One possible solution is cognitive screening - the use of tests such as the Wonderlic, SAT/ACT, or Wechsler to find prospective employees who can learn quickly and have good critical thinking skills (and thus would benefit the most from on-site training for technical tasks. training obviously costs money), but unfortunately something called 'disparate impact' makes this difficult to implement, so employers instead have to let colleges do the screening, turning an advanced degree into a very overpriced, time consuming 'IQ test'. Some people are more concerned about hurt feelings than providing equal opportunities. The 'logic' is if the tests expose a reality that isn't politically correct, we must do away with the test, so the result is more student loan debt, a worse labor market, and more credentialism.
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> The 'logic' is if the tests expose a reality that isn't politically correct, we must do away with the test
Untrue. The logic is if there is a disparate impact against a legally-protected class, such that the test would be a convenient cover for illegal discrimination, and you allow discrimination using the test without demonstration of relevance, it becomes an easy, obvious, and effective tool for those looking for cover for discrimination on an illegal basis; to avoid that, the logic goes, you simply require those who wish to use the test as a basis for discrimination in that case to actually be able demonstrate that the test is meaningful to the job and that it is applied as a discrimination factor in a manner consistent with the way that it is meaningful to the job.
If they've actually done the kind of analysis that would let them know that the test really is useful, this is trivial; it does, however, prevent adopting a test with discriminatory effect against a protected class merely based on intuition or conventional wisdom.
The type of analysis involved may be costly, but then, if it really is something that those wishing to apply have high confidence would be valuable for their business, that type of analysis would be worthwhile to pay for. The reason it is difficult is because none of the people who like to talk about how useful these things would be when talk is cheap wants to put their money where the mouth is on the issue.
Strangely, we are unwilling to apply that same logic to traditional hiring processes. I.e., few companies have ever done a study (sufficient to win in court) to prove that their subjective human opinion-based tests do not have a disparate impact. Yet processes like this are somehow allowed.
I.e., if my subjective human hiring technique is biased, you need to prove I discriminated on purpose. If my objective, IQ-based technique is biased, I need to prove I didn't. Why this disparity?
>Why this disparity?
For the simple fact that we already have evidence that some protected classes perform worse on IQ tests. Therefore, simply by using an IQ test you are discriminating against a protected class. The burden is on you to prove that the discrimination is necessary. No one needs to prove that discrimination is happening because you are using a test that has already been show to be discriminatory.
Interview based hiring techniques are much more varied than IQ tests, and they have not been shown to be near universally discriminatory. Therefore the burden is first to prove that discrimination is happening in the particular situation.
>they have not been shown to be near universally discriminatory.
They actually have...
I am not going to get fully into it at the moment (but there's a ton of research on the topic) but we know that resumes that say Lakisha are significantly less likely to get a callback than a resume that says Karen.
Another example is blinding in orchestras. When the practice became the applicant played behind a curtain (so they judge didn't know what the applicant looked like) the number of women in orchestras increased.
I'm with you on this, but there are differences.
Subjective interview based hiring across all companies has been show to be discriminatory towards protected classes. But that's different than showing a specific company's hiring process is discriminative.
If company A uses IQ test X, and IQ test X has been shown to be discriminatory, then you can say definitively that the hiring process of company A is discriminatory.
If company B uses hiring process Y, and you can show that hiring process Y is discriminatory in 50% of the companies that use it, you can't make a definitive conclusion about company B in the same way you can company A.
Yea, I agree, thanks for clarifying.
There is a huge difference is explicit bias (give applicants an IQ test even though we'll weed out the blacks or even to weed out the blacks) and subconscious bias - which is an incredibly complex problem.
Most companies are trying to eliminate (unintended) bias in the hiring process.
> Strangely, we are unwilling to apply that same logic to traditional hiring processes.
Untrue.
> I.e., few companies have ever done a study (sufficient to win in court) to prove that their subjective human opinion-based tests do not have a disparate impact.
When an employment practice -- including a subjective, human-based tests -- does have a disproportionate impact against a protected class, and actions under it are challenged under anti-discrimination law, companies do have to prove that the practices are sufficiently related to the specific job being hired for that the disproportionate impact is not unjustified. IQ tests are not different in this regard.
They are different in that:
(1) the evidence of disproportionate impact is well-established and ready to use, and
(2) unlike most companies' other hiring practices, there is very little on the surface to show a trier-of-fact that it is related to the specific job duties, so tying it to the specific job duties takes a lot of work -- and, in fact, the places where they have been used and challenged are largely the kinds of places where studies have shown them least relevant to job performance.
how many examples are there of jobs where mental ability is irrelevant to job performance AND where there are more readily available and reliable signals of future job performance?
Trying disprove disparate impact can be time-consuming and expensive, especially with the litigation, and that's why only large companies and municipalities can use these tests. One problem according to business surveys is the skills mismatch, which is that employers can't find enough qualified employees to fill open spots. Maybe the labor market would be better if these tests were made more readily available so employers can find talent that would benefit the most from on-site training, but most businesses don't have the resources to disprove disparate impact should a lawsuit arise, nor the compiled data to show there isn't discriminatory hiring . Even if the plaintiff's case is without merit, it still costs the employer time and money to disprove the case. And it's not like the defendant can recover from a frivolous lawsuit.
