it should be literally illegal for employers to ask what school you went to

ernest goes to school (1994) except it's yan dives into discussions about policy (2024)

i. what’s wrong with schooling?

everyone knows that the benefits of post-secondary education come not from teaching students, but from credentialing them. the vast majority of students choose not to attend school to become educated and cultured, but instead to springboard themselves into elite and otherwise unattainable positions of wealth and influence. attending an ivy plus university triples an individual’s chance of being hired at a prestigious company upon graduation, massively increases their odds of eventually occupying leadership positions, and boosts their chances of reaching the top 1% of earnings by 60%. these are advantages primarily available to the rich, with roughly one in four of the richest students attending elite institutions; through university admissions the privileged use johnny everyman as a footstool to facilitate their upward climb towards money money money! schools (especially for those fields like high finance or management consulting that people enter because they like wealth and the opinions of other social climbers) have become glorified headhunting firms, outsourcing the recruiting work for these money printing sweatshops for passionless overachievers. while our education system may never measure up to our imagined ideal of The University as Hallowed Halls of Learning, we can definitely make things better. to make this happen, i propose the following: 

1. designate alma mater as a prohibited ground in hiring decisions.¹ this would work similarly to what we do for veteran status, race, or gender.

2. publicly fund all post-secondary education.

3. eliminate degree requirements for employment altogether. exceptions can be made for a few advanced degrees, and a few selected careers where education is essential—engineering, law, medicine. jobs with titles like “associate digital marketing coordinator at splatform social analytics” do not require four years of education. 

BUT before explaining my solutions further, let’s outline the problem in more detail, shall we?

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ii. well, how did we get here?

american individualism, classism, and ambition (derogatory) are all obvious contributors to its nightmarish education system. it’s difficult to determine exactly where america’s obsession with educational prestige began, but it’s certainly not new. evidence for such systemic disparities were visible in—where else? boston!—as early as the 19th century. even then, boston private schools were actively relocating in a form of “rich flight” to avoid enrollment from those deemed “unfit for matriculation”. private school enrollment in the area skyrocketed as elite families extracted their children from public school systems filling up with working class (ew!🤢🤢🤢) and immigrant (yuck!🤮🤮🤮) students. unsurprisingly, private institutions resisted the concurrent requests of the working class for affordable public education. even as recently as the forties, harvard admitted 90% of applicants—these were all wealthy and established (largely white) individuals, as the financial obstacles of enrollment proved sufficient to maintain the school’s exclusivity. however, when demographics were no longer enough to limit those who enrolled, their acceptance rate plummeted to the 4% seen today. 

the reluctance of private schools to open up their doors is an oh-too-predictable result of their dominance. prestige is zero-sum; the size of the pie is constantly adjusting itself to ensure that if you’re not descended from mr. burns himself, you can’t have any. self-evidently, for a prestigious institution to provide its stated value to students, it must maintain its prestige—something it can only do through the exclusion of the less elite. ivy-plus educations signal brilliance not because of the schools’ storied histories or the excellence of their instruction, but simply because it’s hard to get in. this selectivity exacerbates the inequality as the colleges (obviously) select already-privileged individuals for admission. these students are then carted off to positions of financial, social, and political power, perpetuating the cycle. to illustrate just how absurd this situation is, consider the following: harvard, yale, and columbia have educated more supreme court justices than all other schools, combined. going to one of these schools enables you to become one of the country’s unelected philosopher kings, a demiurge of american rights and freedoms. clarence thomas giveth and he taketh away. et cetera. ivy-plus alumni disproportionately comprise all prestigious american knowledge work, occupying lucrative positions in everything from investment banking to big tech, two of the institutions with the greatest effect on the rest of the country. it’s super healthy and normal that these positions of outsize influence are only occupied with one kind of person who then is able to unilaterally decide the path of a pluralistic nation comprised of people completely different from them! this isn’t even limited to the spheres mentioned above, however. we’ve gone so credential-crazy that even something as seemingly egalitarian as journalism tends to select near-exclusively from ivies and their ilk for top talent². it’s no surprise that the majority of the population feels so alienated from the media—these positions aren’t being filled by them, or anyone they could ever dream of meeting.

