How to Narrow Class Divide? Author Suggests Suit Challenging Employer B.A. Requirements
A successful lawsuit could help weaken privileges for kids of the new upper class, according to the author of a book on the divide between professional and working classes.
Charles Murray, author of Coming Apart, outlines his idea in an op-ed for the New York Times. In his words, “We should prick the B.A. bubble.” The degree has become “educationally meaningless,” Murray argues, yet it perpetuates class divisions. “We don’t need legislation to fix this problem, just an energetic public interest law firm that challenges the constitutionality of the degree as a job requirement,” he writes.
Murray points to Supreme Court precedent that bars standardized tests unless employers can demonstrate a link to actual job requirements. “It can be no more constitutional for an employer to require a piece of paper called a bachelor’s degree, which doesn’t even guarantee that its possessor can write a coherent paragraph,” he says.
Murray also suggests dropping the SAT in college admissions decisions, and replacing ethnic affirmative action with socioeconomic affirmative action. “This is a no-brainer,” he says. “It is absurd, in 2012, to give the son of a black lawyer an advantage in college admissions but not do the same for the son of a white plumber.”
Finally, Murray suggests getting rid of unpaid internships, which he views as “career assistance for rich, smart children.” He says the minimum wage should “apply to anyone who shows up for work every day” at workplaces with more than 10 employees, with an exception for religious organizations.
Murray isn’t confident his suggestions will make a “substantive, immediate difference,” but he argues they at least have important symbolic value.
