[tman]

"Second, it may provide a credential that employers want, not because it represents actual skills, but because it's a weeding tool that doesn't produce civil-rights suits as, say, IQ tests might."

4 years out of a young person's life when a 2-hour test works better for predicting job performance is sort of awful, isn't it?.

[chrischen]

To be fair IQ tests would probably be weighted less in relation to other things on the resume than a college degree is relative to other things on the resume.

But since a college degree is perceived as a more raw evaluation of skill/potential skill than an IQ test (which is more speculative as it only evaluates potential and evaluated in a short test), the degree is often given too much weight.

IQ test: speculative evaluation of potential but requires virtually no money/wealth to master. College degree: can/must be bought with (sufficient) money or (semi) inherited (in the case of legacy admissions). Both are bad.