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Comment by baryphonic | Hacker News Reader

Many employers once used IQ tests, but the Supreme Court made this much costlier for employers under the "disparate impact" theory.[0] That is, employers had a burden of showing that their tests were sufficiently related to the posted job if the test results were any different among different ethnic groups, e.g. blacks scored lower than whites. Making a degree a literal requirement for the job is a low-cost proxy for IQ (or was in the past), and since it is earned, it can be listed as a job requirement, unlike IQ.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.

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> employers had a burden of showing that their tests were sufficiently related to the posted job

so why not just create a test that actually tests for the skills needed for the job? that would be the obvious way to optimize profit from a business perspective.

the fact that employers don't do that is a pretty clear sign that the purpose of degree requirements is explicitly discriminatory, the same as "IQ" tests (which are completely fraudulent).

> so why not just create a test that actually tests for the skills needed for the job?

IANAL, but my cynical guess is America's legal system. Being ever-so-obviously in the right does not pay your attorney's bills for you.

> "IQ" tests (which are completely fraudulent)

No, not really. Up for debate is pretty much only the overloading of the word 'intelligence'. But whatever it is, it correlates well with job performance and maximum level of education attainable.

But they are culturally sensitive, and thus racially sensitive, and you need to apply the right test to people, for the right goals, to get meaningful results.

If you want to hire only people n-sigma above the norm, in an area of rich and well-educated locals, and you apply the same test to them as to foreign applicants, you'll likely never hire a foreigner - they won't test as well as they would on a test in their native tongue/tasks/etc.

But if you try to estimate the level of abilities needed and you use the correct test to establish an applicant's ability against that metric and hire from anyone qualified, then the tests are useful. They're even a way for skilled foreigners to test into qualification without having to jump through expensive credentialing hoops.

Are IQ tests (or any standardized test) “culturally sensitive?”

Yeah, particularly the language ones. You do have some non culturally sensitive ones like Ravens matrices, but they're not the default.

By “culture” do you mean being able to speak English? Because I am at a loss as to what else you think is in there.

Word analogy puzzles tend to favour particular dialects and cultures and don't map neatly to other measures of g.

If you're actually interested I can go and dig up some of the literature (I have a PhD in psychology in an adjacent area). Please let me know.

https://www.clearchoiceprep.com/sat-act-prep-blog/the-most-i...

Basically though, anything that relies on something not printed on the test runs this risk.

> correlates well with job performance

highly doubtful, but i would be interested to see your evidence. IQ tests might provide a rough gating mechanism but applying them in the field you don't have any control group so there is no proof that they are actually selecting people correctly (you don't know how many good performers you are rejecting because they didn't score well on the flawed test).

> maximum level of education attainable

since the education system is also designed by the same misguided people who designed IQ tests it wouldn't be surprising if scoring well on IQ tests also leads to doing well in the education system, but that doesn't meant that either are doing anything of any value.

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