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U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

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Re: U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

#201
post #191

Instead of better educating our population, the low-tax / anti-intellectual / authoritarian-reactionaries have convinced the population that they don't need education. With education, they might aim for socio-economic advancement (remember the American Dream?), think for themselves, challenge the established order (edit: i.e., they might decide to become the powerful and the leaders themselves). Now they know their p…

I have a friend with no college degree but a number of certifications in the insurance industry and most of a master's degree in a humanities field. Should said friend be allowed to proofread communications going out from Angie Craig's office? I have a friend with an associate's degree who has great customer service skills. Should said friend be allowed to be a receptionist for Angie Craig? I love education, I indulg…

Is MN State (not just Mankato) really 20k a year? Is CC really 20k a year there?

Re: U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

#202

Tangentially related, at my current job we do not filter candidates by certain "top schools" and it has lead to the most diverse (ethnic, gender, vocational background, social economic, nationality, etc.) team of software engineers I've ever worked on. This is in sharp contrast to all my previous jobs where they consistently filter by a list of schools. Obviously this is not a silver bullet but it's quite shocking to…

I'm clearly naive and haven't worked closely enough to filtering stage of of the hiring process, but nevertheless.. I'm shocked to hear that there was a deliberate and explicit filtering by a list of "top schools. An implicit look at the school and some dose of bias, okay sure, I could see it, but an explicit filter? Wow.

This is standard across the world, in professional and engineering jobs. Hiring can be filtered by where you work, what your major is, what school you went to. Not all jobs or education are made equal. Its not what I'd do, but saying, we'll only consider candidates with CS degrees from these top 25 schools seem like a valid strategy to recruiting. Esp. if you consider their professors can be renowned in certain research topics.

Re: U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

#203
post #191

Instead of better educating our population, the low-tax / anti-intellectual / authoritarian-reactionaries have convinced the population that they don't need education. With education, they might aim for socio-economic advancement (remember the American Dream?), think for themselves, challenge the established order (edit: i.e., they might decide to become the powerful and the leaders themselves). Now they know their p…

I have a friend with no college degree but a number of certifications in the insurance industry and most of a master's degree in a humanities field. Should said friend be allowed to proofread communications going out from Angie Craig's office? I have a friend with an associate's degree who has great customer service skills. Should said friend be allowed to be a receptionist for Angie Craig? I love education, I indulg…

I don't think you can have "most of a master's degree" when you're missing the obvious pre-requisite of a bachelor's degree.

Re: U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're right then we should expect countries where IQ tests are not illegal, to have experienced a slower increase in the % of young adults with degrees. I wonder if you've seen any data like this?

Anecdotally speaking, all I can remember hearing drilled into me in the American school system as the path for life success was going to college. The implication was that you'd be a loser who worked flipping burgers at McDonalds for the rest of your life if you didn't go to college. As far as the data you ask for, I'm all for doing that kind of research, but there's probably many variables that are hard to directly e…

I agree with the general sentiment that people do degrees for bad reasons, that even good reasons at an individual level may not be optimal in aggregate etc.

But I'm particularly interested in your hypothesis that it's driven mainly or solely by the inability for US employers to use IQ tests.

Your first sentences (about college being the default/accepted path) is also true in other countries that aren't subject to that supreme court case, like the UK.

Or like Sweden: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35594618

Re: U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

#205
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your argument has nothing to do with college degrees at all What I'm saying is pretty obvious, but I'll spell it out for you. 1. Canadian and American cultures are extremely homogenous 2. Canadian and American police have few differences, but a critical one is the Canadian-only requirement of university degrees 3. With no other clearly-defined drivers of police culture differentiation across the border, we see that…

This butchering of statistical reasoning is so poor I have to assume it is a troll But in case it’s genuine, consider vast differences in gun ownership, homicide rate, and… honestly so many other things it’s just annoying to list them.

> consider vast differences

I did.

Gun ownership is about 32% of individuals in USA vs 25% of individuals in Canada.

Homicide rate is about 2.5x higher in the US, which means US cops are outperforming this statistic vs US civilians.

