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Comment by TimPC | Hacker News Reader

Degrees are often used as proxies for an IQ test. To get into school X you must be at least Y smart. As long as we ban IQ tests for employment employers are going to keep using this as the best practical proxy. It’s going to have these kinds of bad effects where people need to get $115k degrees to get a $50k job since some people will do so despite the nonsensical ROI. We need to remove the law banning IQ tests in job interviews and let employers test for the kinds of things they currently proxy by university degree.

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The world's most intelligent people can't figure out a way to make a 50k salary without spending 300k on education?

> As long as we ban IQ tests for employment employers are going to keep using this as the best practical proxy. I

Thats probably true to a degree, however I think the system will breakdown this decade. Given current inflation rates, anyone with an IQ >120 will soon see that the debt/benefit ratio is becoming unworkable.

The last 2 employees my company hired actually game via github - we were using an open-source repo that someone had made and eventually reached out and asked him if he wanted to consult for us and add some features to his code...that lead to an ongoing basic permanent consulting gig.

Doesn't inflation mean that nominal debt is less painful to hold? ie I go $100k into debt for a degree, but 5 years down the line that $100k only has $50k buying power (in original year terms), so its easier to pay off?

Yes inflation does mean exactly that, but maybe OP meant interest rates (which I believe have been trending up of late).

What law is this?

You aren't allowed to discriminate based on race, and as we all know some races do better on IQ tests than others. Basically this rule:

> A selection rate for any race, sex, or ethnic group which is less than four-fifths (4/5) (or eighty percent) of the rate for the group with the highest rate will generally be regarded by the Federal enforcement agencies as evidence of adverse impact

https://www.uniformguidelines.com/uniformguidelines.html#18

It means that for tests with disparage impact you need good evidence that it is actually relevant, good luck proving that for IQ tests. So either you need to design an IQ test which doesn't favor any race, or you need to design an IQ test which looks like work so you can convince a court that it is relevant for the job. College can be seen as an example of the later.

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