England, Japan, Sri Lanka and Kenya, the four
countries chosen by Dore originally to represent points on the continuum of
'development'; and which generated the evidence for the general propositions about
late development and the intensity of qualification orientation. This is followed by
a review of developments since the 1970s in Cuba, Tanzania and China—three of
the countries which had embarked on radical reforms of the education-qualification
jobs nexus. The final case-studies examine the thesis in two countries not included
in the original analysis—Egypt and Australia.

The Argument: a summary

In the first article, Ronald Dore presents the essence of the original argument. In it
he presents the basic propositions about late development and reflects on some of
the interpretations of the original presentation of the argument. Of enormous value
is the brief autobiographical sketch in which he describes episodes in his educational
and professional experience which influenced the original argument.

England
The English case is reviewed by Alison Wolf. Presented originally by Dore as a case
 10 A. W. Little

of early development and relative freedom from the negative effects of certificate-
pursuit, England remains an early developer but had, by the 1990s, spawned a huge
business in qualification-earning. Since the 1970s qualifications have proliferated
and, Wolf argues, have become much more important in the determination of the
life chances in the British economy of all young people. The expansion of the
post-compulsory education at age 16-18 has been marked and that of higher
education even more so. The growth in qualifications is found in the academic
rather than vocational/professional areas. A major state-led planned reform of
national vocational qualifications was embarked on in the 1980s, underpinned by a
rationale linking economic growth to the types of skills which could be produced
through vocational training. But the expected growth in the numbers of vocational
qualifications awarded did not occur. Wolf explains that the programme focused on
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the development of awards and certificates per se and failed to convince employers
and industrial training organisations that the awards were superior to pre-existing
alternatives. Simultaneously, students and teachers preferred the less academically
demanding nature of these pre-existing alternatives.
The reform of higher education in Britain, by contrast, was unplanned. The
reasons have to do with changes in the economy, the demands of citizens and the
role of government. Today's economy is characterised by employment restructuring
and frequent labour movement. Students are attracted more by general than specific
qualifications. The pursuit of highly specific vocational diplomas at the age of 16 or
17 becomes highly irrational. The expansion of higher education has meant that
employers and students know that many more students are entering higher edu-
cation and that the queue for jobs has simply shifted up the education system. With
an almost open-ended commitment to free higher education it is rational for
students to pursue an academic rather than a vocational degree.
But has this increasing pursuit of certificates led to a deterioration in the quality
of education? Drawing on available evidence Wolf suggests that there is no simple
negative effect of the growth of qualifications on the quality of education in England.
The effects of examination orientation on the quality of education were probably
much more severe in the early part of this century in those schools funded through
'payment by results'. Moreover, 'public' schools, which were not so bound by
examinations, did not always offer high-quality education.

Japan
The review of Japan, the classic 'late developer', and the growth in its examination
hell over the past 20 years is presented by Ikuo Amano. Amano suggests that Japan's
post-war transition to a credentialling society was a result of a double democratisation—
World War. Educational democratisation was encouraged by the post-war adoption
under pressure of the American 'single track' system of education and the introduc-
tion of 9-year compulsory education. Prior to the Second World War, post-primary
enrolments were inhibited and qualification inflation contained by a complex pattern
 The Diploma Disease 11

of secondary and higher education, structured, Amano suggests, along European

lines. Economic democratisation was achieved through a set of institutional
changes, including the establishment of large-scale corporations, land reform, a
simplification of the classification of labour market entrants into three categories,
and a standardisation of salary levels across firms by qualification level.
The near simultaneous democratisation of education and economy created a
new demand for higher levels of education and established a clear bureaucratic
linkage between qualifications, income and status. Because employers could pay
the same salary to graduates of the same level of qualification, they also paid
attention to which institution or school the graduate attended. The process of
simplifying the levels of qualification of labour market entrants was accompanied
by a widening of the value attached to similar qualifications from different educa-
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tional institutions. Universities in Japan came to be ranked clearly in terms of the

entry scores of students; so, too, secondary and primary level institutions.
As Amano explains, the cornerstone of the system was the development of an
objective achievement-scoring system—'the standard deviation score' system—
which ranked individuals, high schools and universities. Japan became a 'which
institution' rather than 'which level' credentialling society. Over time, however, as
mass access to a university education increased and as income and status rewards
in jobs became less visible, the function of schools in generating the heat of
competition is changing in some places to one of 'cooling out'. Some segments of
the student population are turning against the traditional achievement meritocratic
values of school and are resorting increasingly in the 1990s to delinquency, bully-
ing, a lowering of academic achievement, and long term absence, pathological
symptoms, Amano suggests, of 'advanced country diseases'.

