Comment by mattkrause
5 years ago
Annoyingly, the government already sorta does this: many federal jobs, as well as the patent bar, require an ABET-accredited degree.
The catch is that many prominent CS programs don’t care about ABET: DeVry is certified, but CMU and Stanford are not, so it’s not clear to me that this really captures “top talent.”
I suspect this is because HR and probably even side hiring managers cannot distinguish between the quality of curriculums. One of the problems with CS is the wide variance in programs...some require calculus through differential equations and some don’t require any calculus whatsoever. Sob it’s easier to just require an ABET degree. Similar occurs with Engineering Technology degrees, even if they are ABET accredited.
To your point, it unfortunately and ironically locks out many CS majors for computer science positions.
> I suspect this is because HR and probably even side hiring managers cannot distinguish between the quality of curriculums.
Part of the reason for that is they likely haven't even been exposed to graduates of good computer science curriculums.
In what sense do you think they haven't been exposed? As in, they've never seen their resumes? Or they've never worked with them?
I think it's an misalignment of incentives in most cases. HR seems to care very little once someone is past the hiring gate. So they would have to spend the time to understand the curriculum distinctions, probably change their grading processes, etc. It's just much easier for them to apply a lazy heuristic like "must have an ABET accredited degree" because they really don't have to deal much with the consequences months and years after the hire. In some cases, they even overrule the hiring manager's initial selection.