Justice Department Strikes a Blow Against Degree Inflation

You’re not imagining it: the bar for breaking into certain jobs has risen. Degree inflation—the trend of requiring college degrees for jobs that did not formerly need them—carries serious costs for society. It closes off job opportunities for workers without degrees, worsens labor shortages in skilled occupations, and fuels a credentialing treadmill that forces students to spend more time and money to qualify for the same jobs. Some of this has been driven by a backwards legal regime that carves out college degree requirements from civil rights laws. The Justice Department recently issued an opinion that could start to change that. Degree inflation has affected jobs across the economy. Jobs where a high school diploma used to be the entry-level qualification increasingly require college degrees. In 1990, just 9 percent of secretaries held a bachelor’s degree. That proportion has since risen to 35 percent. Jobs that used to have broad noncollege pathways into the field are seeing those paths contract. While 46 percent of registered nurses held a four-year degree in 1990, 75 percent of nurses have one today. Part of the explanation lies in the legal regime that governs how employers may decide whom to hire. Under disparate-impact doctrine , employers generally cannot rely on hiring tests or screening criteria that produce substantially different outcomes across demographic groups unless those criteria are “job related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity.” As Christopher Schorr and Jay Menees of the America First Policy Institute document , regulators have interpreted this law to block employers’ use of employment aptitude tests, written exams, and English proficiency tests, among other things. Curiously—and for reasons that are unclear even to legal experts—regulators have not applied the same logic to college degrees. Over 40 percent of job postings specify a bachelor’s degree requirement, even for jobs that have historically not required degrees or where a degree is clearly not necessary for the position. College degree requirements undoubtedly cause a disparate impact: 43 percent of non-Hispanic white adults hold a bachelor’s degree or higher , compared to 30 percent of black adults. Yet regulators give college degree requirements a pass on disparate-impact laws. Employers, naturally wary of getting sued, lean on college degrees to assess job applicants as opposed to other tests which might be more relevant to the job and fairer to people without degrees. In a new opinion to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Justice Department tries to level the playing field. The opinion doesn’t overrule longstanding civil rights law, but clarifies its interpretation. Going forward, regulators and courts should presume that “background checks, aptitude tests, knowledge-based tests, SAT scores, high-school graduation requirements, or blind auditions” are related to the job and hence legitimate (unless they are truly arbitrary). The opinion also holds that those challenging a hiring practice must show that the policy they’re challenging actually causes the unequal outcomes in question, not simply that unequal outcomes exist. Challengers must also offer the employer a “viable alternative” that accomplishes the same hiring goals with a lesser disparate impact. The opinion doesn’t directly affect employers’ use of college degrees, but rather moves toward placing other hiring practices, such as knowledge or aptitude tests, on a level playing field with college degrees. This gives employers legal cover to shift away from degree requirements towards other measures of job fitness. This could actually reduce disparate impact by making it easier for employers to hire from the much larger pool of workers without degrees, where members of disadvantaged groups are more common . College degree requirements lead employers to bypass this group, but allowing the use of alternative measures of job readiness may lead employers to give workers without degrees another look. One opinion from the Justice Department won’t fix degree inflation overnight. Degree requirements in job postings are an entrenched way of doing things, so most employers won’t immediately transform their hiring models. But the opinion will help edge the college degree off the pedestal on which misguided interpretations of civil rights law have inexplicably placed it—and create more opportunities for workers of all educational backgrounds. The post Justice Department Strikes a Blow Against Degree Inflation appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI .