paper ceiling
paper ceiling · paper ceilings
An informal barrier to promotion or advancement, in employment and elsewhere, for…An informal (and often unacknowledged) barrier to promotion or advancement, in employment and elsewhere, for people who do not have a university or college degree.
Meaning
1 sensesAn informal (and often unacknowledged) barrier to promotion or advancement, in employment and elsewhere, for people who do not have a university or college degree.
Origin
paper (a piece of paper being the diploma representing a university or college degree) + cpaper (a piece of paper being the diploma representing a university or college degree) + ceiling (suggesting a barrier to upward advancement); modeled on glass ceiling, the first of such figurative ceiling terms.
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Forms
plural: paper ceilings| Singular | paper ceiling |
|---|---|
| Plural | paper ceilings |
regular