At a December news conference announcing the launch of a new skills-first hiring initiative for state government, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox stressed the importance of not overemphasizing education when sizing up job applicants for public sector roles.
“When we’ve got jobs to fill, the state of Utah now reduces barriers to hiring by removing bias toward educational requirements that cannot be tied to specific job duties and requirements,” he said, noting that 98% of the 1,080 classified jobs in Utah’s executive branch do not require an advanced degree.
“This is for internal as well as external applicants. We ask our hiring managers and hiring committees to consider comparable experiences as equal to educational qualifications at every step in the evaluation and recruiting process.”
According to a statement from the governor’s office, Utah’s new effort to eliminate bachelor’s degree requirements will broaden access to qualified talent and expand employment opportunities to attract diverse candidates, including underrepresented groups.
This, said Cox, can in turn lead to more jobs for candidates in rural areas, more opportunities for those returning to work after an extended absence through the state’s Returnship program, and more opportunities for apprenticeships and other on-the-job training opportunities facilitated by the Department of Workforce Services.
Cox affirmed his support for those who pursue advanced degrees as well as for Utah’s colleges and universities, but he also stressed that “a degree should not be the only way to get a good-paying job or have a fulfilling career.”
Skills and Experience Over Education
Utah isn’t the only state to start rethinking degree requirements as part of the hiring criteria for government jobs.
In March 2022, for example, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced that many government roles in the Old Line State would no longer require four-year degrees, as part of a new initiative designed to expand job opportunities.
“Thousands of [Maryland] state jobs in every department will be open to applicants with relevant experience and training, particularly in the information technology, administrative and customer-service sectors, which previously required a college degree,” the Baltimore Sun reported.
“The workforce development initiative comes as the state is experiencing a record number of job vacancies, which is creating issues across state agencies, according to the Department of Legislative Services.”
Indeed, at the time Hogan announced the new initiative, the state of Maryland had more than 8,600 vacant positions within its executive branch.
The state’s Department of Health and the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services each had a 14% vacancy rate, with numerous other departments seeing vacancy rates of 10% or higher. Those with the largest number of open positions included parole and probation agents, correctional officers, case managers for juvenile services, registered nurses and social workers.
In a statement, Hogan described Maryland’s effort to formally eliminate the four-year college degree requirement from thousands of state jobs as a “first-in-the-nation workforce development initiative.”
The governor also noted that the state of Maryland employs more than 38,000 individuals, with the Maryland Department of Labor estimating that more than half of those jobs can substitute relevant experience, training and/or community college for a four-year degree.
“Through these efforts … we are ensuring that qualified, non-degree candidates are regularly being considered for these career-changing opportunities,” said Hogan. “This is exactly the kind of bold, bipartisan solution we need to continue leading the nation by giving even more Marylanders the opportunities they need to be successful.”
Removing Hiring Hurdles
Those who will soon be joining the workforce might be happy to hear of initiatives like those in Maryland and Utah, as the cost of college becomes more prohibitive.
Consider a 2021 Georgetown University report, for example. In an analysis of the gap between how much young workers make versus how much they will ultimately pay for a college education, the institution found the cost of earning a four-year degree has gone up by nearly 170% since 1980. Meanwhile, pay for young workers has gone up just 20% during that same span, according to the report.
Other studies suggest that such figures may be leading more high school graduates to forgo four-year college degrees, while employers continue to put less weight on advanced education when evaluating job candidates.
One survey, for instance, found the number of teens planning to attend a four-year university on the decline, with less than half of more than 1,000 students surveyed considering college. Another poll of 1,000 “influential heads of teams and groups within companies” saw more than 80% of those business leaders saying they believe that skills gaps in the workforce can be closed through alternative education pathways.
The United States government has encouraged federal agencies to adopt a similar mindset. A January 2021 memorandum, for example, reminded federal employers of “the long-standing requirement to limit the use of educational requirements in favor of stated skills when acquiring information technology (IT) services.”
That same memo cited a 2020 executive order issued by President Joe Biden, which urged federal agencies to follow the lead of America’s private employers in modernizing their recruitment practices to better identify and secure talent.
“Employers adopting skills- and competency-based hiring recognize that an overreliance on college degrees excludes capable candidates and undermines labor-market efficiencies,” the order read.
“Degree-based hiring is especially likely to exclude qualified candidates for jobs related to emerging technologies and those with weak connections between educational attainment and the skills or competencies required to perform them. Moreover, unnecessary obstacles to opportunity disproportionately burden low-income Americans and decrease economic mobility.”
At the aforementioned news conference, Cox expressed hope that programs like those his state just initiated will be a step toward removing those obstacles.
“Degrees have become a blanketed barrier to entry in too many jobs. Instead of focusing on demonstrated competence, the focus too often has been on a piece of paper,” he said. “We are changing that.”
06 January 2023
Category
HR News Article