October 20th 2023.
A growing trend has revealed that more than 60% of employers have eliminated the requirement for college degrees. This means that up to 1.4 million jobs could be open for Americans without degrees in the next five years. The Burning Glass Institute analyzed over 51 million job postings to understand how this shift in job requirements has happened in almost one million jobs.
Major companies that have dropped these requirements include General Motors, Kellogg’s, Dell, Bank of America, Google, Okta, IBM, Walmart and Delta Airlines. Walmart said its decision is in line with revising job descriptions to reflect that “there are many roles where a degree is simply unnecessary, including at corporate headquarters.”
The data has revealed two types of changes in middle and high-skill roles. Structural resets have occurred in the IT and managerial occupations due to significant technical or analytical requirements. For example, the share of postings for Telecommunications Engineering Specialists that required a bachelor’s degree dropped from 66% to 58% between 2017 and 2019.
Meanwhile, cyclical resets have been observed in 27% of occupations including critical care nurses and registered nurses in the health care sector. These occupations usually require specific credentials other than a traditional higher education degree such as certifications, state-licensing requirements, or certain measurable skills. In 2020, the share of postings seeking registered nurses with a bachelor’s degree requirement declined by 5 percentage points compared to 2019, from 38% to 33%.
The Burning Institute’s analysis of 33 million job postings between 2017 and 2019 showed that employers that cut credential requirements also sought job candidates with a “wider and deeper set of skills than were required previously.” This means that employers are now looking for soft or social skills such as communication and conflict resolution.
The last few years have seen some of the smallest tuition increases in decades. However, a June poll by Gallup found that just 36% of Americans had confidence in higher education, down more than 20% from eight years ago. Last year, the average tuition at American private colleges rose to 4%, with in-state public colleges at $10,500, an annual increase of 0.8% for in-state students and about 1% for out-of-state.
The main driving force behind the increase in school tuition is the price of faculty and administrators, which has grown by 29% between 2010 and 2018. Additionally, state legislatures are contributing less to public education and have lifted degree requirements for government jobs.
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