Unless explicitly necessary to the safety of the position, the state should never be allowed to to place educational restrictions on any private sector job, nor any federal, state, and municipal positions that don't require skills beyond the ability to read, write and comprehend in some interview testable capacity (Here, read this and write down what it's about). Anything less is tantamount to class discrimination at one end, and outright racism at the other. Since the poorest are most often also the minorities, and both are disproportionately lacking in HSDs, any restrictions on education levels are automatically restrictions on the poor and people of minority status. Affirmative action doesn't address this issue, if anything it uses token minorities to go on selling the idea that educational limits are fair, allowing the few to keep out the many. One's capacity to think, to learn, to adapt and to do a job, is not limited to how much state education he or she acquires, or has had to endure. To believe otherwise is a very uneducated point of view.