Journal Review and Critique

Norehan binti Khamsim

850708015314, SPM0189/15

Little A. W. (2006). Diploma Disease. In Clark, D. A. The Elgar Companion to

Development Studies. (pp. 121-125) Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Pub.

The article ‘Diploma Disease’ written by Angela W. Little, a Professor Emerita at the Institute
of Education, University of London in 2006 is in response to Ronald Dore’s propositions on
‘Diploma Disease’ which was first introduced in 1976. Later on, Ronald Dore has written more
about Diploma Disease, revisiting his ideas, revising and reflecting on them. The discussions
in Little’s article are based on more than one of Dore’s work. It includes his book ‘The Diploma
Disease: Education, Qualification and Development’ both the first and second editions which
were published in 1976 and 1997. The article’s references among else, include Dore’s articles
‘The Argument of the Diploma Disease: A Summary’ and ‘Reflections on the Diploma Disease
Twenty Years Later’ which were published in a journal in 1997.

The article begins with a brief discussion of Dore’s ideas. Next, it discusses studies
carried out by different researchers to explore aspects in Dore’s first book. The studies are done
in the same countries where Dore did his first studies and suggested the ideas of diploma
disease. The article compares and contrasts Dore’s prognosis and predicted course of the
disease with the findings of the researches done decades later. The article also discusses the
revised aspects of diploma disease written by Dore himself twenty years after the original
diagnosis was proposed.

Although the article starts by discussing diploma disease, it is very brief that it does not
do justice to the original diploma disease which Dore had proposed. The readers need to have
a good understanding of the original work on diploma disease to be able to fully comprehend
the article written by Little (2006) and make the connections between the two. The article
describes diploma disease as ‘a ritualised process of qualification-earning whose consequences
were thought to be especially deplorable in developing countries’ (Little, ibid, p.121). It stems
from the modern bureaucratic organisations making education certificates as screening tools in
hiring employees. Little states that one of the consequences is qualification escalation which
means that getting the same job requires higher qualification than it was before. Little also
states Dore’s concerns about motivation in learning whereas students learn to get a job rather
than learning for its own sake and learning to do a job. Besides that, diploma disease also
undermines the school’s potentials in developing human capital while degrading the process of
education. Little also states Dore’s proposition that the later a country starts its development,
‘the more widely education certificates are used for occupational selection…the faster the rate
of qualification inflation and the more examination-oriented schooling becomes’ (p.121).
References to Dore’s work are made by Little throughout the article as well as Dore’s
adjustments to his original ideas following important events in the countries involved in his
first studies.

Although Little (2006) states important key elements in diploma disease, readers need
to read the original work by Dore to be able to make sense of the article. Dore discusses each
element in depth. Dore also wrote his ideas and organised his arguments in a way that readers
will find it easy to understand and make connections with what they experience and see in the
education world. He explains the causes of each aspect in diploma disease and its
consequences, the relationship between them and how they are connected while supporting his
arguments with examples from countries he did his studies on. This is missing in the article by
Little. The article discusses important aspects of diploma disease without much discussions
that readers may find it difficult to recognise symptoms of the disease in one owns country.

In taking Malaysia as an example, several circumstances in the educational setting here

can be associated with aspects of the Diploma Disease. Malaysia in the first place shares several
characteristics of countries plagued with the disease. It is a developing country which rapid
development stage begins in 1960 to 1995 (Noorazuan & Ruslan, 2003). As suggested by
Dore, the disease are worse in developing countries because of few reasons. From these
reasons, several fits the situations in Malaysia. The stakes in diploma competition is so much
higher because of the great income difference, lack of resources needed for style of education
that thwart rote-memorisation and exam-centred practise, not much of learning-for-its-own-
sake traditions and wide cultural gap between traditional and imported modern culture (Dore,
1980). Malaysia education also practices high-stake standardised national examinations.
Although the level of bureaucracy in private sector can be flexible, the government sector is
highly bureaucratised. Malaysia can also be categorised as a classless society where everyone
has a fair chance at social mobility. Even though symptoms of the disease can also be seen in
the country, whether it is in fact diploma disease for certain, should be proven by studies done
in the country. However, a few examples of these symptoms can be identified as followed.

