To be fair, lawmakers put them in that position as it has been effectively illegal to filter by anything else. If you have 1,000 people lined up down the street

To be fair, lawmakers put them in that position as it has been effectively illegal to filter by anything else. If you have 1,000 people lined up down the street vying for your open position, you have to apply some kind of filter to whittle them down to manageable numbers for deeper consideration. Us being increasingly more accepting of diversity hiring has helped somewhat. Now employers can say "To everyone not a gay black woman, thanks for applying, but no thanks." without much legal scrutiny, but that has only come on somewhat recently. 30 years ago when we were at peak "degree required" that would have been as unacceptable as saying the same about straight white men. Employers have flirted with other filtering mechanisms, like credit score, but when that was gaining traction there was immediately calls to make that illegal[1] too. A degree is the only filter that has been consistently upheld and accepted. Nonsensically, but that's the power of marketing, I suppose. [1] https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/employer-credit-checks-may-soon-be-illegal-12806755 https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/employer-credit-c...