I'd love to see some data behind this. It's too easy to view this incorrectly from the point of view of an educator.
- Graduating from college, any college, does mean something because many of the people who try can't hack it.
- Big state schools seem to be "of the people" while elite private schools are, well, elite. But they are not so different. Elite private schools have low admission rates but also near-zero dropout rates. Big public schools have high admission rates but also dropout rates in the 40-60% range. They just apply their filters at different parts of the funnel.
- The way to a more educated population is probably not to expand college access. Already, far more people access college than can complete it. More interesting questions are about how we best serve the people at risk of dropping out. The answer might be to make state schools more selective, not less, so that we aren't wasting people's time (and money!) with programs they'll never complete.
There are far cheaper ways of proving somebody can read, write & reason but for some reason employers seem to be stuck on that University diploma. I guess it's easy for them.
I suspect this test is the single biggest reason for the success of the company.
I suspect any reasonable test in that general direction would do the job. I don't think they use it to specifically hire the people who achieve the very best scores, but rather to not hire the ones who perform poorly.
That has nothing to do with the topic at hand though. Or are you saying that colleges have zero influence on their students' education, and the only thing that determines if a student fails or succeeds is whether they really met the course requirements at enrollment time?
It's not my area of expertise, though. My personal experience at Cambridge and Groningen University was always very good with students. Yet, these are peculiar places.