fortunately, these schools are now being exposed as the glorified social clubs that they are, limiting membership to the already elite and wealthy (alongside a few Ordinaries allowed to slip through the cracks to demonstrate Strong Diversity Rankings and a Dedication to Inclusivity). in a recent paper—written by none other than harvard and brown economists, because god forbid anything published at montana state university get cited—it was demonstrated that coming from a top 0.1% earning family made an applicant 2.2 times more likely to be admitted to an elite institution than another applicant with the same SAT and ACT scores. when these colleges have such a strong impact on someone’s life outcomes, this selectivity becomes a cruel indictment of american meritocracy. presently, hyper-selective university admissions benefit three parties, all of which represent small and elite groups:

1. the prestigious universities, which are able to command colossal sums of money, elite students and faculty, and global respect

2. elites and their sperry-shod lacrosse-playing hellspawn with sweaters tied around their necks, who are able to flex their pretty piece of upenn paper to leapfrog miles ahead of their cohort and begin lucrative and prestigious careers 

3. corporate recruiters, who are able to use target school hiring as a recruitment heuristic; knowing that this will net them quality employees, skipping the work of searching for qualified (yet possibly underrepresented) candidates³. 

unequal admissions processes have reverberating effects felt at all levels of professional and social hierarchies. hyper-selective colleges serve as the final checkpoint sifting the super-elite from the merely well-to-do; an effect which then trickles down the social ladder. desirable students not selected to ivy-plus institutions begrudgingly attend slightly less prestigious ones, and tend to receive generous scholarships in the process. this results in a selectivity cascade, pushing less privileged individuals into increasingly less prestigious schools, effectively barring them from elite positions and limiting the scholarship funds available to them. one doesn’t need a harvard sociology PhD to foresee that having the already-wealthy-and-influential occupying the vast majority of spots in elite institutions may have slight racist or classist implications. i can also guarantee that the recent decision made by america’s unelected archconservative philosopher kings (the beloved supreme court) prohibiting affirmative action will exacerbate this disparity.

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iii. how will this work? 

as i said above, we can help flatten the academic hierarchy by designating alma mater a protected status. this would make hiring decisions on its basis illegal. requiring a minimum confirmation that one received a degree from an accredited degree-conferring institution could ensure that education requirements are fulfilled, but that hyper-elite university checkpoints are not limiting individuals who narrowly missed them from competing in the professional world. to ensure legitimacy, the government could establish a governing body to check these accreditations or assign the task to some private institution (like moody’s/s&p but for schools). given the high correlation between wealth, whiteness, and prestigious education, it is already effectively discriminatory to disproportionately draw talent from these schools. the proposed solution would simply formally enshrine into law that those hiring practices are discriminatory, alleviating this form of discrimination and widening access to positions of influence. again, degree requirements altogether should be flat-out illegal in hiring decisions, outside of professions where absolutely essential (engineering, medicine, law, etc.).  this change would enable perfectly capable individuals to enter positions that do not explicitly require education (i.e., public relations and communications specialist at splatform media ltd) and excel without incurring the hefty temporal and financial costs associated with university education. i’m sure that many institutions might work to find ways to skirt these rules, but that’s where you americans can flex your well-trained muscles of litigation and take them to court as you so adore to do!

