In Disparate but Not Serious, James Taranto argues that “College is an expensive way of taking an IQ test”:
What accounts for the increasing insistence on college degrees as a prerequisite for entry-level professional jobs? Ms. Ehrenreich offers this theory: “Employers prefer college grads because they see a college degree chiefly as mark of one’s ability to obey and conform.”To a nonconformist dropout like me, this explanation is emotionally appealing. But I think it’s bunk. For one thing, not all white-collar jobs require obedience and conformity. Some employers prize creativity and enterprise–but even they do not generally go out of their way to hire people without degrees. For another, it’s hard to believe that employers today value the “ability to obey and conform” twice as highly as they did in the era of “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.”
I have a better theory. I blame the Supreme Court.
What most professional jobs require is basic intellectual aptitude. And what has changed since the 1970s is that the court has developed a body of law that prevents employers from directly screening for such aptitude. The landmark case was Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971). A black coal miner claimed discrimination because his employer required a high-school diploma and an intelligence test as prerequisites for promotion to a more skilled position. The court ruled 8-0 in the miner’s favor. “Good intent or absence of discriminatory intent does not redeem employment procedures or testing mechanisms that operate as ‘built-in headwinds’ for minority groups,” Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote.
This became known as the “disparate impact” test, and it applies only in employment law. Colleges and universities remain free to use aptitude tests, and elite institutions in particular lean heavily on exams such as the SAT in deciding whom to admit. For a prospective employee, obtaining a college degree is a very expensive way of showing that he has, in effect, passed an IQ test.