| Summary: | 碩士 === 南華管理學院 === 教育社會學研究所 === 87 === The discussion of credentials can be multi-faceted, because in today''s society a person''s credential has become almost another type of personal identification, and thus encompass several areas of social meaning such as marriage, social class, family background, educational system, etc. This thesis will discuss from one important area, namely, working opportunity, and hopefully provide a fuller understanding of credential''s social meaning.
The structure of this thesis is to place credentials against the total social background, and discuss the amount of influence it possesses in the job market. I achieved this through two approaches.
First, I interviewed with the personnel manager of nine different companies; second, I analyzed the job search section of newspapers. The results are then combined to provide a better understanding of what different types of credentials mean in different job markets. The theories applied to this thesis mainly come from Bourdieu, whose work focuses on the higher education of France, and Collins, who analyses the social-historical meaning of credentials in American society.
A brief summary of the conclusion of my study is this: many factors affect how credentials will influence a person''s career opportunity, but in today''s society, the tendency is to place higher emphasis on the "type" of degree because it is not that easy to clearly tell one''s individual capabilities without the endorsement of credentials.
Also, I provided a brief reexamination of the influence of our education policy in this respect. In addition, through analyzing the job section of newspapers I was able to show the uniqueness of the three types of diplomas: vocational schools, junior colleges, and universities. The above two findings were then combined to give us a more comprehensive look into the actual meaning and influence credentials have on our society today.
Key words: credential, human resource''s theory, screening theory
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