Sri Lanka
The third country on the development continuum addressed by Dore in the
1970s was the 'later developing' Sri Lanka. Angela Little examines the validity of
the original analysis of the Sri Lankan case, the course of the so-called disease
over the past 20 years and economic and political developments which have
altered the nature and implications of the disease.
Little confirms much of the original diagnosis in Sri Lanka. A growth of state
involvement in a free education system and the establishment of links between
qualifications and government jobs contributed to a social definition of the pur-
pose of education in terms of social mobility through qualifications and the acqui-
sition of a government job. The growth of education outstripped the growth in
jobs in an economy where private sector growth was slow. The bureaucratic use
by state employers of educational qualifications for recruitment and selection in-
creased.
During the/late 1970s and 1980s, a number of economic and political changes
occurred which Dore could not have foreseen when he wrote his original book. By
1977, a new government, committed to economic liberalisation, was in place and
the use of political criteria in job allocation was institutionalised. Divisions be-
 12 A.W. Little

tween the two major social groups—Sinhalese and Tamil—increased as they com-
peted for access to economic and political resources. Economic and educational
growth was rapid, and the gap between overall jobs available and job seekers
diminished in comparison with the period when Dore was writing. This, combined
with the increased use of political criteria in resource allocation, might, following
Dore's model, lead one to predict that the value attached to educational
qualifications would decline.
Evidence suggests the contrary. Parental support for examination-oriented learn-
ing is evidenced by the proportion of private income spent on private tuition.
Students participate in two school systems simultaneously—the fee-free state schools
by day and the fee-paying private tutories in the evening and night. Over the past 20
years Sri Lankan educationalists have regularly highlighted the negative curriculum
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and pedagogic consequences of assessments for selection. But their reform attempts
have been tempered by a more general political crisis through the 1980s and 1990
which, paradoxically, has served to enhance, rather than diminish, the legitimacy of
educational qualifications. In his initial article in this issue (p. 23) Dore explains how
the coincidence of his participation in the International Labour Organisation's 1971
'employment mission' to Sri Lanka with the insurrection of Sinhala youth was a
formative experience in the construction of the diploma disease argument. A similar
insurrection recurred 17 years later, just one of several manifestations of a deep
political crisis which has affected the country since the late 1970s. The Tamil-
Sinhala ethnic crisis, the politicisation of daily life and the resurgence of militancy
among Sinhala youth—all have played their part in enhancing the value attached to
educational credentials as the most 'objective', 'fair' and legitimate means of
allocating life chances in a society riven by social and economic division.

Kenya
The case of the 'much later developer'—Kenya—is explored in two rather different
ways by Toshio Toyoda and Tony Somerset. Toyoda's introductory note describes
the massive expansion of the education system over the past 20 years. Primary
school enrolments grew from 2.8 million in 1975 to 5.5 million in 1992; and
secondary enrolments from 227,000 in 1975 to 629,000 in 1992. The respective
growth in enrolment ratios was 88% in 1975 to 92% in 1992 for primary; and 13%
in 1975 to 27% in 1992 for secondary. The relatively modest rise in enrolment ratios
and the huge increase in enrolments at each level is explained by the fact that Kenya
continues to have an extremely high population growth rate. During this period the
main structural change in the education system was the extension of the 'open access
span' of education from 7 to 8 years of primary education. When Dore was writing
about Kenya the first major selection examination sat by primary school students
occurred at the end of Year 7. From 1985 it occurred at the end of Year 8.
The article by Tony Somerset describes the qualitative changes in the Year 7
Certificate of Primary Education (CPE) examination in the 1970s. These changes
were subsequently transferred to the Year 8 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education
 The Diploma Disease 13