> so many other things

It's not just annoying to list them, it's ridiculous; these countries are the exact same place. Across the board, everything you can think of has a lot of statistical homogeneity between these places. But Canadian cops are way better educated, and kill way less.

Around the world, cops that are better educated kill way less.

So why exactly are people excusing reductions in education requirements for police? It makes no sense. There's no supporting evidence that that's a good choice, and literal mountains showing that it's a bad one.

This thread is bizarro world.

Re: U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

#206

Tangentially related, at my current job we do not filter candidates by certain "top schools" and it has lead to the most diverse (ethnic, gender, vocational background, social economic, nationality, etc.) team of software engineers I've ever worked on. This is in sharp contrast to all my previous jobs where they consistently filter by a list of schools. Obviously this is not a silver bullet but it's quite shocking to…

I'm clearly naive and haven't worked closely enough to filtering stage of of the hiring process, but nevertheless.. I'm shocked to hear that there was a deliberate and explicit filtering by a list of "top schools. An implicit look at the school and some dose of bias, okay sure, I could see it, but an explicit filter? Wow.

It's a challenge. I get over 1000 applicants for every position, I can't read every resume and use a few filters to get a subset to read, but it's a disjunction (top 50 school OR company advanced in our field OR specific technology names).

Re: U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

#207
post #9

I've never heard any justification for having "college education" as a job requirement. Or at least no justification that didn't amount to "keep out people who aren't like us", or "pretend to be competent", or "posture as exclusive".

My opinion is that the Supreme Court Case Griggs v. Duke Power Company helped make college education effectively a job requirement for anything other than very simple labor. Before that, employers for any kind of professional job could offer some kind of IQ or other test so they could figure out if you had some basic level of competence and were capable of being trained to perform whatever task they needed. Since it'…

The problem with your theory is that the disparate impact criteria in Griggs creates exactly the same burden for college degree requirements as for IQ tests. (And, secondarily, that that burden for IQ tests is low enough that if they were as suited for purpose as your argument suggests, it would be routinely and easily met.)

That said, I do think that often college degree requirements serve the same purpose as the IQ tests in Griggs: a conscious and direct choice to achieve racial discrimination that isn’t calibrated in any way to the actual requirements of the specific job but has enough of a superficial veneer of neutrality that people aren’t likely to challenge it. (Post-Griggs, while IQ tests are no more illegal than degree requirements, they are more likely to be challenged.)

Re: U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

#208

Tangentially related, at my current job we do not filter candidates by certain "top schools" and it has lead to the most diverse (ethnic, gender, vocational background, social economic, nationality, etc.) team of software engineers I've ever worked on. This is in sharp contrast to all my previous jobs where they consistently filter by a list of schools. Obviously this is not a silver bullet but it's quite shocking to…

I'm clearly naive and haven't worked closely enough to filtering stage of of the hiring process, but nevertheless.. I'm shocked to hear that there was a deliberate and explicit filtering by a list of "top schools. An implicit look at the school and some dose of bias, okay sure, I could see it, but an explicit filter? Wow.

Yup, this 100% existed at FB in the US while I was there from 2013 to 2018. I worked in Europe and found it incredibly bizarre.

Re: U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm clearly naive and haven't worked closely enough to filtering stage of of the hiring process, but nevertheless.. I'm shocked to hear that there was a deliberate and explicit filtering by a list of "top schools. An implicit look at the school and some dose of bias, okay sure, I could see it, but an explicit filter? Wow.

This is standard across the world, in professional and engineering jobs. Hiring can be filtered by where you work, what your major is, what school you went to. Not all jobs or education are made equal. Its not what I'd do, but saying, we'll only consider candidates with CS degrees from these top 25 schools seem like a valid strategy to recruiting. Esp. if you consider their professors can be renowned in certain resea…

This really doesn't happen in technology outside of the US. It seems like way more of a US thing in general, but I can't fully speak to that.

Re: U.S. Rep. Angie Craig drops college requirement for staffers

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 h…

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.
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