Week 4: The Unpaid Internship Industrial Complex

Credential inflation as involution — more qualifications required for the same job, with no corresponding rise in what the job pays or does

15 March 2027

Outline#

• the credential arms race: degrees, unpaid internships, and certificates functioning as positional goods rather than skill signals
• why no single employer can unilaterally de-escalate requirements without losing competitive positioning against other employers
• LinkedIn as an accelerant: visible competitive signalling raises the baseline expectation for every observer
• continued from week 2: how “entry level” quietly became a credentialing tier rather than a starting point