4 ms·

I suppose this explains why some companies simply use universities to do their filtering for them. It's been a while since I took the GRE and LSAT, which I tut

by geebee 10y ago

I suppose this explains why some companies simply use universities to do their filtering for them. It's been a while since I took the GRE and LSAT, which I tutored for a while, but they have questions much like the ones listed here. Some of these tests take place on a computer now, others are still large proctored exams. I'm pretty sure I was fingerprinted before taking them. I thought that it was potentially illegal to use exams like this to hire, which is why it's convenient to use universities. I'm not so cynical as to believe that universities don't impart valuable knowledge and critical thinking to some of their student. However, the quality of education doesn't vary nearly as much as people claim between a very very elite university and a strong state school. The real value is largely in the filter, high standardized testing scores, along with (at elite privates) a number of students admitted because they come from powerful and wealthy families. Supposedly research shows that people who post these kinds of numbers but attend less prestigious universities do about as well as the people who post these numbers and attend a prestigious university (I'm figuring this is because they almost always attend a reasonably good university, and the quality of teaching doesn't really drop off much). Anyway, I think that companies can't ask for SAT scores, but maybe they can just administer their own SAT? Having an outside company do this is probably valuable from a liability point of view. My guess is that some kind of end-run is going on here...

dragonwriter 10y ago
> I thought that it was potentially illegal to use exams like this to hire, which is why it's convenient to use universities. Any place where it would be illegal to use this kind of question (at least, for anti-discrimination reasons) it would be illegal, on the same basis, to use university background (or anything else) that acted as a proxy for the same type of questions.
- geebee 10y ago
  Interesting bit about the law, there... the thing is, they can essentially use universities as a proxy while maintaining plausible deniability, right? I don't think it even needs to be quite that insidious, it can have that effect even if the employers aren't consciously aware that this is what they're doing.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Interesting bit about the law, there... the thing is, they can essentially use universities as a proxy while maintaining plausible deniability, right? Not really plausible deniability, but there is popular mythology about general intelligence tests being illegal and not university background, while in either case the rule is that if it disadvantages a protected class, it must be demonstrably a valid predictive measure of job performance to be legal; because of the popular mythology, people are probably more like to challenge use of tests than use of university admissions, so using tests probably has higher expected legal costs even when you are right, and greater chance of getting sanctioned when you are wrong, because if people don't bother to challenge it in the first place, there is no risk of sanctions. OTOH, for the same reason, people actually using tests are more likely to actually be aware of and guided by the legal rules, so there are probably more cases where university background is being used in an illegal way than is the case for general intelligence tests.

by geebee 10y ago

dragonwriter 10y ago

> I thought that it was potentially illegal to use exams like this to hire, which is why it's convenient to use universities. Any place where it would be illegal to use this kind of question (at least, for anti-discrimination reasons) it would be illegal, on the same basis, to use university background (or anything else) that acted as a proxy for the same type of questions.

geebee 10y ago
Interesting bit about the law, there... the thing is, they can essentially use universities as a proxy while maintaining plausible deniability, right? I don't think it even needs to be quite that insidious, it can have that effect even if the employers aren't consciously aware that this is what they're doing.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Interesting bit about the law, there... the thing is, they can essentially use universities as a proxy while maintaining plausible deniability, right? Not really plausible deniability, but there is popular mythology about general intelligence tests being illegal and not university background, while in either case the rule is that if it disadvantages a protected class, it must be demonstrably a valid predictive measure of job performance to be legal; because of the popular mythology, people are probably more like to challenge use of tests than use of university admissions, so using tests probably has higher expected legal costs even when you are right, and greater chance of getting sanctioned when you are wrong, because if people don't bother to challenge it in the first place, there is no risk of sanctions. OTOH, for the same reason, people actually using tests are more likely to actually be aware of and guided by the legal rules, so there are probably more cases where university background is being used in an illegal way than is the case for general intelligence tests.