sheepskin effect
sheepskin effect noun: the theory that people who have completed an academic degree earn more income, not because of the knowledge they gained during their education, but rather because their degree indicates the possession of mental abilities and personality traits that employers are seeking.
Noun
sheepskin effect
- The theory that people who have completed an academic degree earn more income, not because of the knowledge they gained during their education, but rather because their degree indicates the possession of mental abilities and personality traits that employers are seeking.
- The sheepskin effect represents a proxy measure, or the quest for a proxy measure, to detect such things as self-discipline, learning ability, aptitude for passing tests, ability to collaborate in peer groups, and so on, as well as, perhaps, willingness to conform.
Origin of sheepskin effect
Academic degrees were traditionally presented on sheepskin parchment.
Questions about sheepskin effect
- What does sheepskin effect mean?
- Sheepskin effect means the theory that people who have completed an academic degree earn more income, not because of the knowledge they gained during their education, but rather because their degree indicates the possession of mental abilities and personality traits that employers are seeking.
- What part of speech is sheepskin effect?
- Sheepskin effect is a noun.
Words near sheepskin effect in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sheepskin effect (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “sheepskin effect.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sheepskin_effect. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.