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Why Do Employers Require College Degrees That Aren't Necessary? (thestreet.com)
Slashdot reader pefisher writes:
A lot of us on Slashdot have noticed that potential employers advertise for things they don't need. To the point that sometimes they even ask for things that don't exist. Like asking for ten years of experience in a technology that has only just been introduced. It's frustrating because it makes you wonder "what's this employers real game?"
Do they just want to say they advertised for the position, or are they really so immensely stupid, so disconnected from their own needs, that they think they are actually asking for something they can have...? Here is a Harvard Study that addresses one particular angle of this. It doesn't answer any questions, but it does prove that you aren't crazy. And it quantifies the craziness.
The study's author calls it "degree inflation," and after studying 26 million job postings concluded that employers are now less willing to actually train new people on the job, possibly to save money. "Many companies have fallen into a lazy way of thinking about this," the study's author tells The Street, saying companies are "[looking for] somebody who is just job-ready to just show up." The irony is that college graduates will ultimately be paid a higher salary -- even though for many jobs, the study found that a college degree yields zero improvement in actual performance.
The Street reports that "In a market where companies increasingly rely on computerized systems to cull out early-round applicants, that has led firms to often consider a bachelor's degree indicative of someone who can socialize, run a meeting and generally work well with others." One company tells them that "we removed the requirement to have a computer science degree, and we removed the requirement to have experience in development computer programming. And when we removed those things we found that the pool of potential really good team members drastically expanded."
Do they just want to say they advertised for the position, or are they really so immensely stupid, so disconnected from their own needs, that they think they are actually asking for something they can have...? Here is a Harvard Study that addresses one particular angle of this. It doesn't answer any questions, but it does prove that you aren't crazy. And it quantifies the craziness.
The study's author calls it "degree inflation," and after studying 26 million job postings concluded that employers are now less willing to actually train new people on the job, possibly to save money. "Many companies have fallen into a lazy way of thinking about this," the study's author tells The Street, saying companies are "[looking for] somebody who is just job-ready to just show up." The irony is that college graduates will ultimately be paid a higher salary -- even though for many jobs, the study found that a college degree yields zero improvement in actual performance.
The Street reports that "In a market where companies increasingly rely on computerized systems to cull out early-round applicants, that has led firms to often consider a bachelor's degree indicative of someone who can socialize, run a meeting and generally work well with others." One company tells them that "we removed the requirement to have a computer science degree, and we removed the requirement to have experience in development computer programming. And when we removed those things we found that the pool of potential really good team members drastically expanded."
One theory I've heard (I don't know if it's true or not) is that employers require degrees to avoid sexual discrimination lawsuits.
For example, let's say a company has 20% of its employees male, the rest female. They are open to a discrimination lawsuit prima facie. But if they only hire people with a X degree, they can say, "only 19% of people with degree X are male, we are doing better than average!"
As more people with degree X arrive on the scene, the requirement becomes harder and harder to avoid.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
As soon as you stop looking at only the gorgeous ones, you'll enjoy many amazing sex encounters with the ones you previously ignored.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I didn't RTFA, but I'm pretty sure this has been discussed at least nine million times in the last 20 years. The main reasons:
1. Demonstrated ability to stick with something for a while.
2. The average college grad is usually more literate than the average high school grad. Better chance that you'll get an employee that can do basic math, speak properly to customers, etc.
3. Employers will get many applicants for any given job, so this will at least filter out SOME people. And of those that apply for the job, #1 above applies.
Yes, it's lazy, but as long as you have more applicants than open positions, why not? (From the employer's point of view.)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
One reason is to filter out some of the applicants, because you have too many. Might as well filter out the ones that don't have a degree first; they might know less than the other ones, and they definitely have demonstrated less willingness to jump through hoops.
Another potential reason is to disqualify applicants because you want to hire a H1B.
Another reason is that the HR employees want to protect the value of their bullshit degrees.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Although of course, YMMV.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Because it filters out idiots.
Yes, there are plenty of smart people with no degree and plenty of idiots with degrees, but the mix is more in their favor with a degree, though it's getting to be less of an advantage now that most people have one.
Because it costs them time & money to interview people, simple filters that make their job easier are widely used, even if there's some opportunity cost of overlooking people who are good but who don't pass the filters.
They make up for that anyhow by using employee recommendations. If someone is willing to vouch for a person, they can often skip some of the requirements as long as they have some evidence of being good at the job.