Studies on education inflation in Malaysia produce a range of findings depending on

the sectors and fields of work. The year the study is carried out is a variable as well. A study
carried out by Zulkifly Osman, Ishak Yussof and Abu Hassan Shaari Mohd Nor (2009) on
Education Inflation in Accordance to Malaysian Labour Market Indication suggests that there
are possibilities of education inflation in Malaysia. The findings further suggest that over-
education does not exist in Malaysian education system but qualification escalation does. This
causes occupational mismatch and unemployment among the highly-educated or what Dore
(1976) termed as ‘educated unemployed’. This conclusion is supported by findings of other
studies by Mohd Afendy Anuar and Zulkifly Osman (2012) and Raze Norsyahman (2015).

Two of the factors suggested by Raze Norsyahman (2015) that contribute to

occupational mismatch also correspond with aspects in diploma disease. One of them is
education explosion which is shown by the liberation of the education system in 1990’s that
sees the establishment of many public and private universities. The high funding set annually
by the government for education without regards of the balance between demands and offers
is also a contributing factor. Interestingly, Malaysian government also solved the problem of
unemployment amongst first degree graduates due to economic crisis by funding them to
further their studies in higher levels. The other is stricter employment requirements by
employers. A study by NEAC (2001 as cited in Rahmah Ismail, Ishak Yussof & Lai Wei Sieng,
2011) the main determinant of graduates’ employability is communication skills while
academic achievement ranked number eight. However, as will be proven by studies on diploma
disease, the setting where a study is carried out is an important variable that affect the findings
tremendously. However, it may be that even though employers are looking at more criteria in
hiring, when more than one candidates fulfil them someone with higher academic credential
would likely have a better chance than those with lower credential. Especially when having a
first degree is common, which is the case in Malaysia.

One of Dore’s main concerns when he proposed diploma disease is the quality of
education; education versus schooling. In the case of Malaysia, more researches can be done
to study if, with the symptoms of diploma disease shown, the quality of school has indeed
lessen. A study by Wolf (1997; 2002 as cited in Little, 2006) shows that even though several
symptoms associated with the disease exist, little evidence suggests that the quality of school
education has decreased. Wolf did his study in England which was disease free in the 1970’s
but later develop symptoms of the disease in terms of more young people and/ or their family
go for university diploma which transforms higher education sector and increases the value
attach to university qualification. However, rather than bureaucratisation of the work place,
Wolf attributes this to “a rational cost–benefit analysis by young people and their parents and
the simple faith of politicians in the link between economic prosperity and education” (p.122).

Other than the studies by Wolf in 1997 and 2002, article by Little (2006) also discusses
researches by Amano (1997) which study the case of Japan, Sri Lanka by Little (1997b) as well
as Kenya by Toyoda (1997) and Somerset (1997). Just like the case of England, these studies,
with the exception of Kenya, indicate that the disease has changed its course from what is
predicted by Dore. Little also acknowledges that Dore himself has written a set of reflections
where he reassess his original diagnosis. Little states how Dore has noted that some
governments had put a stop on qualification spirals and employers inflate criteria within the
same certificate qualification which suggest the inclination to believe in human capital. Little
also include other changes that Dore identified including how historical events affect the course
of the disease, changes within the bureaucratisation of working life as well as impacts of
qualification seeking towards learning and working. Besides that, Little also include a different
perspective towards aspects of the disease. Interestingly, concerns about the disease that
originated from developing country is now resurfacing in the policies of developed countries.

The discussions on what happen to the countries where the ideas of the disease are born
and what happen to the disease itself or aspects of it provide the readers with a fair view of the
disease. It does not blindly advocated every aspect of the disease. The article gives the readers
view of the ideas proposed by Dore and discusses the studies that explore the progress of the
disease. The article indicates that education is very dynamic as well as custom-made according
to the country and society. It does not stay the same or even follow the same course depending
on many factors. However, Dore’s propositions of diploma disease provide a good framework
and references to study and make ongoing improvements towards education.
References

Dore, R. P. (1976). The Diploma Disease: Education, Qualification and Development, London:
George Allen & Unwin.

