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There's legal restrictions on other forms of competing for jobs, which creates a vacuum that higher education fills. Consider IQ. It's very relevant for job pe
by ThrustVectoring 11y ago
There's legal restrictions on other forms of competing for jobs, which creates a vacuum that higher education fills.
Consider IQ. It's very relevant for job performance, particularly entry-level. Companies will generally get sued if they try to directly measure and test IQ of job applicants.
On the other hand, companies are generally allowed to look at which university you went to. Those universities make admissions decisions, in part, by looking at your SAT score. That SAT score is highly correlated with general intelligence.
So, as a hiring manager, you have a choice between, say, a Stanford graduate and someone who went to an average state school. You can guess the relative IQ of the applicants, and should have a preference over them.
The funny thing is that this hiring preference is completely independent of anything that Stanford does, outside of its admissions department. It could literally do nothing but put the kind of people who get accepted into Stanford into a room together, and you'd still want to preferentially hire them.
- morgante 11y agoThat's why the trick is to get into Stanford and drop out your first semester. You get the signaling for free. :)
- idanoeman 11y agoIIRC the company can prove ahead of time that IQ is related to job performance, and then they are allowed to use IQ as a way to select candidates.
- ThrustVectoring 11y agoThat depends on what you mean by "allowed". "Will beat a discrimination lawsuit" is a different standard than "will get sued for discrimination".
- sago 11y agoThis makes no sense. Companies routinely use SAT scores in hiring. And even if they didn't, a school is under the same anti-discrimination laws (ADA, less relevant ADEA). > Companies will generally get sued Presumably you can back this up with cases. The USSC ruling in Griggs vs Duke Power [1] is pretty clear. IQ isn't used because it is a dubious measure, not 'very relevant' for anything. Actually useful metrics can be and are used. Your broader point is correct: colleges are, of course, forms of signalling. But IQ is a undifferentiated example. 'Top' schools mostly screen on the basis of wealth and social class. But my point is not about 'top' schools specifically, 99% of graduates are not at Stanford, despite what the valley tries to imply. [1] http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/401/424.html http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/401/424.html