Four-year degree as a job requirement posts a decline
As a middle school student in New York, Shekinah Griffith saw a television news report of President Barack Obama visiting an innovative school in Brooklyn. Its program included high school, an associate degree in a technical subject, an internship and the promise of a good job.
“I thought, ‘This is somewhere I need to be,’” Griffith recalled. “There are not many opportunities like that for people like me.”
She applied, was accepted and thrived in the courses. After school, an internship and an 18-month apprenticeship, she became a full-time employee at IBM at the end of 2020. Today Griffith, 21, is a cybersecurity technical specialist and earns more than $100,000 a year.
In the last few years, major U.S. companies in every industry have pledged to change their hiring habits by opening the door to higher-wage jobs with career paths to people without four-year college degrees. Over 100 companies have
made commitments, including the Business Roundtable’s Multiple Pathways program and OneTen, which is focused on hiring and promoting Black workers without college degrees to good jobs.
How has corporate America done so far? There has been a gradual shift overall, according to a recent report and additional data supplied by the Burning Glass Institute.
The Burning Glass Institute is an independent nonprofit research center, using data from Emsi Burning Glass, a labor market analytics company. The researchers analyzed millions of online job listings, looking for four-year college degree requirements and trends. In 2017, 51 percent required the degree. By 2021, that share had declined to 44 percent.
Workforce experts see removing the four-year college degree filter for some jobs as key to increasing diversity and reducing inequality. Workers, they say, should be selected and promoted because of their skills and experience rather than degrees or educational pedigree. And companies that do change their hiring practices, they add, benefit by tapping previously overlooked pools of talent in a tight labor market, as well as diversifying their workforces.
Nearly two-thirds of U.S. workers do not have a fouryear degree. Screening by college degree hits minorities particularly hard, eliminating 76 percent of Black adults and 83 percent of Latino adults.
Companies that have trimmed back degree requirements typically began doing so before the pandemic, the Burning Glass analysis found.
But the pandemic labor crunch and calls on corporate America to address racial discrimination after the murder of George Floyd two years ago prompted more companies to rethink hiring. An aging workforce; changing demographics; immigration curbs; and diversity, equity and inclusion programs are forcing change, experts say.
“Things are coming together that we really haven’t seen before,” said Joseph Fuller, a professor at the Harvard Business School and a co-author of the Burning Glass report.
The Burning Glass research underlines a trend that is “real and sustained,” said Johnny Taylor Jr., CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management. “Employers don’t have the luxury of excluding talent. They have to be more inclusive of necessity.”
While citing “college degree” in a job posting is not actual hiring, workforce experts say it is an important signal of corporate hiring behavior.