I get in trouble with HN by suggesting that general intelligence is both real and important in life outcome, but I really can't help point out how, when we require a four-year degree for an HR director candidate, we're not really filtering for candidates with a particular body of knowledge, but filtering for candidates with the intellectual capacity to acquire one.

Any college replacement scheme is going to have to perform the same kind of filtering if it's going to be useful, and anything that performs this kind of filtering will be subject to exactly the same controversies the college system is subject to today. This outcome is because disparities in intelligence matter, and as long as we these differences exist and we need jobs with a certain cognitive threshold, we'll need something like college to indicate that certain candidates possess the needed traits.

It's important that it be very hard to lie about these qualifications, because anyone who could, would, due to the clear economic benefits of doing so. The only surefire way to determine whether someone has intellectual chops is to make him or her do something intellectual. That's what college is.