Alphabet Inc. Google, Delta Air Lines Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. Companies like have reduced educational requirements for some positions and shifted recruitment to focus more on skills and experience. Maryland cut college-degree requirements for many state jobs this year — leading to a surge in hiring — and incoming Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro campaigned on a similar initiative.
According to an analysis by the Burning Glass Institute, postings in the US requiring at least a bachelor’s degree stood at 41% in November, down from 46% at the beginning of 2019. Work. Degree requirements fell even more quickly in the pandemic. They have increased since then but remain below pre-pandemic levels.
The shift occurs because the demand for labor remains high and unemployment remains low. Job postings far outnumbered the number of unemployed people looking for work—10.7 million jobs compared to 5.8 million unemployed in September—creating unusually stiff competition for workers.
An increasingly tight labor market has accelerated that trend, creating a debate about the benefits and drawbacks of encouraging more people to attend four-year colleges and how organizations are working to address racial disparities in the workplace. Let’s try.
Some occupations require universal degrees, such as doctors and engineers, while others generally do not require higher education, such as retail workers. There is a middle ground, such as technical positions, which have varying degrees of need depending on the industry, the company, and the strength of the labor market and economy.
Lucy Mathis won a scholarship to attend the Women in Computer Science Conference. There, she learned about an IT internship at Google and eventually dropped out of her computer science graduate program to work at the company full-time. The 28-year-old now makes six-figure totals as a systems specialist.
“I discovered I had a skill for IT,” she said. “I’m not good at academics. It’s not for me.”
The company said more than 100,000 people in the US have completed Google’s online college-alternative program that provides training in fast-growing fields such as digital marketing and project management. It and 150 other companies are now using the program to hire entry-level employees.
IBM spokeswoman Ashley Bright said most of its US roles at IBM no longer require a four-year degree after the company reviewed its hiring practices.
Delta lowered its educational requirements for pilots earlier this year, saying a four-year college degree was preferred but no longer required of job applicants.
Walmart Inc., the nation’s largest private employer, said it values skills and knowledge gained through work experience and that 75% of its US salaried store management began their careers in hourly jobs.
“We don’t require degrees for most of our jobs in the field and increasingly in the home office as well,” Kathleen McLaughlin, Walmart’s executive vice president, said at an online event this fall. The company aims to shift the “focus” from the way someone acquired their skills, which is the degree, to what skills they have.”
The holder of a four-year college degree has higher lifetime earnings than someone without. According to a 2021 report by the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University, a worker with a high-school diploma has lifetime earnings of $1.6 million, compared to $2.8 million for a bachelor’s degree holder.
But many people never finish college and end up with a mountain of debt—more than 43 million people in the US have student-loan debt totaling $1.6 trillion. While a college degree can provide specific workplace skills, workers can obtain the skills needed for many jobs without a four-year degree.
Black and Hispanic people are less likely to have a college degree than white and Asian people, according to the Department of Commerce. Men are less likely than women.
“Even though education is supposed to open doors and windows of opportunity, it has, in some ways, become a means to close off opportunity,” said Nicole Smith, chief economist at the Georgetown Center.
The Ad Council, a marketing nonprofit that targets issues like drunk driving, this summer launched a multi-year national advertising campaign aimed at lowering barriers to the workforce for non-college-degree holders. did. A bus-stop poster says, “Rethink bachelor’s degree requirements and discover a world of talent.”
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said in March that the government would review college-degree requirements for every state job. State and local governments have struggled to hire workers in a tight labor market.
Half a year later, Maryland said the program is showing early signs of working as intended. The number of state employees hired without a four-year degree from May to August was up 41% from a year earlier, while the total workforce increased 14%.
Opportunities@Work, a nonprofit seeking to cut degree requirements, worked with Maryland on its program. There are nearly 70 million Americans over the age of 25 who are in the workforce today and don’t have a college degree, said Bridget Gray, chief customer officer. Nearly four million are already in high-paying careers.
“College is an obvious path to upward mobility, but it should not be the only path,” she said.
Mark Townend, who leads recruiting efforts for Maryland’s state jobs, said lowering the degree requirements was one way to tackle a social problem and make it easier for the government to staff. Mr. Townend and his team are examining and rewriting approximately 2,500 job classifications for approximately 60,000 state employees.
“We basically needed more applicants,” he said. “There is a sizable population of nondegree candidates who are a good fit for our jobs.”
A recent Maryland job posting for an administrative officer paying nearly $80,000 a year said the job required a high-school diploma and three years of experience. A job of the same level previously required four years of college.
Philip Deitchman, chief of human resources at Maryland’s Department of Juvenile Services, said he had previously rejected job candidates without the correct credentials. He said the state had specification sheets which strictly defined the requirements of the job.
“We would say, ‘Wow we want this person,’ but they didn’t have a college degree,” he said. “I’m leaving someone nice.”
Governments are less flexible and have more stringent requirements than the private sector, economists said, partly because they often have tighter regulations to reduce corruption and political favoritism.
Mr. Deichmann said he is seeing more applicants and higher quality job applicants since the policy change.
“I would prefer to have someone with experience,” he said. “This is something that should have been done years ago.”
Patricia Bruzdzinski works as a personnel specialist for Maryland, helping state employees navigate health insurance and other human-resources issues. Ms. Brzezinski said she was hired at a lower level in 2016, partly because she didn’t have a college degree. She said the new policy would help her advance in her career and open doors for others to get state jobs.
Ms. Brzezinski said online training resources and on-the-job learning have allowed her to acquire new skills for the $50,000-a-year position.
“It’s also about self-education,” she said. “I listen to podcasts on Medicaid.”