(KCPE) examination in 1985 and remain current. Although the article draws
extensively on the Kenyan experience, much of Somerset's 'modest counter-
proposal' has more general relevance to assessment principles, policy and practice.
Dore's original analysis suggested that achievement tests, of the kind sat by stu-
dents in educational selection examinations, are irredeemable; and their negative
backwash on the curriculum and pedagogy of schools, inevitable. In his 'modest
proposals for reform' Dore (1976, ch. 13) proposed that achievement tests for
occupational selection be replaced by 'aptitude tests' and suggested that educa-
tional selection tests focus on those subjects which are harder to cram for—maths
and language.
Somerset suggests the distinction between achievement and aptitude tests is not
especially helpful. Much more important, he argues, to distinguish low-quality tests
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and examinations (which diminish and distort the work of the teacher so that she
becomes little more than a dispenser of factual information and supervisor of cram
sessions) and high quality tests and examinations (which avoid these negative
backwash effects and may even help to promote better pedagogy). He describes
how the reform of the CPE initially employed the criteria of relevance, equity and
efficiency in the determination of items to be included in the examination. As the
CPE reform progressed, ambiguities arose in the interpretation of the criteria,
especially in relation to 'relevance'. Should examinations foster the same set of
competencies in all children, or should there be a differentiation based on
would leave the school system?

The unsatisfactory resolution of this duality convinced Somerset that the rel-
evance criterion needed to be replaced by what he terms 'active ideas'. Examin-
ation questions which assess active rather than passive ideas should in turn meet
five criteria. The first two, relating mainly to knowledge-based questions, are
understanding and insight, and experience-based knowledge. The remaining
three, which relate mainly to skills-based questions, are: the assimilation of new
knowledge; application of knowledge; and generative competencies. Somerset's
article goes on to describe some of the changes in pedagogy which flowed from
the examination reform in Kenya. His conclusion, that high-quality examina-
tions can support improved pedagogy, challenges the assumed inevitability of the
linkage between achievement-based examinations, passive pedagogy and ritualised
learning.

The Experience of Reform

After setting out the accounts of the historical development of educational growth
in England, Japan, Sri Lanka and Kenya Dore advanced three general propositions
about the effects of late development on the rate of educational expansion, the rate
of qualification escalation and the quality of education. This was followed by a
review of attempts at reform which delinked educational and occupational selec-
tion from educational certificates. Three examples were drawn from Cuba, Tanza-
nia and China.
 14 A.W. Little

Cuba
Susan Eckstein reviews educational development in Cuba between the mid-1970s
and 1990s in this issue. Up until the 1970s Castro's accomplishments in education
were impressive. Educational opportunity expanded rapidly, especially in rural
areas. Schools stressed the norms of egalitarianism and collectivism. Work was
combined with study to install the work ethic of the new socialist man. Technical
studies were stressed and graduates were guaranteed jobs. Throughout the last 20
years education continued to be upgraded but, as Eckstein points out, the educa-
tional revolution generated its own contradictions. The costs of education to the
government became too great and the government could no longer provide jobs
commensurate with expectations. Government reined in opportunity, especially at
the university level. Not surprisingly, this was resisted. To a large degree the
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legitimacy of the socialist Cuban state was based on the provision of social benefits,
including free schooling for all. Over time, Fidel Castro's initial education strategy—
targeting lower level mass education—created an enormous social demand for
secondary and higher level education. Since the state was the job gatekeeper and
education credentials provided access to jobs, as the volume of jobs failed to keep
pace with the numbers seeking them, the credentials required for jobs gradually
escalated. The demise of the Soviet Union and the aid and trade arrangements with
Cuba restricted economic opportunities and growth. A deschooling strategy in-
volved cut-backs in university admissions and a retracking of secondary school
students onto vocational rather than academic courses. As Eckstein's article ex-
plains, this attempt to deschool was not popular. Far from offering a cure to the
Diploma Disease, socialism came to be part of the problem.