Dore, R. P. (1980). The Diploma Disease Revisited. IDS Bulletin, 11(2), 55-61.

Little, A. W. (2006). Diploma Disease. In Clark, D. A. (Eds.), The Elgar Companion to

Development Study. (pp. 121-126). UK: Edgar Publishing.

Mohd Afendy Anuar & Zulkifly Osman. (2012). Bukti Baru Inflasi Pendidikan Hasil
Ketakpadanan Pekerjaan. Prodiding PERKEM VIII, 2(2012), 1254-1262.

Noorazuan Hashim & Ruslan Rainis. (2003). Urban Ecosystem Studies in Malaysia: A Study
of Change. Florida USA: Universal-Publishers.

Rahmah Ismail, Ishak Yussof & Lai Wei Sieng. (2011). Employers’ Perceptions on Graduates
in Malaysian Services Sector. International Business Management, 5(3), 183-193.

Raze Norsyahman bin Shahril. (2015). Terlebih Pendidikan dan Inflasi Pendidikan Dalam
Sektor Awam di Putrajaya. International Journal of Business, Economic and Law, 8(3),
40-46.

Zulkifly Osman, Ishak Yussof & Abu Hassan Shaari Mohd Nor. (2009). Inflasi Pendidikan
Mengikut Ketentuan Dalam Pasaran Buruh Malaysia. Prosiding PERKEM IV, 2(2009),
439-454.
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Diploma disease 121

Pelletier, Denis (1996), Économie et Humanisme: De l’Utopie Communautaire au Combat pour le TiersMonde
1941–1966 (Economy and Humanism: from Communitarian Utopia to struggle on Behalf or the Third
World), Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf.

Diploma Disease

The Diploma Disease is the title of Ronald Dore’s controversial book (1976, 1997a) on
education, qualification and development. It provides the theme of two documentary
films broadcast on Japanese and British television networks, the title of a teaching video,
the subject of edited collections (Oxenham, 1984; SLOG, 1987), special issues of devel-
opment and education journals (see IDS, 1980; AIE, 1997, 2000) and reviews and ency-
clopaedia entries (Little, 1992, 1997a).
The diploma disease is a ritualised process of qualification-earning whose conse-
quences were thought to be especially deplorable in developing countries. ‘It is something
that societies, not individuals, get through the aggregation of the (mutually interacting)
unintended consequences of . . . “processes common to all societies” ’ (Dore, 1997b,
p. 24). Those processes derive from modern bureaucratic organisations that ‘rationalise’
recruitment of persons for jobs by the use of educational records, especially in general
education subjects. This renders schooling a ‘positional good’ whose value depends on
how many other people have it. One consequence of this is qualification escalation, a rise
in the qualifications required for a particular job. If the raised qualification enhances pro-
ductivity then this process is economically efficient. If it leads to improved quality of life
and citizenship it is socially rational. Dore questions this assumed efficiency and ratio-
nality, for reasons that have to do with the processes of learning and motivation.
Distinguishing three motives for learning – learning for its own sake, learning to do a job,
and learning to get a job – Dore suggests that in many societies learning to get a job has
come to dominate the learning process. In displacing the other two motives for learning
it undermines the potential of schools to develop human capital. The ‘misallocation of
social resources and the degradation of the teaching-learning process were thus the two
“deplorable consequences” which prompted [Dore] to speak of the diploma disease’
(ibid., p. 27).
The thesis draws strength from two lively theoretical debates contemporary to the 1960s
and 1970s – (1) between human capital and screening theorists about variations in earn-
ings; and (2) between the nurture and nature theorists about variations in human abilities.
Dore’s leanings were towards screening and nature.
While labour economists, sociologists and comparative educators have shown interest
in the general thesis, those in development studies derive added value from its elaboration
of three general propositions linked to the concept of ‘late development’. Dore proposed
that the later development starts (that is, the later the point in world history that a country
starts on a modernisation drive):

1. the more widely education certificates are used for occupational selection; and
2. the faster the rate of qualification inflation; and
3. the more examination-orientated schooling becomes at the expense of genuine edu-
cation (Dore, 1997a, p. 72).
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122 Diploma disease

