Recruitment programmes that filter out candidates who fail gain at least 2:1 degrees run counter to many employers’ duties to hire a “diverse” workforce, it is claimed.
Imagine that, discrimination against the thick and or lazy.
Terrible employment discrimination
February 28th, 2012 · 13 Comments
Tags: Education
13 responses so far ↓
1 Grumpy Old Man // Feb 28, 2012 at 9:22 am
They can always work in the public sector, there’s no discrimination against the thick or lazy there.
2 bilbaoboy // Feb 28, 2012 at 10:07 am
As somebody who got a 2:2 I have to agree because obviously I am brilliant. But leaving that aside….
Someone will jump on this and soon it will be regulated and I am going to be told to hire people who can’t get a job on their own which is obviously unfair.
That way I can lose our company’s competitive advantage and we can all be equal. Hooray!
3 David Bolton // Feb 28, 2012 at 10:11 am
Or it’s discrimination against older people who got normal degrees at a time when honours degrees were much rarer. I’m one of those.
When I went to uni in 77, only 5% of the population actually got there. But now there are far more degree holders and degrees have been devalued.
Heck in the 70s you could get a good computing job without a degree…
4 Ian Bennett // Feb 28, 2012 at 10:30 am
A workforce can only be regarded as sufficiently diverse if a significant proportion is unsuitable for the job.
5 Serf // Feb 28, 2012 at 10:32 am
Whilst I would be the last one to ask for regulation, I have been bemused in the past, as a man of a couple of decades of diverse (in the real sense of the word) to be asked about my A Level results. I do think that a lot of recruiters very often miss the point.
I once read an article that said that most FTSE100 CEOs had either a 1st or a 3rd, those with the 3rd class degree had top social skills and a lust for life that made up for the lack of a top notch degree.
I got a Desmond, and an enlarged liver at university and have frustratedly worked for Dull as Ditch Water bosses with superior certificates ever since.
6 JuliaM // Feb 28, 2012 at 11:40 am
Damn it, Grumpy Old Man beat me to it!
7 Jahn // Feb 28, 2012 at 11:59 am
I suggest that in the future it will be up to the employers to grade competence acquired at school – I believe too much of what is now everywhere the curriculum is decided by those who have no interest in its actual usefulness. Combined with Friedman’s school voucher, and some serious remuneration for being chosen as school or teacher, I think this might improve the coupling of education and work.
8 Surreptitious Evil // Feb 28, 2012 at 12:02 pm
Blanket lines like that are generally drawn by lazy HR people who can’t be bothered to learn the actual skills and representative qualifications of the business area they are supposed to be supporting.
I have several qualifications simply because it is an arbitrary tick box that may, once, have been relevant to a particular job but has become accepted as “standard”. I actually have one that encompasses another – and regularly get asked to present proof of both …
9 Surreptitious Evil // Feb 28, 2012 at 12:06 pm
Oh, sorry, in other news, ex-Vice Chancellor of Hatfield Poly complains about companies discriminating against ex-polys?
Bastiat, taxi for Bastiat?
10 Doug // Feb 28, 2012 at 12:22 pm
The fact that companies require candidates to have an university education is proof enough that they discriminate against diversity.
11 dearieme // Feb 28, 2012 at 2:04 pm
In the US the Supreme Court has ruled against the use of IQ tests as part of recruitment, and so firms get round the problem by putting amplified importance on educational credentials which – why might that be? – the Supreme Court has not yet outlawed. So the proposition is that our firms must be even more handicapped than American ones? Brilliant.
12 So Much For Subtlety // Feb 29, 2012 at 12:16 am
American Courts have warned employers that discrimination against the dumb may be illegal.
There have been a couple of law suits. I will see if I can find a link.
So luckily British companies won’t face unfair competition
(Speaking as someone who, umm, got a 2:2. Not as Keynes might have said, because he was smarter than the examiners either)
13 Tractor Gent // Feb 29, 2012 at 9:54 pm
I got a 2:2 many many moons ago. I don’t actually recall the company I joined stipulating a grade, and in fact I joined at the upper of the two levels at which they normally recruited graduates. I don’t think I did too badly for the company – I didn’t become CEO, but then I wasn’t really aiming to, and I (mostly) enjoyed it apart from the increasing incidence of PHBs towards the end.
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