Tanzania
Like Cuba, Tanzania followed socialist strategies for development in the 1970s and
1980s. Brian Cooksey & Sybille Riedmiller explore the implementation of the policy
of education for self reliance (ESR) promoted by Julius Nyerere during the 1970s.
Cooksey & Riedmiller position Tanzania at the far extreme of the development
spectrum—a 'very late developer'—and explore the outcomes in the 1990s of the
radical educational reforms of the 1970s. The ESR policy restricted access to
secondary schooling and higher education, guaranteed government employment for
the lucky few who continued their schooling beyond primary, and promoted a
reorientation of the primary curriculum and assessment system. Dore had predicted
that ESR would meet with popular resistance in the long term for reasons which had
to do with the links between ambitions, jobs, certificates and motives and modes of
learning. Cooksey & Riedmiller confirm the demise of ESR but advance different
reasons. These include the failure of Tanzanian socialism to make rural employment
attractive, the exploitation of child labour by poorly paid teachers and school
managers in the name of 'relevant rural education', the collapse of the formal
employment economy, and the 'deschooling' strategy which parents have adopted
voluntarily.
 The Diploma Disease 15

In contrast to Cuba, where educational opportunity at the post-primary level

mushroomed and where state efforts to curb higher education opportunities were
resisted by students and their parents, Tanzanian parents have increasingly seen
little point in sending their children to primary schools which offer too few opportu-
nities for further advancement, and are voting with their children's feet. Cooksey &
Riedmiller's review of developments in the quality of assessment items in the
Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) over the period 1979-1994 suggests
an increase in the proportion of items assessing the recall of factual information,
from approximately one-half to two-thirds, and a performance level on multiple
choice assessments little better than chance for a majority of students. Secondary
schooling seems to have become the preserve of the urban middle classes. But access
to this level of education is still so restricted that there has been no significant
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devaluation of educational credentials.

China
Where Cuba and Tanzania were used by Dore to illustrate piecemeal reforms which
might stem the diploma disease, China was presented as a case of wholesale
economic and social reform which might cure it completely. Nowhere in the world
have swings in assessment policy been as extreme as those in China. Changes in the
assessment criteria for educational selection have reflected equally extreme shifts
between the 'red' and 'expert' poles of the political continuum. In the original book,
and on the basis of the best available evidence in the early 1970s, Dore provided an
account of what seemed to be happening in China during her cultural revolution in
the period 1966-1976. China had been the first country to select its civil servants
according to the results of scholastic achievement tests. During the cultural revol-
ution it became the first to delink job selection from education certificates. Educa-
tional reforms were radical. Open-book examinations were introduced; part-time
work and study in the middle schools was established; 2 years full-time work in the
countryside became a necessary criterion for university entry; and university entry
was based on political suitability and peer recommendation. The principal motive
for Mao Zedong's virtual destruction of the earlier school structure seemed to be the
expansion of opportunities for the children of 'good' (i.e. proletarian) class back-
ground. This necessitated the abolition of an examination system which had fa-
voured the children of the pre-revolution intelligentsia and merchants.
Jonathan Unger (1980, 1982, 1984), a member of the original Institute of Devel-
opment Studies (IDS) Sussex research team, undertook some early assessments of
the consequences of this policy in urban schools in Canton (Guangdong). His general
conclusion was that the delinking of academic qualifications from educational and
occupational futures led to such demoralisation that most students were unwilling to
study and simply 'stopped paying attention in class' (Unger, 1980, p. 9) The removal
of one of the prime motivators of education and learning—an individual's aspiration
to climb educational and occupational ladders—had been undermined.
Keith Lewin's article in this issue describes changes since the end of the Cultural
Revolution which have taken place in assessment, the school system, university
 16 A. W. Little

