The remarkably popular TV series “Mad Men” depicts the world of New York’s Madison Avenue advertising agencies in the early 1960s. The show’s producers have taken great pains to get the atmospherics of that era right — and they do, for the most part. From the clothing to the incessant cigarette smoking (and drinking) and even to the occasional musical references to Gordon Jenkins’ “Manhattan Tower,” his tribute to the city at its mid-century magical best, the show makes a thoroughly enjoyable effort to recreate the irretrievable past.
In one of the first-season episodes, an ambitious junior executive, with family connections but weasel-like tendencies, comes across some information about his boss Don Draper’s real background and decides to blackmail him. Draper is having none of it, though, and marches the weasel up to the agency head’s office to end the matter.
When they arrive at the top guy’s office, Draper insists that the weasel tell what he knows. The junior executive explains that he has information that Draper “isn’t who he says he is.”
The agency head, played by Robert Morse — who had starred in “How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying” on Broadway back in the era recreated in “Mad Men” — looks at the weasel carefully for a moment, and says, quite firmly and deliberately, “I don’t care.”
It was probably an honest statement, a reflection of the times, of the advertising industry, and perhaps especially of New York then. Draper was doing a great job for them and it really didn’t matter much what his education or background was. Everybody in New York City had a story, and there wasn’t enough time to care very much about each one. What mattered was what you could deliver here and now … a self-styled, practical meritocracy.
Of course, that was 1960. We hadn’t yet experienced the relentless marketing of academic credentials as a product — a necessity, really. And we certainly had not yet come to face the consequences of education as a product whose supply and cost, especially at the high end, is controlled to a degree that rivals the old De Beers diamond cartel.
The 1960 attitude of “who cares?” was not universal, certainly, but credentials and resumes didn’t seem to matter as much to a nation that saw mostly open doors and possibilities in front of it.
Attitudes change, though, and today’s world is very different. This past April, for example, Marilee Jones resigned from her position as dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It turned out that she didn’t have biology and chemistry degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. For that matter, she didn’t have degrees she claimed from Albany Medical College or Union College, either, and hadn’t actually attended those schools at all.
Now, lying on your resume is not a good thing, and MIT was quite right to ask for her resignation. There was no other option, really.
Still, there is the matter of Jones’ performance. She had worked for MIT for 28 years and by all accounts had been an effective dean of admissions. She had even co-authored a book on the admissions process and how it affected the education and behavior of young people.
There is no doubt that educational credentials are important, but we should also remember that the economy, like the boss in “Mad Man,” really doesn’t care. In economics, performance counts; credentials don’t.
As we begin to regain our footing in this economic recession, the difference between performance and credentials becomes important. Credentials are used more and more as a screening device to reduce the number of job candidates. And the bigger the jobless pool, the larger the distance between required credentials and actual job performance.
In the 1930s, for example, when unemployment reached about 20 percent, Macy’s department stores wouldn’t hire what were then called “floor-walkers” (today’s customer service representatives) unless they had college degrees — then much less common than in today’s population of job-seekers. It had nothing to do with the job, really, but was a matter of convenience in that it reduced the size of the pile of applications.
That is still the easy way to handle job descriptions and applicants, and credentials are often used in both the public and private sector as a substitute for actually understanding the job and performance requirements.
Credential-based hiring, though, will slow down our recovery because the screening process is not directly related to performance — making it an inherently inefficient process. What our economy needs now are a few more bosses who understand the real work requirements and are so focused on performance that if you can do the job, “they don’t care” about how many degrees you have, or from where.
James McCusker is a Bothell economist, educator and consultant.
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