Evidence for these ‘late development’ propositions was drawn from the experiences
of England, Japan, Sri Lanka and Kenya, placed on a continuum from early to late
development.
Three qualifications to the late development propositions followed. The size and pres-
tige of public sector employment and the presence of a vibrant small-scale private sector
would temper the first. The ability of governments to resist popular pressure for educa-
tional expansion would temper the second; and the strength of pre-modern educational
traditions the third.
Drawing on the experiences of radical reform then current in China, Cuba and
Tanzania, Dore also explored the prospects for stemming some of the processes linking
jobs, qualifications and education, and develops his own modest proposals.
The original book and thesis met with mixed reactions. The plaudits stressed the ele-
gance, wit, vigour and brilliance of the argument. Some critics questioned some of the
basic tenets of the thesis, while others displayed a less than adequate reading and under-
standing of the (quite complex) argument (see Little, 1992, 1997a for summaries of the
critiques and Dore’s 1997b response).
Twenty years after its original publication, researchers have commented on the diag-
nosis and predicted course of the disease in the countries addressed originally by Dore.
Aspects of the thesis in relation to England are explored by Wolf (1997, 2002). The
England of the 1970s was relatively ‘disease free’. Since then qualifications have prolifer-
ated; so too the number of young people sitting them. Wolf attributes this to a rational
cost–benefit analysis by young people and their parents and the simple faith of politicians
in the link between economic prosperity and education rather than to an increasing
bureaucratisation of the workplace. While government planned and created a number of
new vocational qualifications, uptake by young people was modest. These qualifications
were viewed as the ‘lemons’ of the diploma world. Instead, young people opted for uni-
versity courses in unprecedented numbers, transforming the higher education sector and
the value attached to university diplomas in the labour market and increasing the pres-
sure on young people to stay on in school. Despite these pressures, several associated with
the symptoms of the diploma disease, there is little evidence that the quality of school
education has been reduced.
Japan’s case is explored by Amano (1997). The restructuring of the Japanese economy
and society after the Second World War established extremely clear bureaucratic links
between levels of jobs, incomes, labour market entrants and educational qualifications.
Over time and as numbers expanded, Japanese employers began to pay attention not only
to the level of qualification held by recruits but also to the institution or school attended.
Japan became a ‘which institution’ rather than a ‘which level’ credentialling society. This
process was assisted by developments in the educational assessment system itself and the
development of the standard score system that ranked individuals, high schools and uni-
versities. But there are signs that the diploma disease may have run its course for some seg-
ments of the student population. Not all are participating in the examination and increasing
numbers are turning against the traditional academic meritocratic values of school.
The Sri Lankan case is explored by Little (1997b). While confirming much of the ori-
ginal diagnosis for the Sri Lanka of the early 1970s, she identifies two processes that
changed its subsequent course. The first was economic liberalisation introduced in 1978,
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Diploma disease 123

