Is a College Degree Losing its Value?

The Burning Glass Institute’s recent study about the declining requirement of college degrees titled The Emerging Degree Reset, kicks off with a bold statement, “Jobs don’t require a four year college degree. Employers do.”

While a college degree is still a valuable asset in the workforce there is a trend toward employers rethinking which jobs really require a four year education. The past decade saw what The Burning Glass Institute has called “degree inflation”, or the growing requirement of having a college degree in order to be considered for certain employment opportunities.

However, degree inflation is reversing for particular fields as employers are struggling to fill middle or high skill jobs.

As such, some employers have resorted to opening up their talent pool and making their search less about a degree and more about skills. Employers are now looking for candidates who can perform a role well regardless of their formal education.

While college degrees have been seen as a stepping stone to the middle-class, they also exclude 64% of America’s workforce. That’s 80 million people. Employers are finding that college degrees do not always equate to the skills and knowledge required to be successful in a role.

The degree reset trend is further supported by recent White House initiatives to place limitations on the use of educational requirements for IT jobs. IBM is one company that removed degree requirements for more than half of their positions in 2021.

Another driver for the focus on skills over degrees is the acceleration of technological change. As new technologies emerge and evolve with greater speed, four year college degree curriculum isn’t keeping up. Here are some big picture trends to be aware of:

• 46% of middle-skill and 31% of high skills jobs experienced degree resets between 2017 and 2019.
• A projected 1.4 million jobs could open to workers without college degrees in next 5 years.
• 37% of middle-skill jobs have seen no decrease in degree requirements, even as employers struggle to fill positions.

Read the full article here.

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