Colleges and universities have been implementing controversial new diversity reforms, including dropping standardized test scores, that eliminate objective criteria in academic admissions or advancement. Now, HR&A Advisors, the TriBeCa-based real estate consultancy, has drawn attention to its LinkedIn posting asking applicants to to remove “all undergraduate and graduate school name references” from their résumés. In order to achieve diversity goals, the company wants applicants to only list the degree and not where it came from. It is equity through obscurity. It is as irrational to eliminate any consideration of an academic institution as it is to rely exclusively on the academic institution.
The company insists that it is adopting this new policy as part of “ongoing work to build a hiring system that is free from bias and based on candidate merit and performance.” However, the identification of these institutions does reflect “merit and performance.”
There can be vast differences in the academic rigor of academic institutions. To only go by the degrees is manifestly illogical. It is akin to saying that you competed on a baseball team but not reference the specific team or league to gauge the level of performance. You could have played for the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp or the New York Yankees.
I certainly agree that schools can perpetuate an elitist culture through such rankings. Moreover, many students cannot afford to go top universities or were faced with economic or social barriers in their elementary, middle, or high school educations.
Additionally, there can be too much importance placed on school affiliation. Despite my personal and intellectual regard for him, I was highly critical of the late Justice Antonin Scalia when he told American University law students that they should not envision Supreme Court clerkships. I have also been a long-standing critic of the hold of Harvard and Yale on the makeup of the Court.
However, the problem of blind elitism is getting better overall. There is not a huge divide between the top ten and the many of the college and universities in this country. Moreover, many top schools have been criticized for standards that devalue or undermine academic excellence.
Nevertheless, there remain significant differences in the quality of education between many schools. That is particularly the case on the graduate level. It is also true that some schools excel in particular areas. For example, with a son about to go to medical school, I have learned that the top medical schools do not track the conventional rankings when it comes to many specialties. In weighing the selection of a doctor in primary care, you would necessarily consider the applicant’s medical school to appraise their training.
Likewise, the ranking of top social working schools have universities like the University of Chicago but also schools that are not ordinarily competitors like Case Western, Brandeis, and Pittsburgh. Students in these areas work extremely hard to gain admission and to train at these top schools. These schools invest heavily in these areas to stay competitive with top faculty and ample resources.
HR&A Advisors obviously is free to adopt any evaluation system that it sees fit for new applicants. Yet, removing the name of the academic institution for applicants denies many applicants a measure of their prior work and achievement. It also denies the employer relevant data or information on the background of an applicant.
All of these applicants achieved the distinction of securing undergraduate or graduate degrees. However, it is willful blindness to suggest that all degrees are the same or that there is no difference in particular degrees between institutions. Many students make considerable financial and familial sacrifice to go to a more rigorous university or a university with a top program. That effort should not be simply discarded by employers.
Finally, the approach of HR&A Advisors appears virtue signaling without real substance on a practical level. If students submit their transcripts or faculty references, the identity of their schools will be obvious. Moreover, in interviews, it will be hard for applicants to discuss their academic training while redacting any reference or hint at the academic institution. For example, if a student studied under a well-known figure in real estate or business studies, is she supposed to avoid mentioning the professor’s name to conceal her educational institution?
It would seem to be more logical to have training or guidelines to address threshold bias. The school affiliation alone should not be a determinative factor in decisions. It can be weighed with a variety of other factors in a holistic consideration of the candidate’s record. Identification of the potential bias can go a long way to reducing its impact on hiring decisions.
The alternative is to treat educational institutions as the equivalent of bleach, products that are largely identical on a chemical level. Is the difference between academic institutions merely the bottle and the label? Even as a critic of the current orthodoxy controlling higher education, I do not believe that all universities are fungible. The solution to bias is not blindness but balance.
Well, now, this new avenue of prog/left utopian dreams leaves open an opportunity for new businesses selling college degrees. Just send in your cash and you get a PhD. from Manny’s School of Misinformation and Propaganda – no questions asked. Perfect. Even “you” can become a brain surgeon – all it takes is cash. – easy credit available through Manny’s Easy Loan LLC.
Whether the names of colleges or universities should be excluded will not be an issue much longer. They will all be trash soon enough. Besides, it is probably racist to even require a college degree.
What they are really saying is that diversity can only be accomplished by destroying meritocracy because the intellectual prowess is absent as proven by the socio-techno-economic achievement of the various groups on a global scale.
“In order to achieve diversity goals, the company wants applicants to only list the degree and not where it came from.” (JT)
If they actually implement that hiring policy, they’re committing marketplace suicide (by not hiring the best). If they don’t implement that policy, they’re committing suicide (DEI rats will eat them alive).
You can choose to adopt an irrational policy. But you cannot avoid the disastrous consequences of that policy.
I was about to jump in with both feet on the Professor’s side when he mentioned his son getting ready to apply to medical school and that triggered my own medical school and residency applications.
I graduated from Emory in Atlanta. My older sister and I were the first in our extended family to ever go to college. Emory let me into the college but there was no way they were going to let me into their medical school. As soon as I graduated from college I could feel the wind hustling me out the door. I was not a legacy admission.
The Medical College of Georgia was happy to have me and I forever loved them for their faith and when they ask for cash. Emory’s requests go into the trash. Graduated well and with honors.
