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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   15753 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026

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But first, employers must no longer prioritize (let alone require) college degrees

And instead of using college degrees to filter out applicants, they will be using...? Remember, the most obvious answers are illegal.

Aptitude tests are explicitly legal.

I am very interested to see the outcomes of Palantir's Meritocracy Fellowship. Recruit people directly out of high school; use SATs and high school experience as proxies for g and conscientiousness; hire them if they succeed.

If college is replaced by unpaid internships, those. The internships would be easy to get, and incompetent employees would be fired early and not recommended, so their resume would only grant more unpaid internships.

Unpaid internships have the potential to teach more relevant skills cheaper. Ideally, they’re mutual: the employer gets a free worker, the employee learns exactly what they’ll need for a paid career.

Although they have the alternate potential to be worse than college: an employer may require busywork that would be useless in a real career, “grade” students unfairly (threaten to fire and give negative recommendation based on arbitrary criteria), and probably won’t provide the social aspect of college (which may shift out of college into third spaces if everyone's doing internships, but may remain or disappear, especially if employees are being overworked).

For this reason, I think internships should be advertised and accredited by some agency, like colleges are. Or, students should still attend college, but coursework should be almost entirely replaced with internships. The idea of an internship comes from today’s colleges’ internship programs: every one I’m aware of is highly praised, so much that I’ve frequently heard applicants choose colleges mainly for their internship opportunities.

If you suddenly have so much work done by unpaid interns, why hire any of them on for paid work? They leave, and their place is taken by yet another desperate unpaid intern. This isn't even slavery; slaves get fed.

It's apprenticeship. You hire them because they are now more skilled than the newer interns as a result of your tutelage. Obviously, many ways for this to go wrong in practice.

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