Home
Academic Prejudice
Highly misunderstood, prejudice connotes a crude tension in society corrupting the minds of the masses with negative thoughts and ideas. For some, it could be an adverse statement, judgement, or opinion made beforehand without all the facts. Others may project it overtly through an irrational suspicion or sudden hatred of another's group, race, or religion. Why... merely inflicting injury on someone is already a form of prejudice.
Unfortunately, the mere discrimination of people because of race, religion, ideas, wealth, or culture is not all there is to it. In the field of intellectuals, they fight a similar battle - for knowledge, pride, success, and glory. Honestly, they are all capable of achieving these, for God, surely, did not create someone incompetent. But why are there still some on the losing streak? The culprit behind all this, my dear friends, is what we know of as 'academic prejudice'. I warn you not to underestimate this term for its literal definition. It is far more complex than we actually think.
What is academic prejudice? Just like 'conventional' prejudice, it is synonymous with the word 'discrimination'. However, it is the kind of discrimination that degrades a person emotionally and psychologically by pertaining to his or her knowledge and skills more inferior than another's. This type of prejudice can inflict more damage than any other, for it attacks a person's credibility, capability, humanity, and moreover, essentiality. At this point, it is important to remember what distinguishes men from animals is our ability to rationalize, conceptualize, and analyze complex ideas. That, basically, is how we have developed numerous ways to build, as well as, destroy the core of our humanity - knowledge.
Music, for example, can be divided into modern, classical, folk, and more. These can then be subdivided into rock, pop, ballroom, orchestra, ballad, country, and so on. Like music, a general term such as 'prejudice' would be further divided of which one would be 'academic prejudice', which would then be subdivided and defined by similar genre to clear any present doubts. One such genre would be the "name vs. name" scenario wherein the employer overlooks ALL of the applicant's or employee's positive aspects and goes for the NAME of the university or institute one graduated from. It is the most common form of academic prejudice here in the Philippines. A mass communication graduate from Far Eastern University has, as they say, absolutely no chance at a media job against a graduate of the same course from Miriam College or the University of Philippines. In other words, does this mean others cannot get a job because of their school's names? Honestly, it would appear so. And, even if one gets a job, it may not be as good as the "better" half. That can be frustrating at times.
The "skill vs. grade and/or experience" scenario is another common form of academic prejudice only recently added to this long line of 'viruses' and is not only applicable in the Philippines but also internationally. Employers have a bad habit of belittling a potential employee because of an "unacceptable" transcript or because he or she lacks experience. This will have to be the wake-up call needed for their narrow-mindedness. First of all, of everything a person is taught in a school or institution, only 10% to 15% is used in the real world. So, a dozen or more failing grades do not give an employer the right to not give an applicant an equal opportunity in getting a particular job. One may never know if a person is a born Mozart - skilled to the 'T'. When it comes to experience, employers never hire professionals who have just graduated or have gained experience through personal means. Now, please enlighten us. How would a person gain experience if no one would hire them and give them the opportunity to learn? That is the question of the day. https://jitterymonks.com/paper-writing-service-or-nigerian-scam-18-percent-of-write-my-paper-requests-end-badly/
Moving on, we have the "credibility" scenario - a simple yet ironic genre. Linked to the previous genre, this scenario basically allows potential employees to compete at a documentary scale. The more paper you have to show (licenses, certificates, etc.) the better. This is not very promising to those who learned through experience and have no papers at all to prove it. Honestly, with or without paper, all applicants are capable at a particular job. Others just go an extra step. In fact, if these papers burn or get misplaced somehow, those people will be back at square one.
Another genre would be the "international-local inferiority complex" scenario. Now, imagine a situation wherein a graduate of the Mapua Institute of Technology was not accepted in a job because another MIT graduate got it. Much to your dismay, the MIT graduate is not a Mapuan but a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from the United States. Even worse, Mapua is a local private-school whilst MIT USA is a foreign state university. Obviously, your first reaction would be insult then inferiority. Many companies in the Philippines hire this way. It does not matter what school a person graduates from here in the Philippines, for its curriculum will always be looked at as inferior from that of a foreign curriculum.
Communication barriers serve as another major form of academic prejudice in this society. Most definitely, a Frenchman would not hire Japanese because, obviously, they would not understand each other. Likewise, two equally well-trained computer engineers applying for the same job in an American-based company in Germany would have quite a stiff competition. However, if one speaks both English and German, that person would get the job. This similarly applies to technological and information technology-based communication. It is not enough to be just computer literate. Nowadays, one must be computer proficient. As our society develops and evolves, the human race devises more ways to become more knowledgeable, unique, and superior compared to any other living being in the universe. However, parallel to this, create more ways to destroy our humanity as well. But that is a whole different topic on its own.
