Smashing the paper ceiling: Why employers are dropping college degree requirements
It’s a commonly held assumption that education holds the key to future prosperity and financial security.
But is college now just an expensive and antiquated rite of passage for affluent Americans that doesn’t necessarily equate to gainful employment at the end of a four-year degree?
According to a recent joint report by the Burning Glass Institute and Strada Institute for the Future of Work, a college degree no longer guarantees a “college-level job”—a job that requires a four-year degree at a minimum—and only half of college graduates have managed to secure employment in a college-level job within a year of graduation.
Additionally, for those who don’t manage to secure a college-level job, they will typically earn 25 percent more than someone with no education beyond high school, leaving them on weaker financial footing thanks to student loan debt.
However, many companies have started to eschew formal education when it comes to hiring talent and are doing away with college degrees from job requirements entirely.
In 2022, General Motors announced that it was dropping the four-year degree mandate from the majority of job descriptions, as did Delta Airlines, which now does not require pilots to have a four-year degree.
This emerging shift in attitude has become particularly prevalent in the tech industry as a response to the talent shortage—a report by Korn Ferry has predicted that there could be a global talent shortage of 85.2 million people in the tech sector by 2023, leading to a loss of $8.5 trillion if the skills gap isn’t addressed.
Google, IBM, Apply and Tesla have all removed college degrees from job requirements.
Move towards skills-based hiring
As a result, skills-based hiring is now a major focus.
“Accessing any talent pool that is traditionally overlooked is essential to the tech industry growing and prospering,” suggests Julian Nicks, CEO of LaunchCode, a tech training platform that offers free part-time and full-time courses to help those without a college degree or access to further education upskilling, so that they can access a career in tech.
This alternative pathway is also proving to be more equitable for women who want to break into tech, where only 27 percent of all positions are currently held by women.
“The reality is the demand for tech workers is growing faster than the traditional college pipeline, so it has been imperative that employers look for talent elsewhere. The way people learn tech skills has also evolved – more and more developers are self-taught or learned through accelerated, alternative skilling programs like LaunchCode.
“Our employer partners often prefer our ‘nontraditional’ candidates because they outperform their college degree peers. They bring more life and transferable skills such as direct industry context, customer-centricity or service mindset, passion for learning, higher adaptability to change, and more resilience in difficult situations.”
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