Comment by eadmund | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eadmund | Hacker News Reader

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> My main philosophical gripe is that it doesn't seem to really matter what your major is. "Oh, you got a bachelors in Biology? Well, I guess that's fine. Come work at my tech company in a way that is completely unrelated to Biology." In this particular situation, it seems like the only purpose of college is to create arbitrary classist hurdles for poor people to jump through.

In the U.S., this is due to the fact that employers practically may not use proficiency exams; since they are prevented from testing for actual proficiency, they must use a proxy, and a college degree is a decent proxy for 'reasonably educated enough, exposed to enough general knowledge, knows how to function in a group.'

I don't think that class really enters into it.

> the fact that educational debt in America can never be voided through bankruptcy seems like a conscious systemic decision to create debt slaves.

More that without the inability to discharge it in bankruptcy interest rates for student loans would need to be sky-high: the smart move for anyone graduating at 22 would be to immediately declare bankruptcy when all he would have is debt and no assets.

> In the U.S., this is due to the fact that employers practically may not use proficiency exams

What do you mean here?

I'm a life-long US resident and I've never heard such a thing. I've also taken exams when applying to jobs. There is also the civil service exam which is a prerequisite for many government jobs. Jobs like the police and military have exams, both written and physical. I can't square my experience and your statement.

More likely, employers do not want to pay for additional exams as part of the hiring process and use college-degrees as a proxy. But there's nothing preventing them from using exams if they wanted.

From the US and I've also taken exams when applying for all kinds of jobs. I applied to work in a convenience store and had to take a test on simple math and alphabetizing things. I applied to IBM and took a strange test full of math word problems (the IPATO test; I was amazed they still did that in ~2013). There are certain employers in the tech industry that are well known for their standardized exams, like Epic Healthcare. And that says nothing of the many, many low-wage jobs that require you to take a bogus personality test to prove you're an extrovert before they'll let you stock shelves.

> What do you mean here?

Griggs v. Duke Power held that if a test has a disparate impact on ethnic minorities, then the burden of proof is on employers to demonstrate that the test is reasonably related to the job. The practical effect is that private employers are highly unlikely to use these tests, since doing so opens themselves up to liability, particularly since due to socioeconomic factors any fair test will have a disparate impact. For example, the tests in the particular case were a general IQ test and a mechanical aptitude test.

> I can't square my experience and your statement.

Every particular instance you gave was of a public employer, but I was careful to note that employers practically may not use proficiency exams. It's not directly illegal, and some employers might use them because either they do not realise how much liability they are exposed to, or because they have been very careful to justify them.

> Griggs v. Duke Power held that if a test has a disparate impact on ethnic minorities, then the burden of proof is on employers to demonstrate that the test is reasonably related to the job.

It actually held that for any employer-imposed hiring requirement (not merely a test), and later cases have made it clear that applies pretty much to any element of the hiring, advancement, retention, or disciplinary process.

> The practical effect is that private employers are highly unlikely to use these tests

No, its not. The practical effect is that employers doing cargo cult HR (which is quite common) are highly unlikely to use the specific tests that have been at issue in superficially well-known cases like Griggs (e.g., specifically due to Griggs, IQ tests) even when they could easily meet the test laid out Griggs but simultaneously using many employer-imposed job requirements for which they could not meet the test.

OTOH, employers that have decent legal advice regularly use tests of even the specific types that have been problematic in other cases, but make sure that there is a job rationale supported by evidence for both tests and other requirements in case they are challenged, because that’s the thing that actually matters.

Proficiency exams are exceedingly common (heck, when I did clerical temporary work for a while, it was pretty much the entirety of the hiring and placement process.)

Not the op, but I'm still having a hard time buying this argument that assessment tests "practically" may not be used when Walmart, Home Depot, IBM, and Epic use them, and countless companies required me to fill out their questionable Unicru personality assessments in the 2010s when applying for a summer job. And those are just the big names that folks here might have heard of and that I knew from memory. Clearly this particular decision hasn't been a big barrier to implementing various kinds of pre-employment tests in the US.

Thank you for pointing out what the consequences would be of allowing student loans to be discharged by bankruptcy. It's obvious this would happen a lot if allowed - I would have done it and would tell my kids to do the same. It turns out being held accountable for the debts you incur is usually a good thing.

You don't think class enters into it?

Tell us you grew up in an middle-upper class environment without telling us you grew up middle-upper class.

Agree. Laughed when I saw that

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