The effect of outlawing employment testing

[Sharky]

In 1971, the Supreme Court effectively outlawed employment testing. Their justification was that it discriminated against minorities, and was therefore in violation of the Civil Rights Act. With the benefit of hindsight, care to guess what happened as a result?

A recent study has shown that in the aftermath of the ruling, employers changed their approach to requiring college degrees. Many minorities were shut out only because of their financial condition, rather than their ability. The number of people in college increased and the cost of education increased without providing additional skills or knowledge, further compounding the problem. A bad deal for minorities all around. Plus, degrees evolved into being mostly a demonstration that you could make it through the process, rather than certifications that you actually learned anything useful about your subject.

Yet another example of how government interference in the free market rarely has the desired effect.

http://www.centerforcollegeaffordabi...e_Power(1).pdf

[Wild Style]

Re: The effect of outlawing employment testing

I work at a University. I assure you, the problems with universities have less to do with allowing more people in and more to do with the way they are being run. I could tell you stories that would leave you scratching your head. I fully expect a lot of these poorly run universities to have to start laying off sooner or later and restructuring (or closing their doors?). Part of the reason is many of them have become bloated with unnecessary staff because of pandering to narcissistic faculty and students as well as a management that are about as clued in to reality as a monkey is to nuclear physics. The second problem is these universities are not offering relevant courses. I don't want to go into specifics but a lot of these universities have a crap load of problems least of which is the quality of students, it starts at the top.

[Rantly McTirade]

Re: The effect of outlawing employment testing

Allowing more people in, and the average quality thereby, and the way the college is run may be symbiotic phenomena.

[Wild Style]

Re: The effect of outlawing employment testing

Allowing more people in, and the average quality thereby, and the way the college is run may be symbiotic phenomena.[/quote]Not really. I don't want to go to deep into it, but as I said, it’s a top down problem. Many of these programs have not kept in touch with reality. They (reality and school curriculums) say hello to each other on the way into work but then they go their separate ways. Give you one example. This one college went bananas over the "next big thing" in this one particular field. Now if the people at the top had done their home work, they would have known this particular field was going to flop. Either way, after two years that program was shut down last October. Had nothing to do with who they were educating or how many, just plain, all out inefficiency and providing services no one needs or wants. Not to mention these services are not viable for future jobs.

In another program, they were teaching certain courses that were relevant back in 1980 (I swear). This thing they were teaching is no longer being used anymore (not in large scale). They did a survey after students complained (they survived large and medium sized corporations) to ask them if this particular thing was useful to them. They said out of 80 corporations interviewed, ONE said they needed it. But guess what? They are still offering this same, outdated and tired ass course work (its mandatory by the way). I could go on and on. Now take what I said and multiply that by 1,000 and you will get what’s going on in these schools. They are being run like kindergartens in some instances. Not all but MANY are just run extremely inefficiently

[Sharky]

Re: The effect of outlawing employment testing

I work at a University. I assure you, the problems with universities have less to do with allowing more people in and more to do with the way they are being run.

I didn't see the point of the article in the OP as relating to the problems with universities. Rather, their claim is that when employers lost the ability to do testing, they substituted a college degree as a requirement. That, in turn, drove more people into universities. Higher demand drove up prices. Higher prices made it even more inaccessible to poor minorities, further compounding the problem that banning testing was intended to solve.

The change in what it meant from an employer's perspective for someone to have a degree, and what they actually learned in school is secondary and the cause might be completely unrelated.

[Wild Style]

Re: The effect of outlawing employment testing

I didn't see the point of the article in the OP as relating to the problems with universities. Rather, their claim is that when employers lost the ability to do testing, they substituted a college degree as a requirement. That, in turn, drove more people into universities. Higher demand drove up prices. Higher prices made it even more inaccessible to poor minorities, further compounding the problem that banning testing was intended to solve.

The change in what it meant from an employer's perspective for someone to have a degree, and what they actually learned in school is secondary and the cause might be completely unrelated.

I wasn't responding so much to what the full article said. I was responding to what you had in your original post, particularly

The number of people in college increased and the cost of education increased without providing additional skills or knowledge, further compounding the problem. A bad deal for minorities all around. Plus, degrees evolved into being mostly a demonstration that you could make it through the process, rather than certifications that you actually learned anything useful about your subject.

It was my assumption that this was some how correlating the larger number of people going into university with deteriorating quality of services. I misunderstood the post.