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Notes -
Why wouldn’t employers be allowed to use this approach?
If the concern is “disparate impact”, that could apply even now, for employers using “any bachelor’s degree” rather than specifically “physics degree”—though I grant that the impact gets more disparate, as it were, as the IQ filter gets stronger.
I suppose employers are caught between the Scylla of needing to hire high IQ candidates and the Charybdis of needing to keep the filter as plausibly-not-disparate-impact-causing enough to avoid the baleful Eye of Title VII
You have kind of answered your own question here. Also, if an employer requires a physics major for a job that has nothing to do with physics, it's much easier to argue that the employer is using the requirement to camouflage unlawful discrimination.
Even if the employer chooses majors which are non-STEM but known for attracting smart diligent students (e.g. classics), I can pretty much guarantee that they will be open to a charge of cherry-picking majors so as to facilitate unlawful discrimination.
(As a side note, I feel pretty strongly that all this stuff will be moot pretty soon due to advances in AI.)
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