Abstract
Since the 1960s, there has been a major expansion in the number of people holding post-school educational credentials, and the proportion of the full-time workforce with those credentials. The penalties of not holding credentials, in terms of the incidence and duration of unemployment, are increasingly severe. At the same time, there has been a long-term decline in the income associated with degree and trade qualifications, relative to all incomes. Thus rising needs for education coincide with declining returns from education, and this is one of the sources of claims about declining standards. Human capital theory does not understand these trends well, and the notions of credentialism, and of education as a positional good, are a better basis of explanation.