A 1971 supreme court case named Griggs vs Duke Power found that if an employer engaged in their own employee or applicant skills testing, and that testing was found to result in racial discrimination, then the empoloyer was guilty of racial discrimination even though that was not their intent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
Griggs is the basis of credentials inflation in the US.
As a result of Griggs, most companies began halting their own applicant testing entirely, and simply began to require more and more education--assuming that this would still weed out the ineffective applicants.
People with degrees start life later, and often times with a lot of debt. They are organized in the most traditional sense, and will probably be buying a home a few years after graduation. This debt load makes mobility hard, and the chances that the person is living paycheck-to-paycheck are a lot higher. However, unlike someone with less earning power living paycheck-to-paycheck, the person with the degree will have a higher chance of having more to lose. You want the employee that needs you, not the one that will just wander off and say fuck-all when they're pissed at you the employer; they don't have anything, much less anything to lose, so why put up with you? The college grad has a credit score, mortgage, car, and family to protect.
Sig: I stole this sig.
Wish I had some mod points. I really hate that college degrees in the US are often viewed solely some kind of career prep/vocational training. Higher education does have to be geared towards some specific job; it can be an end in itself, and it has its own intrinsic value.
If you have two applications with no work experience, then I would go with the one with a degree as a baseline filter. But if both have several years of experience then I don't think it matters as much, and if you reject the non-degree candidate in the prescreening phase you might be missing out on a great programmer with a nontraditional background (and in tech not having a formal degree isn't all that uncommon anyways, compared to most STEM fields)
Can we just stick with "HR needs to be fixed"? Working with small local companies up to multinationals over 30+ years I have remained friends with essentially all the useful people that I ever met in HR! That is sadly rather few.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
4 year project? I need people to finish their stuff during a two week sprint!
love is just extroverted narcissism
tech schools are better then college for ready to work skills. To bad they got roped in to the college system and got an bad rap.
"Having a degree" proves nothing in specific, but statistically speaking, it may (vaguely) indicate a few things in general. You'd sure as heck better not depend on those vague indications, though.
What requiring a degree (and various other tickmarks unrelated to actual skill and capacity) does, though, is frees businesses to (a) pretend they can't find viable candidates capable of the work, and (b) consequent to a, allows them fish in pools of skill that are much less expensive without alerting the stockholders.
And of course, all of this facilitates and amplifies various other types of discrimination: age, health, arrest and conviction records, social media participation, political leanings, gender, religious outlook, etc.
The current tech job market is truly a hellhole. I'm really glad I no longer outright depend on it, and I feel intensely sympathetic with those skilled and capable candidates who are trying to crack the corporate wall.
The good news, I expect, will be that none of this will mean bupkis within a few decades, because I highly doubt there will be any jobs at all of this type remaining. Pervasive automation looks to be coming, and if/when it does, it's going to eat the need to be employed outright.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
While these are good skills the degree shouldn’t be a baseline for employment. Because too many people are wasting 4 years of their lives in education just so they can get a job. Many have these skills beforehand but knowing they need to work the system they get the degree to get the job.
College isn’t designed to be a job training center. They want to focus on learning and education.
A lot of good people are wasting time in college just for the degree and not for the enlightenment of learning.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This would make a lot of sense in an era of declining educational standards at schools. It used to be that getting good grades at secondary school meant that you had put in a decent amount of work and commitment. However, now that it is no longer politically correct to fail school kids the qualification has become enormously devalued and it is no wonder that employees no longer rely on it. In fact, even universities are now beginning to question whether using high school marks to determine which admit students is reliable.
Because too many people are wasting 4 years of their lives in education just so they can get a job.
The problem is that there is a negative feedback loop. Too many people go to college and get worthless degrees, so the job market is flooded with psychology grads. Therefore there is no downside to employers demanding degrees since these grads are plentiful and willing to accept the same low wages as a HS grad ... which puts pressure on the HS grad to go to college and get a degree in something.
I don't know what the solution is. One reasonable proposal is to require taxpayer subsidized student loans to be combined with an internship or apprenticeship to match up students with employers and ensure they are learning something useful.
More like demonstrated ability to be born into money.
Often enough if you apply they will still accept you without the mentioned degree as long as you show competency in said field. Bring a portfolio and show your previous professional works as well as personal works.
Twinstiq, game news
Just no. Part of the solution is for the government to stop paying any part of any degree program that doesn't have high in field employment after graduation. That means kick those programs off public school campuses.
