If you’ve been paying attention to hiring trends post-pandemic, you’ve likely noticed that some major tech companies removed the requirement that employees have four-year degrees. While this trend may have emerged in response to a tight labor market, I don’t expect it to reverse—even as the labor market opens up.
Why? Because acknowledging a four-year degree is not the sole indicator of an individual’s potential for success in every role is long overdue. It’s a necessary course correction for both higher education and corporate America.
What’s the value of a four-year degree?
A traditional college education (which typically involves pursuing a four-year degree) still promises significant value for many students. In addition to preparing them for entering the workforce, it provides them with the opportunity to come of age in a safe space surrounded by their peers.
However, due to factors such as rising college costs and ballooning student debt balances, more Americans are skeptical that a four-year degree can deliver the meaningful return on investment it once did.
For employers, a four-year degree has long been a surrogate stand-in for an applicant’s technical skills and competencies as well as their tenacity and capacity for achievement. As fewer people pursue four-year degrees, companies must look for other indicators of a candidate’s potential for success.
Tech giants like IBM and Apple have the resources and infrastructure to take this task fully in-house. And they have the ability to bridge the gap between an employee’s potential and their competencies. In a post-four-year-degree world, I expect we’ll see more and more large companies developing robust apprenticeship programs to train entry-level employees and providing ongoing training to upskill and reskill employees as needed. I expect these new pathways to reach more directly into the high school populations as well.
Smaller companies with fewer in-house resources will have to be more creative in identifying indicators of success. One such indicator that should be on every hiring manager’s radar is a microcredential or badge, which individuals can pursue as a faster and more cost-effective alternative to obtaining a four-year degree.
Embracing microcredentials as indicators of success
There are inevitably obstacles to embracing microcredentials and badges as alternatives to a four-year degree. While higher education has done an excellent job of demonstrating the meaning, transparency and value behind a four-year degree, a compelling case hasn’t yet been made for alternative credentials. But imagine a system where anyone can point to a microcredential or badge and say with clarity, “This indicates X, Y and Z about this person.”
Higher education has the infrastructure to create this system. Yes, there are some challenges inherent to the current “credit hour” system. Still, there is a consistency to it that can prove useful to employers, helping them quantify what it means when they see a specific credential on a candidate’s resume.
Open dialogue will pave the path forward
As with any paradigm shift that affects many different parties (and yes, this course correction does represent a paradigm shift), the best way forward is through open dialogue. If corporations and higher education institutions hope to continue thriving while working with a shared population, they must come together to develop a roadmap for what happens next. There is even potential for government collaboration: There is increasingly rare bipartisan support for reforming hiring processes for federal employees.
Businesses have often driven innovation in higher education; the transition away from requiring four-year degrees is just the latest in a long history of examples. Neither side exists in a vacuum, and how each proceeds amid disruptive change inevitably affects the other. Now is the time to start discussing what the post-four-year-degree future will entail.