I faced the same when I went on internship interviews. Nobody really knew much about my med school, even though it had some renowned graduates like J. Willis Hurst and others. Even interviewed at George Washington there in DC where they told me about all their celebrity patients.
I wanted to go to Baylor in Houston at the Texas Medical Center. That place, along with Cleveland Clinic and Harvard and others were the top centers in Cardiopulmonary disease. They knew little about MCG except for a young man they had accepted the year prior to me and he made such a splash with his excellence, that i caught the wave he created and they took me in and I was able to build upon what he did. The Chief of Medicine specifically told me that this prior gentleman paved the way. I did well and had many accolades and the offer of a faculty appt before going into private practice.
So my story is mixed. The school is important but the people are also. And Baylor proved that to me. I have used that when interviewing new hires in years gone by.
Gems can come from everywhere and all they need, sometimes, is a chance.
It’s up to you to find those gems.
One last thought. That little known medical school better prepared me for my residency and fellowship than many of my colleagues who came from much higher profile medical schools, including the northeast.
good luck with that ignorant diverse doctor
time to end all federal aid and loans to colleges. Also to tax any non-profit including colleges where anyone gets more than $100k+
time to level the playing field
Of all the positions taken by the American left, the demand for equality of results (as identified by this article) encapsulates more than any other their requirement to “share the wealth.” This includes intellectual wealth, ie plain old ability and the personal discipline to work hard and forgo today’s pleasure for tomorrow’s gains. The left’s extremism is not limited to the expropriation of property.
If they want less transparency as a way to “insure diversity” why not do away with all of the boxes that denote a persons background, race, religion, sex or income. Let’s not know who is black, white, Hispanic or Asian. This way we won’t be able to give a seat to Teddy Kennedy or a kid that hasn’t excelled in basic high school courses as well as some other kids have. You want merit, just hire or enroll on merit based indices.
If a person isn’t allowed to achieve their God given ability you dumb them down to make everyone happy.
I’m just glad it happen after Gates created the Computer
Thinking Gates invented the computer makes you a victim of your first sentence.
@anoleman
Oo, sorry, gotta double down. Gates didn’t invent *anything*, whereas Jobs and Woz actually DID create the Apple and Mac. Gates was lent a Mac by Jobs under the auspices of software development and Gates reverse-engineered it to make Windows, it was essentially a stolen product. Prior to that Microsoft was screwing around with BASIC using tech from people like IBM. Pretty much everything after that Microsoft bought. They ‘created’ almost nothing. Gates was a con man from the start. Linux and Mac OS are the actual innovations, and Xerox actually invented the GUI as we know it. Tim Berners Lee and team developed the world wide web on NeXt computers, not Windows. Gates has done very little in his life worth praising.
James,
Glad to here you double down. I had a freind who worked at Xorox at the time it drove him nuts everything that they had invented but they couldn’t get past the “we make copiers” dogma. They also developed the mouse and I believe ethernet. Gates was just an opportunist who was at the right place at the right time.
Nice virtue signaling. Unfortunately, everyone knows about networks.
I would love to see the stranglehold that Harvard and Yale on our legal system broken
I followed the hyper-link to the HR&A Advisors website. I found nice photos of all the partners and brief bios of them. I’m a very shallow dude, so I clicked on the photo of the most attractive chick to see if she has her alma maters listed in her bio.
She does. Bachelors from an Ivy (Penn) and Masters from MIT. Impressive.
I wonder why HR&A Advisors think it is important for prospective customers to know the names of the schools from which that partner graduated?
When Thomas Jefferson came up with the idea for the University of Virginia, the basic concept was a school that had no fixed curriculum and offered no degrees — a mind-sharing place where people would stay for 6 months or 60 years — as long as they felt that they were benefiting from what others had to offer or that others were benefiting from what they, themselves, had to offer.
Of course if America had decided to follow through on that idea, Universities wouldn’t be the diploma-selling scams and bogus-résumé manufacturing factories that they are today, and job interviewers would have to do the actual work of figuring out whether an applicant showed any signs of possessing the requisite initiative and mental capacity to get the job done.
Under Jefferson’s methodology, people would go to college for the purpose of improving their minds, and presumably a better job and more money would naturally follow as a byproduct of a well-functioning brain, instead of the streamlined process we used today, where the rusty old nonsense about improving one’s mind and learning how to think is dust-binned, and instead, people are basically given a set of crayons and some Elmer’s glue, glitter, and smiley-face stickers so they can make their own diplomas and bamboozle witless sluggo job interviewers who were eduficated via a similar procedure.
Just more stupidity.
It is another example of entities trying to outshine others by being more “woke” than the rest. Of course it has an escalating effect. I think in this case, however, even the wokiest of the woke will balk at having their burnished trophy degrees deliberately downgraded. This policy will quickly disappear.
HR&A Advisors, and those who espouse their beliefs, should be prohibited from doing such things as operating heavy machinery, as well as getting behind the wheel of a car. These people are insane. It’s scary.
It would be a great idea if the courses were of the same standard.
But… some colleges hand out ‘A’ grades like candy on Halloween.
Oh goody, I’ll start claiming all kinds of academic achievement, and anyone who questions it, I’ll simply tell them, “you’re a racist” or any other slur. SMDH
The collective insanity around the world, is the real pandemic!
Great policy Santos should have followed. Just claim the degree and not name a University so no one could check on it. At least it will be in the place for all the following fraudsters.