I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'd embrace and extend your remarks with two other illegal or semi-illegal reasons: One is employees who are deeply in debt c

I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'd embrace and extend your remarks with two other illegal or semi-illegal reasons: One is employees who are deeply in debt can be more easily abused than, for example, wealthy skilled tradesmen. You can do all kinds of things to woman with a student loan debt larger than a mortgage and she'll have to put up with it, whereas a journeyman electrician, in addition to being paid more, would simply move to a competing jobsite the next day. The other reason is colleges highly promote diversity in freshmen accepted class statistics but always cover up graduating diploma holder statistics. You can kind of legally/illegally guarantee you hire a white woman or certainly tilt the odds against PoC, by demanding the office receptionist hold a bachelors degree in something "to maintain office culture because everyone else in the office went to college and we wouldn't want her to feel left out". Presumably those type of places where PoC need not apply, will soon require their janitors to have a four year degree in some sort of liberal art...