I'm not sure why employers must prove the relevance of IQ tests but not work sample tests, given that the former are better predictors of job success (Hunter & Schmidt 1998).
> I'm not sure why employers must prove the relevance of IQ tests but not work sample tests
If challenged in court, and if the work sample test is shown to have a disparate impact such that its use would be illegal discrimination if it were not tailored to the job, they do have to show this for work sample tests. Your premise is simply false.
(OTOH, the disparate impact of IQ tests is more readily established by a plaintiff since there are numerous, readily available studies. So the work of establishing the threshold issue which requires the employer to prove relevance has largely been done by the plaintiff for IQ tests.)
> given that the former are better predictors of job success
The legal standard addresses the specific job for which hiring is being done, not a generic job. Interestingly, your source indicates that the types of jobs where IQ test challenges have notably occurred are those where the test is least relevant per the source you cite (unskilled/semiskilled jobs).
Let's imagine that tomorrow I come up with a magical super-reliable method of interviewing, which works better for most jobs than existing specific methods. Then I'm fucked! My method will certainly have disparate impact (because it has nonzero correlation with IQ), be not very tailored to any particular job (because it's magical), and there will be numerous available studies (making it easier to sue me as you explain). So tell me, what incentive do I have to invent such a method?
> Let's imagine that tomorrow I come up with a magical super-reliable method of interviewing, which works better for most jobs than existing specific methods.
If you can demonstrate this is the case for the specific jobs where you want to apply it, you will then have no problem, even if it has a disproportionate negative impact on a protected class.
> You will have no problem
Only in the same sense that an unjustly accused person will "have no problem" as long as they're actually innocent. In practice, they do have a problem. Firms are afraid of using IQ tests and being the first against the wall.
Actually, there seems to not really be any legal issue with IQ testing job candidates (in the US), and plenty of companies do some kind of cognitive testing: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/07/three_big_facts....
It isn't about political correctness (this word has really lost its meaning lately) its about eliminating tools that companies use to illegally discriminate against a protected class. It depends on its intent and its effect. The company must demonstrate the job requirement that has a disparate impact is job-related and consistent with business needs. A strength test might have a disparate impact on women and those with disabilities but that's ok as long as the job actually requires heavy lifting.
Tests have been used as a tool to weed out the undesirables, this is a fact. Look at literacy requirements for voting, for example. If this wasn't the case we wouldn't be facing this issue.
That being said - its a huge can of worms that needs more clarifying. It has a spotty judicial history, to put it lightly.
It is also questionable that requiring a college degree for many jobs is actually legal anyway and it is consistent with precedent such a practice is actually illegal.
Griggs v. Duke Power was a big Supreme Court case in this area. The Duke Power Company had explicitly segregated its workforce when it was legal to do so reserving the low paying jobs for blacks and the high paying jobs for whites. When it became illegal to do so they changed "you have to be white" to "you have to have a high school diploma or pass an IQ test."
Duke lost the case.
See here: http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=3118
>Furthermore, the company’s lawyers argued, the legislative history of the Civil Rights Act clearly showed that it was not intended to interfere with bona fide aptitude testing, widely used in business at that time. During Senate debate on the bill, opponents argued that it could be used to attack employment testing, which had in fact occurred in a case in Illinois involving Motorola. A state official had ruled the company’s testing illegal under state law because it was “unfair to disadvantaged groups.”
>Bill sponsors, including Senator Hubert Humphrey, replied that nothing in the language of the statute could be construed that way, but to head off objections, they included a new section, 703(h). That makes it legal for an employer to use a “professionally designed ability test” if it is not “designed, intended or used to discriminate….”
>You might think the Court would have ruled in Duke Power’s favor. Wrong—it ruled unanimously against it. The justices ignored the legislative history and gave deference to the federal agency charged with enforcing the law, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
>But there was also a delayed consequence. With actual intelligence testing now an invitation to costly litigation, “many employers made the college degree a de facto intelligence test and focused only on hiring applicants who possessed it.”
>O’Keefe and Vedder raise that question: “If challenged, could employers who have set the college degree as a requirement show that it has anything at all to do with ‘business necessity’ or are ‘job related’? That is very doubtful.”
>Suppose that someone who’d been turned away from a sales job for lack of college degree took the company to court, claiming that its educational requirement had a disparate impact, screening out people who could succeed in the job. That would appear to be a strong case.
>I have never heard of such a case, attacking an employer’s college degree requirement on disparate impact grounds. But nothing would more rapidly deflate the college bubble than if the Court were to hear such a case and rule consistently with Griggs.
Intention doesn't match with reality. Honestly, we need to revisit the issue and so something differently. However, political correctness has nothing to do with it.
(I am also not convinced such tests actually have much to do with intelligence anyways...)
"Political correctness" has maintained its primary meaning over the years, which is an indication of terrible opinions coming from the user.