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Comment by bluedino | Hacker News Reader

Here's maybe a simple solution: Why can't it be made illegal to list 'college degree' as a requirement for a job? Everyone knows of jobs that any moron can do, but a college degree is required. Especially for white collar jobs in large corporations, you can't make it past the first layer of HR without a degree.

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So your solution to the complex problem of college tuition increases over almost 30 years is "Make a law, then create n enforcement department, then levy fines"? I'm presuming the latter too since it makes no sense to "Make a law" that isn't going to be enforced. To enforce this over the 20,000,000 job postings out there - probably need a department of at least 50 people. Budget $80,000 per employee + $20,000 in taxes + benefits = $100k per person x 50 = $5m budget each year. I guess we'd better make those fines pretty high so we can pay for the department but, if not, that's okay - we can raise taxes 0.004% on everyone to offset it.

Mike talked about how Repubs and Dems want the same basic things but disagree about (a) how to get there, and (b) the role of government. I'm guessing you and I are on different sides of (b).

There were a few law cases that made it difficult for employers to test applicants.

* http://www.chicagonow.com/chicagos-real-law-blog/2012/02/do-...

* http://www.halfsigma.com/2006/12/why_employers_d.html

(just a few links from a Google search for "employers can't test IQ")

It's deemed socially acceptable to use college degrees as a proxy for "smart enough for the job" or even "smart enough to be trained for the job."

Alternatively, because primary education is so bad in the US (grades 1 through 12---roughly ages 5 to 18 for those outside the US) that a bachelors degree today is the equivalent of a high school diploma from the 1950s/1960s.

How is this going to solve anything? All this is going to do is bring in a flood of applicants to the job that has no listing of a college degree as a requirement. Then HR is going to reject a bunch of applications. At the end you are just moving the barrier to an internal portal.

What you do, however, is remove the reason job seekers go to college in the first place. There are not that many jobs that actually require a degree, other than as a superficial filtering mechanism, so you can take them out of that system.

The result is that demand for college decreases, therefore the price will decrease through the properties of supply and demand, which leaves an education that returns to being affordable for those who actually care about an education.

You are right that businesses will have to find a new filtering mechanism, but it can be one that doesn't come at the cost of making education unobtainable to those who want an education.

> What you do, however, is remove the reason job seekers go to college in the first place. There are not that many jobs that actually require a degree, other than as a superficial filtering mechanism, so you can take them out of that system.

This is a second order effect which I am not so sure which actually happen reality. I posit that it is also likely that people move the requirements to an internal portal, everyone gets wind of such a thing, mainly when HR reps start writing that "breakthrough book" about secrets of getting your first job and everyone still keeps going to college.

Remember that the old filter was "is the applicant white?"

Plus I'm pretty sure that would be clearly unconstitutional.

Well listing IQ requirements is not allowed. So presumably restricting this falls under the same category?

That would be a large reversal from the current situation. College degrees are not officially required for things like immigration or proving candidate qualifications in discrimination lawsuits, but they are generally accepted as a reliable standard. This means that if you don't require a college degree, you have to do a lot more work to define qualifications and prove they match.

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