The Four-Year College Degree Requirement: How It Came About (+ Do We Still Need It?)

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This Labor Day, I want to focus on a hot topic in recruitment, and begin by asking you a question: What period in American history do you suppose the following quote is talking about?

“There was nothing that could be done with a bachelor’s degree that could not also be done without one… There was not a single urban occupation that required a bachelor’s degree, and few where it might be an asset in finding employment.”

While this reality may seem unimaginable in 2023, the answer to my question is, only about 130 years ago. The quote comes from Prof. Roger L. Geiger, Distinguished Professor of Education at Pennsylvania State University, in an essay describing the scenario in the late 19th century—a time when only 5% of 18–21 year old males went to college (with women largely excluded), and dropout rates were high. All of which inspires another question: Why is the situation so different now?

And more importantly, why am I sharing this with you in the first place?

The simple answer is that the history of educational qualifications and work has profoundly affected the way that we view recruitment and selection, and it continues to do so today. While this is a fascinating story in itself, I hope the brief snapshot I have space for here can help us to better understand some potential origins of underrepresentation, and to identify how we can level the playing field to create a more equitable hiring process.

My focus, of course, is the college degree requirement that continues to form part of many job listings. Clearly, something has changed significantly over the past century to get to where we are today. How did it all begin?

From the perspective of employers, the world of the early 20th century was a time of major change. Rapid advances in technology and transportation were accelerating the shift from small, local businesses to an economy dominated by large, national corporations with a new US-wide labor market. Seemingly, this was the time when employers began to turn to the education system to train workers for increasingly specialized job roles.

To some extent, this period also saw higher education opened to new groups, including women and African Americans, but there was significant discrimination and they were generally restricted to sub-baccalaureate schools. Bearing in mind that the college system was established before secondary education became common, this hints at one possible source of historical underrepresentation, especially in occupations that specify a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Even with the expansion of secondary education from the 1920s onward, only 15% of high school students continued in higher education by the time of World War II. If you ask when it became “normal” to go to college, you will likely come across a variety of answers (as we did in our research), but the transition seems to have gradually gained momentum during the post-World War II period (i.e., from 1945–1975). Certainly, the shift happened earlier (by around 1930) for some professions such as medicine and law, but as late as the 1970s, the majority of jobs still required no more than a high school diploma, and most people were not going to college.

The tide seemingly turned during the 1970s and 1980s, with employers placing an increasing emphasis on college degrees. As explained by Harvard Business Review, by the early 2000s, “a significant number of employers were adding degree requirements to the descriptions of jobs that hadn’t previously required degrees, even though the jobs themselves hadn’t changed.” In the US, more than three times as many adults hold a college degree now than they did in the 1970s, but this still accounts for less than half of the workforce (approximately 38%). To put that in perspective, 75% of new jobs are currently reported to include a college degree requirement.

To make matters worse, these “arbitrary” degree requirements disproportionately affect marginalized communities and are estimated to exclude over 70% of Black, Latinx, and rural workers from jobs where they may actually have the required skills. Moreover, the simple reality is that while the overall proportion of individuals with a bachelor’s degree has risen across the board, Black (28.1%) and Hispanic (20.6%) Americans continue to be left behind in terms of pay and access to graduate employment, relative to White (41.9%) and Asian (61.0%) workers.

This leads us to another important question: Are college degrees really necessary for the majority of jobs today?

The argument often goes that increasing technological complexity means that more and more jobs need a college education. Intriguingly, the evidence does not support this view, as explained in Randall Collins’ landmark book The Credential Society, originally published in 1979 and reissued in 2019 (with the same conclusions). Essentially, the reality is that most work skills are learned on the job; an assertion that is actually supported by other academic studies. Collins’ work is also important because as a sociologist, he analyzed how “educational stratification continues to contribute to the unequal distribution of resources.” In other words, the education system is historically intertwined with underrepresentation of certain groups, especially in professional occupations.

Over time, it seems that many employers came to adopt the degree specification as a kind of “skills proxy,” assuming that it signaled certain skills and competencies that they were looking for. This has rightly been criticized as taking an easy route instead of testing for those skills directly, which is surely the better option. Actually, recent research has revealed that only 16% of US adults think that a four-year college degree prepares students “very well” for a well-paying career. And significantly, an increasing number of employers seem to be recognizing this.

Over the past year or so, we have come across many conversations about a shift to skills-based hiring. Leading voices such as The New York Times and Wall Street Journal have contributed to this debate, emphasizing how it levels the playing field for historically underrepresented groups and has many benefits for employers, including reducing the number of costly “mis-hires.” And some big companies are leading the way on skills-based hiring: Google, Bank of America, and General Motors, to name just a few.

So, while we may not have come full circle to the situation of 100 years ago, there is certainly an ongoing move toward finding a better balance. As recruiters and hiring teams, it is our responsibility to hold ourselves and our organizations accountable for assessing whether degree requirements, or any qualifications, are really necessary for a position. Here at Team JTC, we are encouraged to see this shift to skills-based hiring as a meaningful strategy to increase diversity, identify the best talent for every role, and improve inclusion and retention in the workplace.

JOIN US IN THE COMMENTS: Has your organization already explored skills-based hiring or put it into practice, perhaps as part of your DEI initiatives? Have you seen this approach boost applications from historically underrepresented groups? As always, we value your insights and feedback, so please join the conversation below!