You talk like a f^g and your sh*t's all retarded.

What is this I don't even

BrainyBear: No big deal. Employment discrimination laws just demand that requirements actually be relevant to the job they're hiring for. If you don't need a high school diploma to be the custodian, then why needlessly require it?

Because not as many black people have high school diplomas?

This is perfectly valid. If you require a credential that's not required for the job, and it has the effect of discriminating against a group, you're liable. It's the same issue as a job that requires you to lift heavy objects- if you require that an applicant be able to lift 200 lbs, but you would only ever need to lift 50 during the course of the job, congrats, the EEOC will be filing a suit against you for discriminating against women.

Civil_War2_Time: Is that like liberals trying to divide by zero?

FTFY -- why needlessly complicate things?

/don't bother me, I'm batein'

Can we classify being a teenager as a disability finally as well?

Monty845: It does make sense, employers want an easy way to screen for some minimum level of intelligence.

Well, I can think of worse ways, but not many.

FSTFKL: BrainyBear: No big deal. Employment discrimination laws just demand that requirements actually be relevant to the job they're hiring for. If you don't need a high school diploma to be the custodian, then why needlessly require it?

Indeed. I've seen job postings lately for receptionists, office clerks, etc. all of which *require* a 4-year college degree. Now I'll grant you, a person with a degree is likely to have some of the skills that you will need for the job. On the other hand, over the years of my working life I've encountered many perfectly competent people in those kinds of positions who didn't have a degree. It makes no sense.

You know the reason for that? Because the economy is crap and it's an easy way to narrow down the applicant pool. You open it up to anybody, you get a thousand applicants. You require the bachelors, and all of a sudden you have a much smaller pool to go over, filled with the people with the highest credentials. If you're planning on hiring the most qualified person anyway, why bother with the giant pile of resumes you're just gonna toss anyway?

It's not a question of whether the people without the degree could do the job. Of course many of them could. But if you can get a better candidate in that job for the same pay anyway, you get value added. And you have to waste less time sorting through applications.

It's the same reason jobs that used to be entry level professional are now requiring 2-3 years experience. Where they might have been hiring people right out of college in the past, it's now easy to just get people with experience already for the same low, low wage.

If you want to get a decent office job with a HS diploma, then you're probably going to have to wait until college grads are able to get better ones, because if it's down to the HS diploma guy or the guy with the bachelors, the guy with the college degree is most always going to get that job.

LoneWolf343: BrainyBear: No big deal. Employment discrimination laws just demand that requirements actually be relevant to the job they're hiring for. If you don't need a high school diploma to be the custodian, then why needlessly require it?

While we are at it, stop demanding bachelor degrees for everything.

Jesus f*cking Christ, THIS.

Disfunction: If people aren't book smart, they're not stupid... they're learning disabled. And why should employers be able to eliminate a candidate for a job because of their disability?

Uhm... 'cause if they haven't demonstrated the baseline learning capacity generally associated with a HSD, how can they demonstrate the baseline learning capacity associated with learning the new job?

For pitty's sake; get a farkin' GED even - they're free and so are the prep classes. Do something to show an investment in yourself, instead of worrying about what you don't have. Farkin' too lazy to try .... gowldammmed right you ought to be discriminated against.

That word can have positive connotations too.

/Not "you" in particular -- more of a generic, all-inclusive sense.

//back to batein'

We use the HS diploma/GED criteria to screen out applicants where I work. More than indicating whether someone is intelligent enough to perform the job tasks we need them to perform, having at least one or the other suggests that someone had the drive to finish what they started.

It is the same principle as requiring a college degree for certain positions. It's not that someone without the degree couldn't do the job. It's that when there are dozens of applicants, we would rather choose someone who has already proven they have enough ambition to improve themselves.

FSTFKL: Monty845: FSTFKL: BrainyBear: No big deal. Employment discrimination laws just demand that requirements actually be relevant to the job they're hiring for. If you don't need a high school diploma to be the custodian, then why needlessly require it?

Indeed. I've seen job postings lately for receptionists, office clerks, etc. all of which *require* a 4-year college degree. Now I'll grant you, a person with a degree is likely to have some of the skills that you will need for the job. On the other hand, over the years of my working life I've encountered many perfectly competent people in those kinds of positions who didn't have a degree. It makes no sense.

It does make sense, employers want an easy way to screen for some minimum level of intelligence. Sure, a person without a college degree may by really smart, but they can also be dumb as a nail. Most people with college degrees should be intelligent enough learn a job without too much difficulty just like they managed to figure out how to graduate.

I disagree. If you look at the person's resume and see that (for example) they've got a few year's experience as a receptionist already, I think you can safely assume that he/she has the required level of intelligence to do the job. Your argument only makes sense if you are hiring really young people with little or no work history.

It's not about if they can do the job or not. It's about making it easy for the HR person to actually conduct the search when there's a glut of candidates.

Because they'll find someone with a college degree, or some college experience, who has had similar experience working as well. And they'll pick that person. And they'll have wasted their time going over applications from a bunch of people with GEDs who really wouldn't be well suited for the job.

If you're trying to fill a job, and you can get 250 applications, 100 of which might be qualified candidates, if you only require a HS diploma, or you could get 75 applicants, 50 of whom might be qualified if you require a bachelors, why wouldn't you just go ahead and list a bachelors degree as a requirement? It makes your work easier, and you still wind up with the same pile of top candidates, since that college degree helps a resume rise to the top anyway.

OneNightStand: /Became a teacher because HS sucked, wanted to change the system.
//Left teaching because the system is rigged and corrupt; was a good teacher but was unable to change anything.


You don't ever change the system by being a cog. If you want to change things, get yourself into running the system. Run for your local school board, county board, city council or state legislature. If you want to change the system, get involved on the systemic level. One person can't change a damn thing from the ground floor- you can make it a little better for your students, but you have nowhere near the leverage needed to move an institution.

Get involved. We need more people who want to actually reform education to benefit the students on school boards and less busybody helicopter moms trying to require uniforms and make sure anybody who bites pizza into the shape of a gun is suspended.

malaktaus: I don't necessarily agree with the way they're going about it, but the fact that a high school diploma is a near-universal requirement is not a good thing and something should be done. It doesn't make menial workers more competent or intelligent, it just makes a high school education less rigorous and takes limited funds from people who could benefit from additional attention and shifts it to people who are and will always be rock-stupid. Aside from that it makes low-income people, who are far more likely to drop out, less able to make a living and therefore more likely to commit crimes. This coincidentally disproportionally hurts minorities. I could go on, but long story short, I think the push to make everyone graduate high school is maybe the single biggest problem in American education today.

Soooo... if high school were harder:, more kids would stay, get a diploma, land a job, and not be criminals? Why not go about it that way, then, instead of doing away with the employers' ability to link educatiion with motivation and employability??

Even better -- make schools that serve mainly minority populations even more rigorous to, you know, disproportionally help them.

Nowhere in the discussion is this "push" to "make everyone graduate high school" -- at issue is whether or not employers can consider HSD status in employment decisions. You don't wanna get a HSD/GED, fine. Settle for the lot in life you've settled for, and quit your biatching.