This article outlines an opinion that organizations either tried skills based hiring and reverted to degree required hiring because it was warranted, or they didn’t adapt their process in spite of executive vision.
Since this article is non industry specific, what are your observations or opinions of the technology sector? What about the general business sector?
Should first world employees of businesses be required to obtain degrees if they reasonably expect a business related job?
Do college experiences and academic rigor reveal higher achieving employees?
Is undergraduate education a minimum standard for a more enlightened society? Or a way to hold separation between classes of people and status?
Is a masters degree the new way to differentiate yourself where the undergrad degree was before?
Edit: multiple typos, I guess that’s proof that I should have done more college 😄
IDK, Has the author ever worked anywhere? Talked to anyone who worked somewhere? READ SOME POSTS ON REDDIT ABOUT WORKING SOMEWHERE? The amount of times no one could understand why a business does what it does, seemingly to its own detriment, is staggering.
They are right that it’s wrong to believe that people with college degrees don’t have skills - some do. The issue is that it appears to practically be non correlated to each other. I’ve seen people with college degrees who clearly learned very little during that experience. I’ve seen people with no degree be very knowledgeable and skilled.
The other obvious question in regard to hiring is - if going to college was necessary to do a job, then surely the degree would matter. However, outside of limited situations, the thing they’re looking for is a degree, not one related to the job they’re hiring for. Also, degrees are stupidly expensive which at least has to drive up wages a little anytime there’s some competition in the labor market.
I’d argue the biggest obvious mark against a degree really doing much is that it’s relevant at most for the first job. After that, no one asks to see the degree, or cares what your GPA was, or whatever - because the much better skill assessment is actually doing a job in the field. At that point, while it’s tradition to require a degree, it’s literally a check box. If these companies thought about it better, they’d realize the hiring mostly ignores degrees for any position outside of literally the first one out of college. An obvious solution to this problem IMHO would be the probationary period. Set it for 6 months renewing for some period. You need some time having someone do the actual task to really know if they’re going to be a good fit anyway.
I wonder if having a degree is a hard requirement for journalism and writing/communication and that’s what the author’s world perspective is based on?
When coworkers sit around the lunch table and complain/vent about the state of the world, do you imagine that journalist complain about a lack of higher education, so when they see any evidence that threatens the model of college degrees (which = debt), they jump on it as proof of their own path?
This is a very good challenge to the requirement. If it’s just a check box (that you have A degree) and not a very specific one, does it diminish the credibility of the requirement?
Do people like the probationary period idea? It sounds functional and practical to me.