The Shift from Mandatory Degrees for Employment is Becoming Increasingly Common

It’s no secret, that traditional college degree prerequisites have restricted access to well-paying employment opportunities for millions of Americans. In fact, the ongoing scarcity of labor is prompting an increasing number of companies to abandon degree mandates. And that said – there are many cases in which experience was far better than a degree in performing a job.

This is leading the way in a movement of companies – spanning the realms of technology, finance, aviation, and more – to eliminate – or at the very least – relax requirements – for many jobs that once required a college diploma.

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, roughly two-thirds of American workers found themselves excluded from numerous well-paying positions which – bottom line – didn’t actually demand a four-year college education at all. A 2017 employment report notes Black and Latino workers were disproportionately affected; individuals who held fewer degrees compared to white counterparts.

As influential business figures such as Apple’s CEO Tim Cook and Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk have continued to raise doubts about the necessity for college degrees, an increasing number of companies are recognizing – and admitting – such requirements place their company at a “competitive disadvantage.” With the continued labor shortage, and no resolution on the horizon, they’re finally realizing adhering to degree prerequisites, is clearly limiting their pool of potential hires and putting them in an untenable position.

According to a recent article from Fortune, the emphasis on potential is precisely why GM and many other Fortune 500 companies are moving away from compulsory college degrees. For example – Google, EY, Okta, Penguin Random House, Microsoft, and Apple all have started offering high-level roles to candidates without degrees as a way to attract talent in a tight labor market.

Currently, numerous other companies have also eliminated degree prerequisites to broaden their talent pool and promote workforce diversity. According to a 2022 report by Burning Glass Institute (a think tank), “between 2017 and 2019, employers removed degree requirements for 46% of middle-skill and 31% of high-skill positions, with the most significant shifts observed in finance, business management, engineering, and healthcare sectors”. The overwhelming majority of these “degree resets” are anticipated to be permanent.

These companies are harnessing the potential of the over 70 million workers, across the nation, who have acquired skills and experience outside traditional four-year college programs. This diverse talent pool includes individuals who have attended community college, served in the military, completed boot camps, or gained expertise through on-the-job training, as estimated by the workforce development non-profit Opportunity@Work.

In 2017, Joanna Daley, Vice President of Talent at IBM, informed CNBC Make It that approximately 15 percent of the company’s hires in the United States did not possess a four-year degree. She elaborated that instead of exclusively considering candidates with college backgrounds, IBM now evaluates individuals with hands-on experience gained through coding boot camps or industry-related vocational courses.

With the increasing trend of companies eliminating degree requirements, the Burning Glass Institute predicts an additional 1.4 million job opportunities will become accessible to workers within the next five years.

I refer to the quote attributed to Julius Caesar in De Bello Civili

“Ut est rerum omnium magister usus” (roughly “experience is the teacher of all things” or more generally “experience is the best teacher).

To further prove the point of the lack of need for a college degree, a February 2023 report shows the unemployment rate for American high school graduates stood at 5.8%, contrasting with the 2.9% rate for those holding a bachelor’s degree. This disparity represents a substantial number of individuals capable of excelling in roles, even in the absence of a college diploma.