After the Credential Society

Over the course of the twentieth century the United States was a world leader in expanding access to formal schooling: first by providing school access to all of its citizens through high school; then in funding postsecondary education and variously encouraging mass completion of four-year degrees. In the process we created a schooled society, in which school credentials are primary mechanisms for mediating and producing identity as well as sorting and stratifying persons, groups, occupations, and knowledge. Sociologists have yet to theorize an historical epoch that might come after the schooled society. I provide empirical motivation for pursuing such an enteprise and sketch its broad outlines.