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iv. how will this help?

enabling learning for its own sake, or a quick start to a meaningful career. 

people who are interested in pursuing education simply for the joy of learning will be able to do so. if you want to go write overlong papers about how george envies the lacanian phallus possessed by jerry in seinfeld, that’s your prerogative! 

for those who want to enter the workforce and begin their careers and earning money, that’s your prerogative too! removing degree requirements would further help kickstart peoples’ careers as it would encourage a return to on-the-job training. it should be that employers train their employees rather than outsourcing the training to a 73 year old professor emeritus of business from duke university who hasn’t worked in industry in decades anyway. 

also if they so choose, overachieving students will now be able to select their school by picking a specific program they want to study or place they want to live, rather than being forced into studying in one of three different stuffy northeastern townships or new york city where you need to perform daily plasma donations to cover 1/15 of your $4,500 monthly rent payments to live with:

• a ketamine dealer

• two rats

• a rat-sized roach

• a roach-sized roach

• a kennedy faildaughter whose living expenses are subsidized by her great grandfather’s life insurance payout courtesy of lee harvey oswald’s 6.5×52mm carcano model 38 long-barrelled rifle. 

decreasing overall government education spend. 

insane amounts of money are presently spent on financial aid. also, we know that up to 58% of students claimed career prospects as the primary reason for their choice to attend university. making education no longer an obstacle to a successful career will drastically reduce the number of people who choose to attend—which is perfectly fine! school isn’t for everybody and it doesn’t have to be! besides, it’s better to pay $16K of full tuition for 10M people that want to actually learn instead of $8K of partial financial aid for 100M people that are being held in classrooms against their will!⁴ 

additionally, because alma mater can no longer be advertised, harvard and its ilk will no longer be able to command exorbitant tuition prices—their brand names no longer confer any benefit. this reduction in overall pricetag will place strong downward pressure on the cost of schooling overall, and thus, government education expenditure. it’s worth noting that this is something these institutions already can, but choose not to do. if harvard wanted to pay for tuition and housing for every student for decades to come, they could very easily make that happen given their gargantuan endowment funds fed by $300M donations from hedge fund chief executives who thousand yard stare directly into your optic nerve).⁵ after these economic adjustments, schooling will come to cost what it is actually worth, rather than its present hyperinflated cost associated with being able to wear a My Son Goes to Columbia t-shirt (made by cambodian sweatshop workers btw) purchased for sixty american dollars from the campus bookshop⁶. these cash savings can then be redirected towards research grants, other useful government spending (healthcare! healthcare! healthcare!)⁷, or simple tax refunds to give taxpayers some money back—i know y’all love your tax rebates in the us of a! 

correct long-standing inequality. 

education is one of the most unequal institutions in the developed world. the highborn are shipped off to prestigious universities, graduate debt-free, and proceed to work lucrative careers and literally live lives of sex drugs and rock and roll (except the rock and roll is quant trading). the hoi polloi leave school with awful student loan payments and even worse career prospects. the august spaces needed for successful careers occupied by our modern nobility are all but inaccessible, gated by these hyper-selective and hyper-expensive schools. by enabling more people to attend school, build connections, or simply proceed into the workforce, citizens will be able to begin earning money rather than incurring meaningless debt. when people aren’t forced to pursue schooling at one of 20 or so exorbitantly expensive schools, the opportunities for gainful employment will expand to include many more people (those who couldn’t afford schooling, those who chose not to go to school, or simply those who were a little lazy in high school!)⁸ one’s alma mater is as much a class proxy as any, and if diversity is truly something we value let’s all stand together—hands across america in us (2019) style—and stand up to chadley and bradwick from the nantucket yacht club to stop worshipping it at every stage of a person’s life!

1. in the process of writing this i found out that scott alexander proposed something similar at some point, but let’s just call this a leibniz-newton situation :)

2. a fun task—look up any prestige journalism institution’s staff writer list (ie. the atlantic, the new york times, etc.) and tally the ivy-plus alumni. 

3. if admissions policies were made more fair, it’s reasonable to assume that few would bemoan the gross tragedy of corporate recruiters having to search a little harder for talent

4. obviously i made these numbers up but you get the point.

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6. omg this is totally me when i discover use value vs exchange value i love the marx brothers!

7. “oh, you spent it on 650 cbu-100 cluster bombs again to be thrown at 13 year old children already displaced from their homes by the previous order of 650 cbu-100 cluster bombs? okay, mr president, if you say so…”

8. y’all be like normalize this! normalize that! how about we normalize being a little lazy in high school? bussin fr fr