A recent report found, among other things, that employers are now requiring fewer and fewer college degrees.
For years, one of the key requirements that companies that pay a living wage have asked for is a university degree, the one that guarantees the applicant who, for four years, acquired the knowledge and skills necessary to carry out said responsibilities.
However, many times, these requirements could be excluding those people who, despite not having a university degree, are fully qualified to perform any job.
A recent Bain & Company report in the United States found that 60 percent of companies offering a hefty salary had a bachelor’s degree among their top requirements; however, only 25 percent of those companies involved skills that candidates would acquire in college.
These findings, according to Chris Beerlya Bain Senior Partner and co-author of the report, can set the tone for employers to better select candidates.
Notably, in 2016, 35 percent of adults in the United States had at least a bachelor’s degree in terms of their educational level; 21 percent were for African American adults and only 15 percent for Hispanic Americans.
On the other hand, in 2020, university enrollment in that country fell by 6.8 percent, according to a report by the US National Student Clearinghouse.
In this context, Bierly has considered that, perhaps, eliminating the university degree requirement could be of benefit to companies when it comes to achieving diversity in their talent pool.
This data was found thanks to the fact that Bierly and his team carried out an analysis of more than 50 million job offers from the labor market analysis firm Emsi Burning Glass.
Their analysis found that 60 percent of “good jobs” (those that offered a living wage) required at least a college degree, even though one in four of those jobs did not require skills from an educational institution.
So what Bierly and his team are proposing is a solution that might sound difficult for companies: drop the college degree requirement.
Now, that’s not all, because the idea, according to Bierly, is that companies look for their own employees in frontline jobs, either by creating internships or partnerships with certain institutions in order to find the right talent.
In that sense, Carolyn Kleiman, professional adviser and strategist, although she has given value to the university degree, mentions that the university is not for everyone and that there are many ways by which, today, various skills can be acquired for the world of work.
“There is this idea that you have to have a college degree just to be invited. In some cases, the value of a title is empirical. But there are also many jobs where a certification program; continuing education, and even some on-the-job training, would qualify,” Kleiman explained.
For his part, Bierly continues to believe that companies should be open-minded and relax their requirements, as there is an untapped pool of candidates and talent who might have the skills to get the job done.
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