entrance and job recruitment. Some aspects of Dore's valued model of education—
Confucian traditions, an all round education, and vocational secondary schooling—
flourish. But the delinked relationship between certificates and jobs has been swept
away. Examinations have been relinked with educational progression at several levels
of the system, and the examination baton directs the rhythm and tune of curriculum
and pedagogy once more. The 'expert' is in political ascendance, and the assessment
system values competence over ideology and individual over group performance.
Key schools have re-emerged at the primary, junior secondary and senior secondary
level and competition for entry to the university, especially key universities, is
intense. Private sector employment is growing; so too is private education. In this
climate of unregulated economic growth Lewin suggests that the backwash effects of
examinations on the quality of learning and teaching in China could become still
more severe, underlining the relevance of much of Dore's basic model.
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Egypt
The final two cases in this volume—the 'monster' school leaving certificate in Egypt;
and the aspirations for qualifications among migrants in Australia—extend Dore's
model to new contexts. Eleanore Hargreaves reports recent research on the relation-
ship between certificate orientation and learning and teaching styles, in the context
of the link in Egypt between examination success and life chances. When Nasr's
nationalist government came to power in 1952, all university graduates were
guaranteed a government job. Entry to university depended on passing the second-
ary school certificate. The subject a student studied at the university was based, not
on subject interest, but on the overall marks gained in the certificate examination. A
hierarchy of marks and subjects corresponded with a status and income hierarchy of
jobs. Many other selection hurdles were crossed en route to the secondary leaving
certificate—entrance to a good quality primary school; the grade 5 primary school
leaving certificate; and the grade 8 middle school certificate. But war and slow
economic growth have meant that university graduates were employed, or severely
underemployed, in low paid and low grade work. The automatic link between
university graduation and a government job was broken in the 1970s when the
queue for government jobs lengthened and the private sector, spurred by foreign
investment, began to expand. Employment in foreign affiliated firms in Egypt now
yields private returns double those in local private firms; and regional migration to
richer countries generates salaries ten times those within Egypt. International
Certificates—especially the International Baccalaureate (IB) and the International
General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) have become increasingly
popular.
Hargreaves' case studies of classrooms generated substantial evidence of the
domination of curriculum and pedagogy by examinations—a focus on examination
subjects, examination pressure at home, extensive use of private tuition, ritualisation
of learning and teaching. The examination system is so deeply entrenched that the
Ministry of Education has difficulty in reforming it to promote the goals of learning
rather than selection. However, Hargreaves suggests that while examinations domi-
 The Diploma Disease 17

nate teaching methods they do not dictate them. Reform of one is not dependent on
the other. Other factors, such as the bulging population, a large bureaucracy,
chronic economic instability and inequality, poor quality teacher education and a
general lack of resources—all contribute to a low quality pedagogy and curriculum
on the one hand and low quality assessment systems on the other. A much more
fundamental reform of society in general is necessary if the assessment system or the
quality of education are to be improved.

Vietnamese Migrants in Australia

In the final case study in this issue Peter Ninnes explores the nature of aspirations
for qualifications from the viewpoint of a minority group within an industrialised
society. Drawing from an earlier critique of the diploma disease thesis (Lee &
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Ninnes, 1995) Ninnes points to the importance of understanding cultural values and
minority-majority power relationships in the formation of approaches to schooling,
in both developed and developing countries. Ninnes explores these values and power
relationships among migrants of Vietnamese background experiencing schooling in
Australia. Central to his analysis of the importance of assessment and certification in
the lives of Vietnamese students is a four-level model of perspectives on schooling.
The first—the metacurricular level—examines the purposes of education and no-
tions of what constitutes, in Dore's terms, a good education. The second—the
macrocurricular level—examines the systemic functions of certification and school-
ing, and suggests that aspirations are influenced by both local and global socio-
economic systems, and, in the case of migrants, by educational experiences in the
country of origin and settlement. The third—the mesocurricular level—is concerned
with the mainfestation of ideas about the purposes of schooling in approaches to
learning. The fourth—the microcurricular level—focuses on relations between self
and society. Here, the dynamics of relations between individual students and other
societal members, but especially parents, are explored for their influence on ap-
proaches to schooling in particular contexts. This level reflects the research reported
earlier (SLOG, 1987), in which the motives for learning of individuals needed, in
some contexts, to be related to the orientations towards family. Ninnes suggests that
Dore's thesis was pitched at the metacurricular and macrocurricular levels. The
inclusion of meso-and micro-level analyses enhances an understanding of how
particular groups interpret and respond to schooling in specific contexts.

