[toast0]

I couldn't read the article because of the paywall.

I'm going to assume the person in question graduated from IIT as well as gained entry. If so, I don't see how it matters if he got in through a door with a lower bar, if he graduated, he graduated. Unless graduating from IIT is a rubber stamp for showing up?

Also, just because the bar is lower for admissions doesn't mean that people who cleared the bar couldn't have cleared the bar otherwise. I don't see how IIT entrance exam scores are relevant for employment at Cisco anyway.

[MattGaiser]

It depends on what theory you believe about why a university degree is valuable. If you see it as a competitive signal of how many people a candidate was better than, then the signal is contaminated.

[mirimir]

One might feel the same about an African American graduate of MIT, but it'd be illegal to discriminate based on it.

[tesseracted]

Ivy League degrees are worthless to most employers except for what they say about how you score (or who your parents are) and this signal is unavailable to those who benefit from lowered admission standards. Does anyone actually think that you learn anything of substance better at the University of Pennsylvania than at the University of Iowa?

[pankajdoharey]

Haha, Spot on!