the growth of the private sector and the paradoxical institutionalisation of political cri-
teria for recruitment to government jobs. The second was the increasing competition
between the country’s two major ethnic groups – the majority Sinhalese and minority
Tamils – for economic and political resources, the intensification of a civil war and the
re-emergence of the Sinhala anti-state militancy that had made such an impression on
Dore, some 17 years earlier (Dore, 1997b, p. 24). Since 1978, economic and educational
growth increased, the gap between job seekers and jobs available decreased and political
criteria for resource allocation increased.
Following Dore’s thesis, one might infer that the value attached to educational qualifi-
cations would decline. Evidence suggests the contrary. Two reasons are advanced. First,
the civil war, the politicisation of recruitment to government jobs and the resurgence of
Sinhala militancy served to enhance, rather than diminish, the legitimacy of qualifications
as a ‘just’ allocator of scarce resources, including jobs. Despite earlier problems associ-
ated with examinations and university entry, most ordinary Sinhala and Tamil war-tired
citizens regard examinations as the only legitimate and fair way of allocating scarce
resources in a conflict-ridden society. Second, economic liberalisation served to increase
the supply of courses and qualifications by foreign suppliers and open up many more
opportunities for the youth to travel abroad for further education and for jobs (Hettige,
2000; Little and Evans, 2005). Foreign suppliers of qualifications work alongside domes-
tic suppliers in an ever-expanding market of qualifications and provide opportunities to
labour markets worldwide. Where Dore’s original analysis had focused on the emergence
of national education systems and the use of credentials within national economies, more
recent analyses suggest that the landscape of youth aspirations for education and jobs
extends beyond the shores of Sri Lanka to a greater degree than in the periods about
which Dore wrote. Not all youth can so aspire and there is a growing tendency for aspir-
ations beyond national boundaries and participation in ‘international’ examinations to be
the preserve of the better off (Lowe, 2000).
The case of Kenya – the most recent ‘developer’ in Dore’s continuum of ‘late develop-
ment’ – is addressed by Toyoda (1997) and Somerset (1997). Charting the massive expan-
sion in primary and secondary enrolments in the 1975–92 period and the raising of the
first major selection hurdle from Primary 7 to 8, Toyoda confirms that the demand for
education and qualifications is as high as ever. Somerset describes the attempts made in
Kenya to reform the quality of the Primary 7 and 8 selection exams in order to mitigate
the worst effects of the examination on the process of learning, in particular the rote and
ritualistic learning so abhorred by Dore. Arguing that many poor-quality national exam-
ination systems test ‘passive, inert knowledge’, Somerset (1997, p. 91) suggests that good
examinations test active ideas and require learners ‘to think about what they know, and
to restructure it in some way’, thus supporting, not subverting pedagogy.

Reflections
In a set of ‘reflections’ Dore (1997c) reassesses the original diagnosis in the light of the
experiences of England, Japan, Sri Lanka and Kenya, on those of the countries who, in
the 1970s, had held out some promise of reform, in particular China, Cuba and Tanzania
and of other research that has addressed aspects of the thesis over the past 25 years. ‘How
rudely history erupts in sociologists’ attempts to arrive at generalisations about long-term
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124 Diploma disease

trends!’ he bewails (ibid., p. 189). While the original diagnosis had acknowledged the role
of specific class structures, educational traditions and small-scale private sectors in modi-
fying the three propositions about trends, the thesis did not provide for the impact on
trends of traumatic historical events. Such events include the enormous changes in Japan
as a result of the Second World War (Amano, 1997), the impact of the collapse of the
Soviet Union on the economic and educational system of Cuba (Eckstein, 1997), the
effects of civil war in Sri Lanka (Little, 1997b) and the switch from Maoist socialism to
market socialism in China (Lewin, 1997).
Reflecting on the process of qualification inflation, Dore notes how some governments
have called a halt to qualification spirals, even in the absence of traumatic historical
events, and how employers inflate criteria within the same level of certificate, the grade of
the level and the institution attended by the student. The propensity to do this, Dore sug-
gests, may ‘reflect a society’s predisposition to believe in the human capital theory or
screening theory explanation of how education systems work’ (Dore, 1997c, p. 191).
Fundamental to the diploma disease thesis is the notion that the bureaucratisation of
working life was a long-term and irreversible trend. Writing in the early 1970s, Dore did
not foresee ‘Thatcherism, Reagonomics and the neo-liberal marketist individualist revo-
lution in the Anglo-Saxon world’ (ibid., p. 194), all of which advocated that the public
sector introduce performance-related pay systems and short-term contracts, in marked
contrast to the security of a job for life offered by public and many large private corpo-
ration bureaucracies (especially in Japan). And if bureaucratisation is so important for
the diploma does its reversal mean the end of the disease? Dore’s reflection on Cooksey
and Riedmiller’s (1997) account of recent developments in Tanzania, especially the
decline in primary level enrolments, suggests this might be so. ‘The IMF and the World
Bank’s imposition of Thatcherite anti-public sector policies as a condition for survival
loans, has so cut back on the bureaucratically organised jobs in government and the paras-
tatals that the drive has gone out of the search for qualifications’ (Dore, 1997c, p. 194).
Implicit in the original thesis were twin assumptions about the impact of qualifica-
tion seeking qualifications on learning and working. The first was that the effects of a
qualification-earning educational experience – ritualistic, tedious and suffused with
anxiety and boredom, destructive of curiosity and imagination – would be the same for
all ability groups. The second was that those ‘who have been subjected to a ritualistic
examination-oriented learning as children and adolescents are likely to turn into ritualis-
tic, performance-evaluation workers, incapable of the sort of entrepreneurial initiative-
taking which developing countries need’ (Dore, 1997a, p. xxvii). Dore now suggests that
it is not the brightest who are likely to suffer most from qualification-orientated school-
ing, but ‘those who are bright without being the brightest, those who are within sight of
whatever are socially defined as the desirable prizes in the competition, but by no means
certain of reaching them without a very great deal of anxious effort’ (Dore, 1997c, p. 200).
And the complexity of relationships between learning motivations developed in school
and in the workplace has been amply demonstrated by subsequent studies (SLOG, 1987;
Little and Singh, 1992; Little, 2003).
Notwithstanding the caveats and qualifications to the original thesis it is interesting that
several of Dore’s concerns and issues, raised in the context of developing countries in the
1960s and 1970s, are now surfacing at a policy level in some developed countries. Wolf’s
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Diploma disease 125

