The UK branch of Ernst and Young has dropped the
requirement that applicants possess a college degree –
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/ernst-and-young-drops-degree-classification-threshold-graduate-recruitment
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/ernst-and-young-drops-degree-classification-threshold-graduate-recruitment
“One of the UK’s
biggest graduate recruiters is to remove degree classification from the entry
criteria for its hiring programmes, having found “no evidence” that success at
university was correlated with achievement in professional qualifications.
Accountancy firm
Ernst and Young, known as EY, will no longer require students to have a 2:1
degree and the equivalent of three B grades at A level to be considered for its
graduate programmes.”
Ernst and Young's recruitment policy change actually makes sense. Pervasive grade
inflation and an explosion of majors lacking rigor has negatively affected
the undergraduate system in both the UK and the US. Historically, a fundamental
function of the university system was to provide good and honest signals regarding
the abilities of degree recipients. Over the past decade or so, universities
have failed to perform a decent job of evaluating students.
Research on Signaling and Grade Inflation
INTERNATIONAL
ECONOMIC REVIEW [Vol. 48, No. 3, August 2007]
A
SIGNALING THEORY OF GRADE INFLATION BY WILLIAM CHAN, LI HAO, AND WING SUEN
Abstract
When employers
cannot tell whether a school truly has many good students or just gives
easy grades, a school has incentives to inflate grades to help its mediocre
students, despite concerns about preserving the value of good grades for its good
students. We construct a signaling model where grades are inflated in equilibrium.
The inability to commit to an honest grading policy reduces the efficiency of
job assignment and hurts a school. Grade inflation by one school makes it easier
for another school to do likewise, thus providing a channel to make grade
exaggeration contagious.
Related:
What do Leading Companies Look for in Potential
Employees?
Some interesting insights from Google’s chief recruiter:
“For every job, though, the No. 1 thing we look for is
general cognitive ability, and it’s not I.Q. It’s learning ability. It’s the
ability to process on the fly. It’s the ability to pull together disparate bits
of information.”
Grade Inflation – The New Normal at US Universities
“Students aren’t getting smarter," said Stuart
Rojstaczer, a writer and former science professor who calls himself the
country’s “grade inflation czar.” “They aren’t studying more. When they
graduate they are less literate. There’s no indication that the increase of
grades nationwide is related to any increase in performance or achievement”. …“If you give everybody an A, either people are not
going to take it seriously or those who do take it seriously might get the
wrong impression,” Healy said. “When students receive grades, they’re receiving
feedback on how well they did in their courses, if they put in an equal amount
of effort [in] each one. And [if] they receive higher grades in some subjects,
they logically come to the conclusion that they are good at certain things. It
wouldn’t normally occur to them that they happened to receive a grade that was
out of line”. …Meanwhile, student evaluations could incentivize
instructors to give their pupils higher grades than they deserve in an effort
to “buy” higher evaluation scores, the study says.”