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Old guy trying to put things together ahead: I think that this mentality may have started as a result of the Griggs vs Duke Power Co case from 1970. Griggs was

Old guy trying to put things together ahead: I think that this mentality may have started as a result of the Griggs vs Duke Power Co case from 1970. Griggs was a black man who was turned down a promotion because he failed a company aptitude test, which was later determined to be racially biased against him . . . something to that effect. Companies were hesitant to continue using such tests, so they started requiring college degrees instead. Higher demand for higher education led to higher costs.

chadlavi 7y ago
... requiring college degrees, of course, being a nice way to wash your hands of any controversy while still effectively enjoying the same biased applicant filtering
- wu_tang_chris 7y ago
  ikr? thanks god there was a workaround
alfromspace 7y ago
Important to note it was only determined to be biased on the basis of disparate impact, which I think is a baloney concept. In other words, if one group of people doesn't do as well on something as another group on average, the thing can be considered a violation of the 14th amendment. The NY City fire department recently had to shell out millions to people who weren't hired because of a similar ruling. No discrimination found other than that black people didn't do as well on a test as white people.
- pault 7y ago
  I think the problem is that there's no way to tell if it's just an unintended correlation or if the test was chosen intentionally because it favors the racial majority. In that case, the only way to prevent the latter is to ban all of them.
- Infinitesimus 7y ago
  > which I think is a baloney concept Understandable but we cannot ignore how history plays into these decisions you know? > No discrimination found other than that black people didn't do as well on a test as white people. I don't know the details of this case but there are a lot of systemic effects if the history of racism in the US that have lingering effects in society today. Consider how practices like redlining significantly affected finance and education access. Jail sentence time disparity and a lot of other often invisible ripples of what happened in the early years of this country. It's very hard to know what causes some of these disparities and sometimes a society tries to deal with it by using equal/similar outcomes as an admittedly flawed proxy for equal treatment while we try to address the underlying factors ( better schools, representation, access, etc.)
spamizbad 7y ago
It's a bit more complicated than that. Duke Power Co had an explicit policy restricting its black employees to "labor" positions. It changed its requirements exactly 1 day after the 1964 Civil Rights Act took effect, and added a mechanical proficiency and Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test to its requirements. The Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test itself isn't a terrible good measure of fluid or crystal intelligence, but it does a good job of measuring how much you remembered from high school... although some of the questions are word problem versions of "How many tablespoons in 2.5 cups" which IMO is just rote crap.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  > "How many tablespoons in 2.5 cups" which IMO is just rote crap. I'd fail that one today. My high school never taught such things, and I never learned to cook.
  - Aeolun 7y ago
    Hopefully because your high school taught you to measure in liters and milliliters?
    - WalterBright 7y ago
      I learned that from a chemistry set I got when I was 10. My high school didn't teach metric, nor really much of anything that I recall.
    - ken 7y ago
      Yes, we were taught SI in middle school (and I think even a little in elementary school) -- for a country which would be all SI by the time we graduated. So that was basically the worst of all possible outcomes.
      - WalterBright 7y ago
        > So that was basically the worst of all possible outcomes. Come on. It's not difficult to learn either system. Takes about 10 minutes.
SamReidHughes 7y ago
That case actually covered disparate impact of high school degrees as well, and the trend towards requiring college degrees is also exhibited outside the USA.

chadlavi 7y ago

... requiring college degrees, of course, being a nice way to wash your hands of any controversy while still effectively enjoying the same biased applicant filtering

wu_tang_chris 7y ago
ikr? thanks god there was a workaround

alfromspace 7y ago

Important to note it was only determined to be biased on the basis of disparate impact, which I think is a baloney concept. In other words, if one group of people doesn't do as well on something as another group on average, the thing can be considered a violation of the 14th amendment. The NY City fire department recently had to shell out millions to people who weren't hired because of a similar ruling. No discrimination found other than that black people didn't do as well on a test as white people.

pault 7y ago
I think the problem is that there's no way to tell if it's just an unintended correlation or if the test was chosen intentionally because it favors the racial majority. In that case, the only way to prevent the latter is to ban all of them.
Infinitesimus 7y ago
> which I think is a baloney concept Understandable but we cannot ignore how history plays into these decisions you know? > No discrimination found other than that black people didn't do as well on a test as white people. I don't know the details of this case but there are a lot of systemic effects if the history of racism in the US that have lingering effects in society today. Consider how practices like redlining significantly affected finance and education access. Jail sentence time disparity and a lot of other often invisible ripples of what happened in the early years of this country. It's very hard to know what causes some of these disparities and sometimes a society tries to deal with it by using equal/similar outcomes as an admittedly flawed proxy for equal treatment while we try to address the underlying factors ( better schools, representation, access, etc.)

spamizbad 7y ago

It's a bit more complicated than that. Duke Power Co had an explicit policy restricting its black employees to "labor" positions. It changed its requirements exactly 1 day after the 1964 Civil Rights Act took effect, and added a mechanical proficiency and Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test to its requirements. The Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test itself isn't a terrible good measure of fluid or crystal intelligence, but it does a good job of measuring how much you remembered from high school... although some of the questions are word problem versions of "How many tablespoons in 2.5 cups" which IMO is just rote crap.

WalterBright 7y ago
> "How many tablespoons in 2.5 cups" which IMO is just rote crap. I'd fail that one today. My high school never taught such things, and I never learned to cook.
- Aeolun 7y ago
  Hopefully because your high school taught you to measure in liters and milliliters?
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    I learned that from a chemistry set I got when I was 10. My high school didn't teach metric, nor really much of anything that I recall.
  - ken 7y ago
    Yes, we were taught SI in middle school (and I think even a little in elementary school) -- for a country which would be all SI by the time we graduated. So that was basically the worst of all possible outcomes.
    - WalterBright 7y ago
      > So that was basically the worst of all possible outcomes. Come on. It's not difficult to learn either system. Takes about 10 minutes.

SamReidHughes 7y ago

That case actually covered disparate impact of high school degrees as well, and the trend towards requiring college degrees is also exhibited outside the USA.