COMMENT Secondly, you are experiencing a phenomenon particular to this era; you are bearing the consequences of being a legatee to the advancement and progress made hitherto; of the 3,000 years of recorded history that have made us inheritors of a vast amount of knowledge.

How banal it is today to be awarded a degree, how perfunctory and meaningless graduation ceremonies are or the act of framing certificates and affixing them on the wall. Sixty, seventy years ago, when the world’s population was half of what it is now, and university education was a privilege, it was different.

Even the award of a Bachelor of Arts in History would allow one to secure a comfortable job. Everything has changed now, because of the increase in population, the greater demand for education and the consequent increase in the rate of literacy and therefore, competition.

One would think that this would raise standards, but the result, according to Max Travers (2009), is “a shallow form of education that suits the credentialising needs of a mass society, rather than actually promoting learning.” (Law and Society, 178)

The private sector thrives on making education a business. It markets and sells education competitively, whetting the appetites of prospective consumers through the display of vulgarly attractive billboards and the use of deceptive marketing strategies, and sells it as a product below par.

Those who are to graduate seldom turn around and complain, because their attention is fixed on the procurement of a passport that sadly stands out purely as a rite of passage. The certificate is merely symbolical and as most symbols, supplants intrinsic value with ornamental worth. After all, it is trite that most of what needs to be known is learnt at the workplace...