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Notes -
Largely because they're not allowed to filter by basic IQ and because degrees have become so ubiquitous that they CAN demand them.
See:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidies/
And for bonus points:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-19/thiel-s-unicorn-success-is-awkward-for-colleges
Regarding IQ, there is the Wonderlic, which is used by many employers and is implicitly understood to be an IQ test (and produces a Bell Curve like a real IQ test) , and a lot of people on Reddit can attest having to take it. A full-scale IQ test would take hours to administer and req. a professional psychologist to proctor, which would be impractical for employers. The Wonderlic takes 12 minutes and can be administered and scored by the employer, and the Wonderlic also shoulders the legal burden of the test, which has resisted legal challenges, what few there have been. Also, it's not like employers ever used IQ tests even before credentialism become nearly as rampant as it is today. The degree solves many things at once: it filters for IQ, work ethic, and political correctness-all in one.
IQ tests for employment are unambiguously legal in the UK (I took a double-figure number of them over the course of my time on the graduate job circuit, despite having a degree in physics from Cambridge which pretty much guaranteed that my IQ was beyond the range of the tests). There is less pointless credentialism around degrees in the UK than in the US, but not that much less, and it is almost entirely in areas where there is an explicit requirement for a degree imposed by US regulatory bodies or trade associations (e.g. the 150-hour rule for accountants). The phenomenon of "you need a 100 IQ to be a secretary and nowadays most young people with 100 IQ and any degree of conscientiousness have degrees, so we are going to advertise for graduate secretaries" absolutely happens in the UK as well.
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