Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work

by Matthew B. Crawford

Thirty years ago, Collins pointed out that higher education serves a signaling function: it rewards and certifies the display of middle-class self-discipline. But what sort of discipline is required of white-collar workers these days? Once upon a time, the passing of examinations, meeting of course deadlines, and disciplined study for the sake of mastering a body of knowledge broadcast a willingness to conform to organizational discipline, and displayed the dispositions needed to develop competence in a bureaucracy. But the new antibureaucratic ideal of the flexible organization puts quite different demands on people, requiring the cultivation of a different sort of self. As Brown and Scase point out, in the new dispensation the whole person is at issue; one has to have certain personal qualities, more than a well-defined set of competencies tied to the fulfillment of specific organizational ends. What the recruiters are looking for is a manner of personal comportment, a collection of psychological and social aptitudes, that is difficult to codify. (This makes sense for a workplace that has little in the way of objective standards such as one finds in a machine shop.) Accordingly, the credentialism of higher education can continue its signaling function only if the official items appearing on a transcript are supplemented with extracurricular items that signal the possession of a complete personality package.22 Students and their parents seem to understand this. An importa...