Reflections
The final article in this issue is contributed, appropriately, by Ronald Dore. He
reflects on the thesis in the light of contributions to this journal issue and other
research conducted since the publication of the original book in 1976. Rather than
my extracting the essence of his views—incisive and controversial as ever—the
reader is urged to address them directly alongside the views and evidence presented
by all the contributors to this journal issue.
A contemporary issue which the original thesis necessarily overlooked, but to
 18 A. W. Little

which several of the authors in this issue allude, is the increasing globalisation of
economies and jobs. Dore employed the nation-state as his unit of comparative
analysis. Relations and dependencies between nation-states were addressed, but more
for an understanding of how contemporary systems emerged than for an understand-
ing of why they continue. In the 1990s there is a growing awareness of the effects
of economic globalisation on the nature and availability of work; of the increasing
integration of national economies into a global economic system; of the ways in which
employers are moving jobs around the world in response to global markets and the
relative price of labour; and of the new types of skills required for jobs in the
twenty-first century. Many of the old certainties about a good education leading to
a good and secure job for life are breaking down.
Several of the papers in this issue allude to an increased liberalisation of economies
and employment markets; and several also refer to the growing importance of private
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education, especially private education linked with international rather than national
qualification systems. Others refer to the role of assessment as the arbiter of resource
allocation in plural societies struggling to maintain a national identity. In this rapidly
changing context, what will become of the role of assessment in occupational
allocation in global, national and local employment markets—and in guiding learning
in the classroom?
As economies and job markets become more internationalised and as more social
groups compete for power and position within them will the diploma disease,
identified by Ronald Dore, become a thing of the past, or will it re-emerge in the next
century on a global scale?

Notes
[1] For example see Dore (1976), Dore & Little (1982), Oxenham (1984), SLOG (1987).
[2] For example see Boakye (1985), Boakye & Oxenham (1982), Brooke (1980a, b), Brooke et
al. (1978), Brooke & Oxenham (1980, 1984), Deraniyagala et al. (1978), Dore (1980),
Dore & Little (1982), Dore & Oxenham (1984), Lewin (1980, 1981, 1984), Lewin & Little
(1984), Little (1977, 1978 a, b, c, 1980 a, b, 1982, 1984a, b), Oxenham (1980, 1982,
1984) and Unger (1978, 1980, 1982, 1984).
[3] See also the video film The Diploma Disease (1982), available from the Institute of
Development Studies (attn: Peter Esland), at the University of Sussex, Falmer, East Sussex
BN1 9RE, UK; and the video film The Qualification Chase (1997) to be transmitted on
BBC2 10 February 1997 at 06.00, BBC Prime (satellite channel) on 17 February 1997 at
00.30 and BBC2 on 30 June 1997 at 06.00. Educational institutions and commercial
companies may purchase the video film The Qualification Chase in 1998 from Open
University Education Enterprises (OUEE), 12 Cofferidge Close, Stony Stratford, Milton
Keynes MK11 1BY, UK. The licensing of off-air copying of programmes can also be
arranged through OUEE. The Qualification Chase is linked to the Open University course
EU208 Exploring Educational Issues (1997). Course materials, including audio-cassettes,
are available from OUEE (address above) for non-enrolling students and from the Admis-
sions Office, Open University, PO Box 48, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AB for
enrolling students.
[4] For example, see SLOG (1984, 1987), Howard (1988), Little & Howard (1988 a,b,c),
McNae, et al. (1988), Little & Singh (1992), Little (1992).
[5] For example see McNae, et al. (1988), Little & Howard (1988b) and Little (1994).
[6] For example see Lewis (1954), Bowman (1977), Blaug (1972), Wiles (1974) and Arrow
(1974).
 The Diploma Disease 19

[7] For examples of reviews from a range of social science publications see Anderson (1976),
Barber (1977), Crossley & Guthrie (1987), Fry (1981), Jary & Jary (1991), Williams
(1977), Bowman (1977), Lee & Ninnes (1995), Little (1992), Passin (1979), Weeks (1980)
and Wegmann (1977).

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