Paper Lives: Certification vs. Licensure

Abstract

Since the mid-1990s certification has increasingly been considered as a tool to increase the chance to find job particularly by youngsters. However under the circumstances that exist today it is known that having certificates does not automatically lead to get job, even contrary job seekers may remain jobless after they pay huge amounts of money to certfication firms. The very fast increase in the number of certfying firms confirms the fact that there is an ongoing demand for short term qualification courses. Another process which accompanies to private certification is that the loosing ground in public education that despite corporations still care about diplomas in hiring they reject job applications in the case of absence of certificates. In this study certification as a popular phenomenon has been compared with licensure in the context of waged engineers and their chambers. As a consequence of the analyses made for this study, it may be concluded that there is a capital accumulation which is carried out via two layers of working classes: masses who are obliged to be certified and waged laborers who work in certification industry in order to improve skills of those who are in need to be certified. During reviewing of literature it has also been witnessed that the academic writings focusing on the numbers, wages and working conditions of trainers hired by certification firms is virtually non exist. Therefore study suggests further researches especially on waged trainers working in private certification firms.