I got back from a great family vacation in Istanbul a few days ago. I love cities where history is palpable. There’s a mosque called Yeni Cami, which translates to the “New Mosque.” This Johnny-come-lately was completed in the 1660s, more than a hundred years before the independence of the United States.

I hope that you enjoyed Vadim’s writing for the last couple of weeks - big thanks to him for filling in.

This week, I was blown away by a particularly smart piece about the ongoing crisis of trust in higher education and what it means for talent acquisition. It was written by Raghav Singh, a longtime contributor who will be speaking about the hidden cost of AI in hiring at the ERE Recruiting Innovation Summit in a couple of weeks.

Enjoy!

Earlier this month, a faculty committee at Yale University released a report that should get the attention of every recruiting leader in the country. The report was not about hiring. It was about something upstream: the collapse of public trust in higher education.

But for talent acquisition leaders, the implications are immediate—and profound. Because if employers can no longer rely on universities to consistently signal ability, rigor, and readiness, then the burden of validation shifts. It shifts directly to hiring. And most recruiting systems are not built for that reality.

The Signal Is Breaking

Since the Griggs v. Duke Power Co. ruling in 1970, employers have been discouraged from using assessments in hiring. In response, they switched to using degrees as a proxy, with high GPAs and admissions to elite institutions signalling greater ability and potential.

That logic is now under strain.

The Yale report documents a steep decline in public confidence in higher education—from 57% expressing strong trust a decade ago to just 36% in 2024 . At the same time, 70% of Americans believe higher education is heading in the wrong direction. More importantly, the report highlights structural issues that directly undermine the signaling value of degrees:

• Grade inflation: Nearly 80% of grades at Yale are now A-range.

• Opaque admissions: Decisions are subjective and difficult to explain.

• Unequal access: Wealth and legacy status still influence outcomes.

• Inconsistent standards: No shared academic baseline across institutions—or even within them.

• AI disruption: Traditional academic work is increasingly assisted—or replaced—by generative tools.

Taken together, these trends frame a new reality: candidates with identical degrees (major, GPA, institution) may no longer have comparable skills, discipline, or readiness.

The Collapse of Proxy Hiring

Most recruiting systems still operate on proxies. We use school pedigree, GPA thresholds, degree requirements, and keyword-based resume filters. These proxies were always imperfect. But they were directionally useful because they relied on relatively stable institutional signals.

When grading systems compress, admissions lack transparency, and academic work itself becomes ambiguous in an AI-enabled environment, the usefulness of these proxies weakens.

This is already visible in hiring outcomes:

• Increased variance in new hire performance

• Higher early attrition rates in some roles

• Growing reliance on “experience” over “education”

Recruiters often interpret these as labor market issues, when in fact they signal integrity issues.

The Shift: From Credential-Based to Evidence-Based Hiring

If degrees can no longer be trusted as consistent indicators, hiring must evolve. The future of recruiting is not credential-based. It is evidence-based. This means moving from:

• “Where did you go to school?”
  to

• “What can you demonstrably do?”

That means employers should move towards using:

• Work sample tests

• Job simulations

• Structured interviews

• Skills assessments

• Portfolio reviews

These approaches are not new, but their importance is rising. They are no longer enhancements to the hiring process and should become the core.

A New Risk Surface: Fairness and Transparency

The Yale report repeatedly returns to one theme: trust is built on transparency and fairness. This is not just a higher education problem. It is also a hiring problem. Criticism of admissions systems—opacity, bias toward privileged groups, lack of explainability—maps almost perfectly onto modern recruiting processes.

Consider the parallels:

• Unstructured interviews are no different than holistic admissions. The selection criteria in either case are largely “feel good”, aka BS, and missing any validation.

• Referral hiring is basically the same as colleges allowing legacy preferences.

• Black-box AI screening lacks transparency.

As scrutiny increases, these parallels will not go unnoticed. Recruiting leaders should expect:

• Greater demand for explainable hiring decisions.

• Increased focus on auditability.

• Legal challenges to opaque or biased processes.

• Pressure to demonstrate fairness across candidate groups.

In other words, the same trust crisis affecting universities is coming for hiring.

AI: The Double-Edged Sword

The report identifies AI as a disruptive force in education, undermining traditional models of learning and assessment. The same is true in recruiting where AI is used for resume screening, candidate matching, interview analysis and making hiring recommendations.

But here’s the paradox:

• As trust in educational signals declines, reliance on AI in hiring increases.

• At the same time, trust in AI systems is fragile—and declining.

This creates a high-stakes environment for recruiting leaders. AI is not optional. But it must be governed.

Organizations will need to ensure:

• Transparency in how AI systems make decisions.

• Documentation of data sources and model behavior.

• Regular bias audits and impact analysis.

• Human oversight in high-stakes decisions.

Without this, AI risks becoming another black box—replicating the very trust failures seen in higher education.

Recommendations for Recruiting Leaders

The implications of declining trust in higher education are clear. The question is how to respond. Here are four strategic moves recruiting leaders should prioritize:

1. Replace Proxies with Proof. Reduce reliance on degrees, GPA, and school pedigree.
   Increase use of structured, role-relevant assessments.

2. Build Transparent Hiring Systems. Document evaluation criteria and ensure decisions can be explained and defended.

3. Expand Talent Pipelines. Move beyond elite institutions. Invest in partnerships with community colleges, bootcamps, and alternative credential providers.

4. Govern AI in Hiring. Treat AI systems as high-risk decision tools. Implement audits, monitoring, and human oversight.

For decades, employers outsourced part of the talent validation process to universities. That model is breaking down and the responsibility is shifting back. Recruiting is no longer just about finding candidates. It is about establishing trust in who is qualified—and why.

The organizations that recognize this shift early—and build systems to support it—will define the next era of talent acquisition.

Thank you again to Raghav!

— David

P.S. If you found this newsletter valuable, chances are your colleagues will too. Feel free to forward it along—and if it landed in your inbox by way of a friend, you can subscribe here to get the next one directly.

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Conferences

ERE Recruiting Innovation Summit

Atlanta, GA
May 5-6, 2025

The ERE Recruiting Innovation Summit is a practitioner-led event built for talent acquisition leaders who want real answers, not hype. Now that the updated agenda is live, this is your chance to explore the sessions, speakers, and conversations shaping the future of recruiting.

Join us for practical sessions, meaningful peer connection, and live Ask Me Anything office hours with speakers. If you care about where recruiting is headed and want ideas you can put to work immediately, you belong in this room.

(ERE Recruiting Innovation Summit)