I think their is another important reason people are selected based on a degree. When I was at school their were a lot of people who were some combination of disruptive/annoying/violent “laddish” that made me (and others) uncomfortable, by deducting status points for niche, weird or “nerdy” interests*. A correlation (at least at my school) was that none of those people went to university, and (at least at my university) no equivalent people of that type were there. Similarly I have not met any such people in the workplace. College/university filters them out. It overlaps with class-ism to some extent. Maybe to overstate it wildly you could say that employers are trying to select so that the workplace culture is dominated by middle-class social norms.
I think their is another important reason people are selected based on a degree. When I was at school their were a lot of people who were some combination of disruptive/annoying/violent “laddish” that made me (and others) uncomfortable, by deducting status points for niche, weird or “nerdy” interests*. A correlation (at least at my school) was that none of those people went to university, and (at least at my university) no equivalent people of that type were there. Similarly I have not met any such people in the workplace. College/university filters them out. It overlaps with class-ism to some extent. Maybe to overstate it wildly you could say that employers are trying to select so that the workplace culture is dominated by middle-class social norms.