Since this topic comes up every few months, there is one major reason why college degrees are often prerequisites for job applications. Pasting the entirety of

Since this topic comes up every few months, there is one major reason why college degrees are often prerequisites for job applications. Pasting the entirety of patio11’s old comment below. > _Are companies really legally disallowed from using IQ tests in the USA?_ Griggs v. Duke Power Company, 1971. US Supreme Court found that a particular use of IQ tests in hiring practices caused a disproportionate impact on African American employees. "Disproportionate impact" can make a facially neutral policy illegal under various US civil rights laws. This is not a blanket ban on IQ testing in employment, but corporations being risk-averse, most of them don't really do it much any more. (This is a very happy outcome for universities, since it gives them a virtual monopoly on discriminating on the basis of intelligence. Since that is really useful to do, all a university has to do is maintain its reputation as being a mostly reliable discriminator, and the actual contents of what it teaches are virtually irrelevant.) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2414062#2414152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2414062#2414152