On Sunday, George Will devoted his column to the impact of the 1971 Supreme Court decision in Griggs v. Duke Power, specifically how it led employers to start looking at college credentials as a substitute for general-aptitude testing. (The Court’s decision turned that into a legal minefield.)

What Will unfortunately did not mention is that the paper he’d read by Bryan O’Keefe and Richard Vedder was one of the Pope Center’s projects. The full paper is available here.

Back in the ’70s it was still something of a mark of distinction to have earned a college degree. Today, it’s swung the other way; so many people have degrees (some earned, some merely obtained) that not having one is something of a stigma, as Charles Murray says in his latest book. That suggests to me that the usefulness of the BA as a screening mechanism has probably declined. I would be glad to know if anyone has evidence to support that hypothesis.