The future of work hinges on skills, not college degrees

It’s commencement season in the U.S. and time for all the pomp and circumstance that comes with it. I applaud the class of 2022 and wish them the best of luck in their careers.

We like to talk about the importance of college education in society, but the reality is only about 38 percent of the U.S. population age 25 or older has a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.?

Why a college degree

As a CEO, I have begun to wonder why a college degree is a job requirement for so many roles. Universities, which are expensive to enroll in particularly in the U.S. and often difficult to gain admission to, should not represent barriers to opportunity.??

To me, our focus as an employer should be on creating winning teams with a variety of skills and backgrounds. All people have potential, not just those with a university or advanced degree.?

To be clear, I am not against earning a college degree. College and graduate school can build skills and create a great foundation. But there are other ways to launch a career.

At Nielsen, I am beginning to explore dropping the college degree as a requirement for a number of well-paying positions. Instead, I want to create job requirements centered around skills and interpersonal abilities such as problem solving, critical and creative thinking, collaboration, communication and leadership.?

As recruiters, we need to be asking job candidates about their track records and points of view. Will people follow them? Can they challenge us and make us better? Are they ambitious? There are many people with college degrees who aren’t very ambitious. There are others without degrees, for whatever reason, who are quite ambitious. In my experience, ambitious people contribute more.

Excluded voices

So often, society and the workplace exclude certain voices and talent because of their background. I know firsthand.

I grew up in a blue collar neighborhood in Lansing, Michigan, in the 1960s and 70s. My dad was a night-time janitor at my high school and my mom a payroll clerk at the local school district. Neither attended college.?

My high school guidance counselor saw that my parents had limited resources and advised them that sending me to college was a waste of money; I was better off in vocational school.?

I found a work around because I was a science nerd. I conducted an experiment at a local science fair – sponsored by General Motors (GM) – and won several awards. After that, GM granted me a scholarship to its engineering school called General Motors Institute (now known as Kettering University) and later awarded me a scholarship for Harvard Business School. It was an amazing leap forward and it clearly helped my advancement.

Future of work

That was the 1980s when an MBA was a golden ticket. The modern workplace is different. The world is now at a crossroads where there is a growing demand for skilled workers and not enough qualified job candidates to fill the positions. According to the National Association for Business Economics’ January 2022 Business Conditions Survey, more than half of U.S. respondents – 57 percent – reported a skilled labor shortage, up from 47% in October 2021.

In today’s workplace, the questions we should be asking our job candidates and our employees are – what skills have you perfected this year?? And what about next year? To be innovation and technology leaders – which we strive to be at Nielsen – we all need to be lifelong learners to keep up with rapidly changing technology in a rapidly changing industry.

We need to build new skills, visit new places, learn new things. We should also look to non-U.S. institutions and markets that have embraced this concept for many years. Skills are the future of work – not a one and done degree.