A generation of 'poetry majors' publicly starving in the streets will also help kids focus on getting value for their education dollars, borrowed or not.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Universities are not supposed to be vocational training facilities. That's one of the reasons why it's inappropriate to use a degree as a job requirement. You are part of the problem.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
I don't know what the solution is. One reasonable proposal is to require taxpayer subsidized student loans to be combined with an internship or apprenticeship to match up students with employers and ensure they are learning something useful.
Here's another proposal. Let's have the students either have to pay for their own educations, like in working through college, or have to apply for a loan through a private bank. If you pay for your own education up front then no one cares if you study transgender dance theory because that's your money. If someone has to go to a bank and they see an application for a loan to major in transgender dance theory then chances are the bank will refuse the loan. If someone shows up with an even slightly higher than average SAT or ACT score, good grades in high school, and wants to go to college to be a registered nurse then that person is quite likely to get a loan.
Government subsidy just artificially raised the prices and reduces choices. I remember this with the switch to digital television. The government said they'd pay UP TO $50 for a device that received digital TV and had a few other requirements. Guess what happened? Every device was priced at exactly $50. I wanted a device that did something the government would not subsidize so I had little for choices. I could choose the crippled government subsidized solution or a very expensive feature filled device for many times more money. There wasn't a $100 middle of the road digital TV converter device, only the $50 crippled devices or $300 whiz bang devices.
Why is it that an engineering degree costs as much as a degree in transgender dance theory? Because the student doesn't pay for it, the government does. If the student had to pay for it then perhaps the student might give more thought in the value of the degree. If a private bank had to put a risk factor on each degree on every student loan they they'd be handing out loans for things like engineering, nursing, law, business, and so forth but not transgender dance theory. They'd also set standards on who got the loan. The government really only cares if a person has been accepted to a college, not if the degree has any value or the school is any good. Mostly they do this just so they know who gets the check and for how much.
A private bank would also put a market based check on the amount of the loan. They might give a $15,000 loan for studying dance. For someone that wants to be a surgeon, and they have demonstrated ability, the bank is quite likely to give a $250,000 loan. Oh, and the dance school loan would probably have a 15% interest rate and the medical school loan a 5% interest rate.
Oh, and the bank might also get in the business of finding people work if it meant getting paid back on the loan. What incentive does the government have in finding people work? I mean they don't want people destitute but really all they want is people that won't cause trouble. The government doesn't much care if they get you a job, put you in prison, or get you on welfare. It's not their money so some government bureaucrat will "find you a job" just so they can be rid of you and move on. They won't care if you like the job, if it matches your degree, or even if the job pays better than minimum wage. It's not their money.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
College degrees have been the new high school for quite some time. I would say 20 years now. It's really sad.
1. Demonstrated ability to stick with something for a while.
So require someone to waste 4 years of their life while not earning money and accruing debt just to prove they can stick with something. Nice.
I'd bet that a lot of people would be willing to accept a much lower starting salary if they didn't have to finance a student loan.
2. The average college grad is usually more literate than the average high school grad. Better chance that you'll get an employee that can do basic math, speak properly to customers, etc.
That's a failure in the high school system if true. But the quote in the summary of the article says "even though for many jobs, the study found that a college degree yields zero improvement in actual performance"
3. Employers will get many applicants for any given job, so this will at least filter out SOME people. And of those that apply for the job, #1 above applies.
Yes, it's lazy, but as long as you have more applicants than open positions, why not? (From the employer's point of view.)
Why not? Because it's a broken filter. The degree doesn't tell you that they're going to be good at their job, only that they're good at memorizing and passing tests. That and you're filtering out good candidates that don't have a degree.
It's way easier to find the right person when you haven't arbitrarily tossed a good chunk of the candidates away.
Translation, there is no STEM shortage. We have so many we can afford to round file people without reading past the top of page 1.
4) You get people that think getting into a ton of debt just to prove how smart they are sounds off to them.
You sound like you have a massive chip on your shoulder. Going into massive debt so you can spent the next 40-50 years employed rather than unemployed is almost certainly the better choice. Also:
1) You can pay them less. A lot LESS.
Yep, going into debt to massively increase lifetime earnings is not a terrible plan.
3) You get people that have experience working long, hard hours rather than staying out late and drinking, then doing a half -assed job to finish off projects at the last minute.
