Employers used to have standardized tests for all sorts of things. The tests enabled a lot of upward mobility for people to pursue occupations that did not require college degree. If you could show aptitude in a test and had at least a high school education, they'd take you on and train you and you'd have a nice career.
However, certain groups sued saying that "equality of outcome" is more important than "equality of opportunity". They argued that if the outcome of a test showed intersectional differences, then the test must be biased. They succeeded in pressuring the various trade groups and industries to get rid of the tests or be sued into oblivion.
The trade groups that offered these tests realized it was just easier to require college degrees as a proxy instead of having their own specific tests and having to deal with these pressure groups. This is why many occupations these days require a degree when it seems like that should be unnecessary.
This slammed the door to upward mobility for many that the pressure groups were claiming to try to help.
Or, what a private employer tested was not necessarily a fair standardized test, given they are a private entity that could do whatever they wanted, not part of the public education system that has to adhere to all kinds of annoying standards.
Just because something claims to be fair doesn't mean it is.
It was a Supreme Court case, Griggs vs Duke Power, in 1970. Since then, employers cannot use IQ tests or standardized tests, since they were deemed discriminatory against minorities.
This case says something different though. It says you can’t use a test that doesn’t relate to the job, regardless of if there’s intent to discriminate or not.
A standardized test that tests your ability to do the job is still allowable — presumably even if minorities fare worse on it.
This case is the whole reason the "disparate impact" phrase exists and its had a chilling effect on employment testing. If you're a large FANG company hiring programmers, you risk testing (validating someone can write code), but if you don't have the pocketbook and legal team, there is not much incentive to put your company at legal risk of being sued. This is especially true when you can just use "college degree in X required" as an extremely inefficient and costly proxy for what could have been a test. And we wonder why tuition is so high.
But even small tech companies do coding tests. I don't think its a function of large pocketbooks. Rather I think that they found tests that correlate more to the work done on the actual job.
This misses the point. The point is that the process is the punishment. The process is that these groups will sue over and over again until you give in.
However, certain groups sued saying that "equality of outcome" is more important than "equality of opportunity". They argued that if the outcome of a test showed intersectional differences, then the test must be biased. They succeeded in pressuring the various trade groups and industries to get rid of the tests or be sued into oblivion.
The trade groups that offered these tests realized it was just easier to require college degrees as a proxy instead of having their own specific tests and having to deal with these pressure groups. This is why many occupations these days require a degree when it seems like that should be unnecessary.
This slammed the door to upward mobility for many that the pressure groups were claiming to try to help.