David Christopher Kaufman: “Equity,” Employers are now ignoring educational achievement

Today, at most two-thirds of higher education institutions, including Harvard and Stanford, don’t require the SAT for admission. American Bar Association has recently announced that they will. drop the LSAT As an admissions requirement to law school. Now, some are calling for the prestigious MCAT to be scrapped as the gold standard for medical school admissions — all in the name of racial equity.

As a result, colleges are now the most recent standard to be cut, as evidenced by a recent job listing for a position in the director’s office.

A LinkedIn posting TriBeCa-based HR&A Advisors asked prospective applicants for the $138,432-to $121,668-per-year position to be removed. “all undergraduate and graduate school name references” from their résumés and only cite the degree itself. A quick spin through a few other HR&A job postings confirmed that this policy extends company-wide as part of their “ongoing work to build a hiring system that is free from bias and based on candidate merit and performance.”

It is not surprising that employers are trying to overlook the educational benefits of new employees at a time when equity policies and inclusion policies are corporate must-haves. Colleges and universities are a good example of this. even the military (which no longer requires a high school diploma) drop the most basic entry requirements, why shouldn’t the private sector follow suit?

There’s no doubt that access to fancy schools and pricy education has historically shut out racial and economic minorities from many employment arenas — particularly at the highest ends of the earning spectrum. But obscuring education histories won’t solve these inequities. It only creates more.

One, companies such as HR&A still consider education important. If it didn’t, they would ask candidates to Completely Take out schooling and not only school names from your CVs.

The second is that education matters for job candidates. Many people have borrowed money to get college degrees. Signify something To the HR&As all over the world. Many college students have also spent hours supporting academic societies, college sports teams, and other extracurricular activities. This is both a resume-building activity and is deeply rewarding.

I myself attended universities (Brandeis, NYU) that were far above my family’s affordability level precisely because I knew they were investments in my long-term earning potential as well as a way to keep me on the straight and narrow in high school. Sure, as with many Americans — particularly African-Americans like myself — I took on student debt. The pursuit of academic success did not only help me avoid teenage troubles but it also gave me a good job and a strong sense and self-worth.

Policies like HR&As are not just punitive, they’re downright lazy. Telling young people —particularly the young people-of-color this “school-blind hiring” purports to benefit—that academic prestige doesn’t matter literally reinforces the worst stereotypes of minority cultures. It says academic prestige doesn’t matter To them.

Furthermore, for HR folks and recruiters, ignoring educational bona fides — while appearing benevolent—is a missed opportunity to truly learn, as they say in woke-speak, about the “lived experiences” Because they want to attract the diverse workforce that they so desperately need. 

Many black students have attended historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) like my grandparents. These are not just places of learning, but integral components of their graduates’ identities. HBCUs have a meaning: they matter. These well-intentioned initiatives, dominated largely by white liberals erase that meaning. 

This is why school-blind hiring feels so frustrating — and phony. It gives already unmotivated workers a second task while they are able to improve their anti-bias skills for doing literally nothing. 

Of course, this doesn’t mean that graduates of schools less costly or “lower ranking” My American Dream should not be denied to anyone other than me. Instead, hiring groups need to work harder to figure how to get there without erasing other’s educational achievements. 

David Christopher Kaufman works as an editor and columnist. [email protected]