Yeah all college students suck! Boo!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If in the Griggs vs Duke Power 1971 case, that Duke Power is prohibited from requiring high school diploma which was disproportionally disadvantageous for blacks, then how can businesses now defend their practice of requiring college degrees which is even more arbitrary and harder to justify for business purpose? It's widely known that college degree is a white privilege much more than high school diploma. I think businesses are just in an ignorant bliss ripe for a lawsuit to slap them back into sense.
I once had a signature.
Your view is really the same view as the Enlightenment. It's only been around hundreds of years and most of Western civilization was founded on it, but that doesn't stop conservatives from rejecting the Enlightenment and wishing for the golden age of artisans, serfs, nobles, etc.: (might be behind a pay wall)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
And this is how science dies in America.
I have a degree and I have worked in IT for many years, both as a developer and someone that hires developers. As near as I can tell, a degree doesn't make one bit of difference. I have worked with smart people that had degrees and smart people that didn't. I have worked with people with advanced degrees that were as dumb as the day is long.
I think it is a mistake to assume that people that did not attend college or finish college are less intelligent than people who did. One of the big problems is identifying talent. The gatekeepers - HR - are largely unskilled in my experience and often unable to identify talent. Simply excluding people without degrees dumbs it down. It makes their job easier. Relying on software that scans resumes for key words just compounds the problem. This leads to people gaming the system and tailoring resumes to trick the software into thinking they are the better candidate. People that can't or won't play the game are left on the sidelines.
Higher education, particularly in some of the more prestigious schools, is little more than a giant country club. Some people are able to milk these sorts of relationships for their entire career. As the old saying goes, it's not what you know it's who you know. This holds true mainly in executive positions and less so in individual contributor positions. But there is a discrimination of sorts and a stigma attached to those without degrees.
Good god this. Years back I was the "IT Manager" for a very small organization. I was alone but shortly added one person. The process of hiring someone for a position a bit higher than help desk was painful. Bad candidate after bad candidate walked through my door.
I finally hired a woman who appeared to be a self taught, motivated individual who did not have a degree. She was fantastic. Personable, hard working, picked up on things quickly. She was a god send. Until I told her to send out an Email to the organization informing them she would be rebooting a server that night. It was like "I am booting server SW twonight becuz of mainence. Shuld be o.k. tomorow. LoL!"
From then on, any communications going out to the company were to come through me, but I would have her write them and send them to me for editing. Finally, I stopped having her attempt writing up a draft and wrote them myself. I tried to help her with her English skills, but she just never got anywhere near acceptable for a professional communication. Note that English was her native and only language.
That said, I'd hire her again. When she asks me career advice, I tell her to really concentrate on her language skills. I think being unable to communicate clearly and effectively through a variety of means gives you a ceiling in IT and most other positions.
I hire people all the time, and I promise you everyone at my company just wants to hire someone competent who can get shit done, and we have no interest whatsoever in indentured servants. We require a degree.
Every few months someone says, "Maybe we shouldn't require a degree." And then everyone else shrugs. Nobody actually cares if anyone has a degree if they write decent code, but nobody is sure it's a good idea to not require a degree, so nothing changes.
People at the bottom of the totem pole always seem to think upper management has a scheme or a grand plan. We don't. We just have very limited time and a lot of inertia.
Private colleges use private money.
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
I don't care what they teach, so long as they aren't using any of my money.
They are using your money.
When a student from ITT or DeVry drops out and and defaults on his government guaranteed student loan, who do you think pays the lender?
We actually have a blacklist of degrees - we found that not all degree programs are the same. Trade school degrees were found to be generally inadequate - employee under performance was generally noted over the years we've had them.
Then there were the degrees that produced useless garbage - it was a masters in IT program for non-IT students. The students there all interviewed so terribly we had to basically tell HR to not even consider it. I don't know what the program did, but it was not a good fit - none of those people could do a simple programming test. We kept an open mind, but it was clear by the third or fourth candidate that none of them were close to what we were looking for.
We had a degree requirement in the hopes of doing a filter for competency, but it ended up showing up how incompetent (or unsuited) entire degree programs were.
Of course, the best hires have always been the employee referrals, and for those, all we require is a display of competence. If you don't have a degree, but can show you know your stuff (and conduct yourself appropriately with the team), we'd hire you.
If you can string lines of code together, solve problems, have decent personal hygiene and have good communications skills, that's all we want.