(2002) account of young people’s views of vocational qualifications in England and the
fate of vocational qualifications resonates with Foster’s (1963) vocational school fallacy,
identified in the Ghana of the 1950s and influential in Dore’s thinking. Her questioning
of the social rationality underpinning the expansion of higher education in the UK and
elsewhere, resonates with Dore’s descriptions of qualification escalation in developing
counties. And some of the basic questions raised by Dore on the impact of external exam-
inations on student motivations for learning are now attracting high-level policy interest
in the United States and England and systematic reviews of research (for example, see
Kellaghan et al., 1996; Harlen and Deakin Crick, 2003). The reviews underline the
importance of understanding the motivation of learners and teachers in the process of
education and the development of human capital. Harlen and Deakin Crick identify neg-
ative and positive impacts of summative evaluation on learners. Their recommendations
for policy makers include one with clear links to the notion of human capital and lifelong
learning. ‘Not only is there growing recognition of the value of learning to learn and of
the drive and energy to continue learning, but there is empirical evidence that these are
positively related to attainment’ (ibid., p. 203).
The debate about qualifications, examinations, motivation and learning will run for
many more years to come.
ANGELA W. LITTLE

References
Amano, I. (1997), ‘ Education in a more affluent Japan’, Assessment in Education, 4 (1), 51–66.
AIE (1997), special issue ‘The Diploma Disease Twenty years On’, Assessment in Education, 4 (1).
AIE (2000), special issue ‘Globalisation, Qualifications and Livelihoods’, Assessment in Education, 7 (3).
Cooksey, B. and S. Riedmiller (1997), ‘Tanzanian education in the nineties: beyond the diploma disease’,
Assessment in Education, 4 (1), 121–36.
Dore, R.P. (1976), The Diploma Disease: Education, Qualification and Development, London: George Allen &
Unwin.
Dore, R.P. (1997a), The Diploma Disease: Education, Qualification and Development, 2nd edn, London: Institute
of Education, University of London.
Dore, R.P. (1997b), ‘The argument of the diploma disease: a summary’, Assessment in Education, 4 (1), 23–32.
Dore, R.P. (1997c), ‘Reflections on the diploma disease twenty years later’, Assessment in Education, 4 (1),
189–206.
Eckstein, S. (1997), ‘The coming crisis in Cuban education’, Assessment in Education, 4 (1), 107–20.
Foster, P.J. (1963), ‘The vocational school fallacy in development planning’, in M.J. Bowman, and
C.A. Anderson (eds), Education and Economic Development, Chicago: Aldine, pp. 142–66.
Harlen, W. and R. Deakin Crick (2003), ‘Testing and motivation for learning’, Assessment in Education, 10 (2),
169–207.
Hettige, S.T. (2000), ‘Economic liberalisation, qualifications and livelihoods in Sri Lanka’, Assessment in
Education, 7 (3), 325–34.
IDS (1980), special issue ‘Selection for Employment versus Education?’, Institute of Development Studies
Bulletin, University of Sussex, Brighton, 11 (2).
Kellaghan, T., G.F. Madaus, and A. Raczek (1996), The Use of External Examinations to Improve Student
Motivation, Public Service Monograph, Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.
Lewin, K.M. (1997), ‘The sea of items returns to China: backwash, selection and the diploma disease re-visited’,
Assessment in Education, 4 (1), 137–60.
Little, A.W. (1992), ‘The diploma disease and related literature’, Encyclopaedia of Higher Education, Oxford:
Pergamon.
Little, A.W. (1997a), ‘The diploma disease twenty years on: an introduction’, Assessment in Education, 4 (1),
5–22.
Little, A.W. (1997b), ‘The value of examination success in Sri Lanka 1971–1996: the effects of ethnicity, polit-
ical patronage and youth insurgency’, Assessment in Education, 4 (1), 67–86.
Little, A.W. (2003), ‘Motivating learning and the development of human capital’, Compare, 33 (4), 437–452.
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126 Disability and development

