Rick Singer was sentenced to 42 months in prison this week for helping wealthy parents bribe and scam their children's way into prestigious colleges. The college admissions consultant plead guilty to "racketeering conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of justice," reports the New York Times.
In an effort to level the playing field, some companies are asking job applicants to delete from their resumes the names of the colleges or universities they attended, writes David Christopher Kaufman in a New York Post commentary. Degrees are OK, but not whether the applicant went to UCLA, Cal State LA or FlybyNight College.
"A LinkedIn posting by HR&A Advisors, the TriBeCa-based real estate consultancy, asked applicants for the $121,668- to $138,432-a-year position to remove 'all undergraduate and graduate school name references' from their résumés and only cite the degree itself," he writes. The policy is part of the company's plan "to build a hiring system that is free from bias and based on candidate merit and performance.”
Racial and economic minorities have had much less "access to fancy schools and pricy education," writes Kaufman, who is African-American. "But obscuring education histories won’t solve these inequities."
He took out student loans to attend Brandeis and NYU "because I knew they were investments in my long-term earning potential," he writes. He not only qualified for a good career, he developed "a strong sense of self-worth and satisfaction."
Many graduates of elite colleges come from educated, affluent families who sent them to excellent schools, paid for violin lessons, computer camp and community service trips and hired tutors when needed. But very, very few cheated on the SATs (now optional at many colleges) or faked stardom on the lacrosse team like Singer's clients.
Outsiders value test scores and other measures of merit, writes Shelby Kearns on Campus Reform. Those who don't have money or connections need ways to prove their competence.
“As an Iranian immigrant I always fall into the white caucasian group and that creates a lot of issues for groups like me that want to compete for law school admission,” said Tahmmineh Dehbozorgi, a law student at George Washington University, on Fox & Friends. “However some objective method like the LSAT score allows many individuals coming from an immigrant background to overcome DEI bias.”
DEI stands for diversity, equity and inclusion.
If one attended a highly selective university but did not graduate versus graduating from a directional state university, the university would give much more weight to the degree holders. This is the argument about many college degrees. One gets no credit for learning anything. One only gets credit for finishing the degree.
Over at management blog that I read, there has been some distinct prejudice against some religious universities because the hiring managers are very afraid that a person who graduated from that kind of school would bring its mindset into the work place (and be prejudiced against others.)
So this would be an advantage to them as well
So, this reduces the incentive to get a degree from a top-notch school to just about zero, doesn't it? Why get a degree from Big Deal U when you can get a degree from Whatsamatta U for half the price and half the effort?
All of my adult jobs have been a result of "Oh, you went to that school and majored in Classics, you can definitely handle the learning curve for this position." On the other hand, when a few clients started demanding an MBA I went the WGU route to knock it out quickly, so I'd be fine leaving that one off. (It was equivalent to a directional state U MBA - some classes were useful, most were not hard if you already know how to read, write, and do math through Pre-Cal.) I don't how directional state MBA compares to the more prestigious places, though.
This started years ago when the art history major's from the Ivy League could not get past the computer-based, algorithm-driven job application websites that many corporations were using. The computer did not care about the Ivy League degree as much as the degree matching the job. This is very different from the Mad Men days when an investment bank or brokerage would hire any Ivy Leaguer and put them through a long training program.