Of 70 employers in three countries, not one had tried systematically to determine why a given educational qualification was required for a given job. Nearly all admitted that the minimum educational qualifications for many, if not most, non‐manual jobs had been raised. However, the reasons given had nothing to do either with job content or increased efficiency. Either it was just that people with more education were available, or else so many educated people were available that they had to be held back by demands for more education. The implications of these findings are discussed.