Little, A.W. and J. Evans (2005), ‘The growth of foreign qualification suppliers in Sri Lanka: de facto decen-
tralisation?’, Compare, 35 (2), 181–91.
Little, A.W. and J.S. Singh, (1992), ‘Learning and working: elements of the diploma disease thesis in England
and Malaysia’, Comparative Education, 28 (2), 181–200.
Lowe, J. (2000), ‘International examinations; the new credentialism and reproduction of advantage in a global-
ising world’, Assessment in Education, 7 (3), 363–78.
Oxenham, J.C.P. (ed.) (1984), Education versus Qualifications: A Study of Relationships between Education,
Selection for Employment and the Productivity of Labour, George Allen & Unwin: London.
SLOG (1987), ‘Why do students learn? A six country study of students motivations for learning’, Institute of
Development Studies Research Report Rr 17, University of Sussex, Brighton.
Somerset, A. (1997), ‘Treating the diploma disease in Kenya: a modest counter proposal’, Assessment in
Education, 4 (1), 91–106.
Toyoda, T. (1997), ‘Kenya 1975–1995: an introductory note on educational expansion’, Assessment in Education,
4 (1), 87–90.
Wolf, A. (1997), ‘Growth stocks and lemons: diplomas in the English market-place 1976–1996’, Assessment in
Education, 4 (1), 33–50.
Wolf, A. (2002), Does Education Matter? Myths about Education and Economic Growth, London: Penguin.

Disability and Development

Disability is any long-term impairment, which leads to social and economic disadvan-
tages and to the denial of rights. Impairment is defined as any loss or ‘abnormality’ of
psychological, physiological or anatomical structure or function. The development of the
concept of the ‘handicap’ has emphasised environmental shortcomings, which prevent
disabled people from participating in social life and working in the economy on a par with
others (Yeo, 2001).
Disability is a serious development problem worldwide, and one for which data are
unusually defective. Global estimates are built from scant and irregular surveys with
inconsistent classifications, and from case material. Over 600 million people, or approxi-
mately 10 per cent of the world’s population, are thought to live with a disability – at least
two-thirds of them in developing countries (DFID, 2000). The proportion of the popu-
lation deprived by disabilities increases with levels of economic development. With devel-
opment, disability undergoes its own epidemiological transition, involving a decline in
disabilities attributable to malnutrition/infectious disease and increases in both life
expectation and survival rates from disabling accidents and degenerative disease (Harriss-
White, 1996). The prevalence of moderate to severe disability worldwide increases from
2 per cent in infancy to 55 per cent in people over 80 (Yeo and Moore, 2003).
Although disability cuts across class, region, the rural–urban divide, the income distri-
bution, and social segmentation by gender, ethnicity and religion, disability and poverty
are strongly associated. As many as 50 per cent of disabilities are preventable and linked
to poverty. Disabled people are estimated to account for 20 per cent of the world’s poorest
people – and for this reason alone disability reduction ought to be an essential element of
development – whether conceived of as poverty reduction or capability expansion (ibid.).
Yet disability is strikingly absent from utilitarian, welfare and Rawlsian theories of justice
and well-being, and, as Sen pointed out in late 2004, both capability expansion and
poverty reduction require attention to the earnings gaps of disabled people and the large
and hidden ‘conversion gap’ made up by the costs of achieving parity with non-disabled
people (Sen, 2004).