No Degree? That's No Problem for These Government Jobs

A bipartisan solution to degree inflation

After Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro was sworn into office on January 17, his first official act was to make it easier for residents without college degrees to get jobs in state government.

"Effective immediately, 92% of all Commonwealth jobs do not require a four-year degree, roughly equivalent to 65,000 jobs," Shapiro, a Democrat, wrote in an executive order. "Consistent with this Administration's commitment to emphasizing skills and experience, job postings will begin with equivalent experience needed in lieu of a college degree whenever possible." For the remaining 8 percent of jobs, Shapiro ordered Pennsylvania Secretary of Administration Neil Weaver to determine whether requirements can be revised to allow for practical experience instead of a college degree.

"Every Pennsylvanian should have the freedom to chart their own course and have a real opportunity to succeed," Shapiro said when he announced the order. "They should get to decide what's best for them—whether they want to go to college or straight into the work force—not have that decided for them."

Shapiro's order resembles reforms initiated by former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and current Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, both Republicans. The Pennsylvania Senate's Republican majority leader, Joe Pittman, welcomed "Shapiro's executive order to expand employment opportunities for positions throughout state government," calling it "a step in the right direction."

A 2017 Harvard Business School study found that both government and private employers demand college degrees even when they are not necessary to perform the work. For one mid-level supervisory position, the researchers found that 67 percent of open job listings required that applicants have a college degree but that only 16 percent of people who were already working in the same position had one.

Progressives tend to respond to this "degree inflation" by advocating expanded access to college and training, often funded by government subsidies. Shapiro smartly realized that it is cheaper and easier simply to delete a few lines in the job description.

Comments

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[Spiritus Mundi]

commitment to emphasizing skills and experience

Which comes from college or another job. If you didn't go to college, no private sector employer will risk giving you a job to learn by trial and error in a market with trained applicants. This law says the quiet part out loud; most government jobs are useless and nobody really expects you to be good at them. A degree will not make you a better DMV employee or at handing out welfare checks.

[perlmonger]

And this makes it easier for them to hit "diversity" targets.

[MatthewSlyfield]

"no private sector employer will risk giving you a job to learn by trial and error in a market with trained applicants."

The problem with this claim is that private sector employers for many of the jobs at issue will take any degree at all, even if the applicant's degree has zero relevance to the job.
This is not in any way an experience/training issue.

[freedomwriter]

Why does anyone need a degree to be a file clerk? No college needed for the trades, which require technical knowledge. I could just go on and on. IF companies want competent employees THEY should train them. It is not YOUR responsibility to pay 10's of thousands to learn a job that you will be underpaid for by a company that contributed nothing to financing that learning they DEMAND.

How do you think anyone survived before "college degree required?"

[Ragnarredbeard]

The degree requirement became a useful tool to manage the applicant pool. If 1,000 people apply for 1 job, its easier to attrit the pool by mandating a degree. It was never really about needing a degree to do the job.

[Idaho Bob]

This is why so many gov't jobs are filled by people who have gender studies or basket weaving degrees. It also explains why gov't employees lean so far left.

[JFree]

So why is an irrelevant degree any better as a vetting mechanism? Say piling up the resumes, picking a random one. If the person has no obvious red flags then they are hired.

[Ragnarredbeard]

It's "better" because it gives lazy hiring managers an easy filter when they have 100s of applicants.

[Jerryskids]

Progressives tend to respond to this "degree inflation" by advocating expanded access to college and training, often funded by government subsidies. Shapiro smartly realized that it is cheaper and easier simply to delete a few lines in the job description.

How much could it cost to print a piece of paper? Everybody can have multiple doctorates! Everybody deserves multiple doctorates! I myself have a couple of dozen doctorates. I'd have more but my printer ran out of ink.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Progressives have their own ideas as to how the world should be, and want the post secondary institutions to be 1] totally government funded and 2] to expand as much as possible to "educate" their troops.

It seems colleges have become little more than indoctrination centers.

[mad.casual]

I’d have more but my printer ran out of ink.

Everybody knows you give yourself a doctorate in Printer and Ink Management first.

[JesseAz]

Bet the state jobs still pay above market rate for the skills required and this still a net negative overall.

[Elmer Fudd the CHUD]

Especially in blue states.

[SRG]

IMO, like an MBA for some white collar jobs, these degree requirements are really ways to reduce the number of resumes an employer has to go through.

[Naime Bond]

'..What qualifications do you have for this job? Click all that apply..'
1. Diversity
2. Equity
3. Inclusion
4. Person of Color and High School Drop out.
5. All of the above...

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Or, as we used to call it, graft.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

All else is white supremacy.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

6. convicted criminal Person who has interacted with the corrections system.

[creech]

Good to know that you'll no longer need a college degree to stand around at a PENNDOT worksite and pretend to fill potholes or do road maintenance.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

^This^.

I'm betting a majority of state/muni jobs didn't require a degree anyway.

[Fast Eddie]

*Must make union contributions.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

No Degree? That's No Problem for These Government Jobs

Congressman, Senator, President...

[Elmer Fudd the CHUD]

We even have a president, albeit an illegitimate one, who is not on,y of subnormal intelligence and senile, but also cheated his ass off to scrape above the bottom of the barrel academically. I’ve met high school dropouts who are more capable.

[Moderation4ever]

Many years ago, a co-worker told me that a degree was often seen as the equivalent of a union card. In the same way that a union might vouch for an employee the degree served a similar purpose and provided the employer with a benchmark. I suspect that this will continue and that a candidate with a college degree will have a leg up on a candidate with no degree when employers are evaluating candidates. I still support the effort to remove college requirement for most government jobs. But would caution a candidate without a college degree, that they are at a disadvantage.

[JFree]

Guy won a Nobel for giving an explanation for pointless credentialism. The more the applicant spent training themselves through college, the more committed they are to learning and to finding reasons why the job has a purpose.

The degree doesn’t matter. Only the debt hole. A sales manager I once knew used that explicitly for screening sales people. How much debt are you in? Is it so much that you’ll have to work like a dog? Do you have a criminal record? No? You’re hired

[SRG]

I'm sure that the degree will be evidence of commitment etc etc (as with MBAs for Wall St hires) but it is at least an improvement that a job that doesn't need a degree shouldn't require one.

[Elmer Fudd the CHUD]

It’s strange for an ostensibly libertarian news magazine talking about getting more people government jobs.

[SRG]

It's not. It's talking about expanding the pool of applicants.

[MWAocdoc]

A step in the right direction? Nope! A step in the right direction would be for the state to eliminate 63% of the government jobs and lay off the employees filling them. Degree inflation and grade inflation are educational problems, not government problems, and private employers could take "a step in the right direction" by dropping degrees as a qualification "wherever possible."

[Moderation4ever]

Just curious how you came up with the 63%. Was that a result from an analysis or a SWAG (Scientific Wild Ass Guess).

[AltheDago]

My lovely wife, a former public safety operator with several years experience, was once denied a job as a customer service representative because she didn't have a bachelor's degree. Seems a bit silly, no?

[TJJ2000]

Once in a blue moon a Democrat does something that isn’t completely retarded… And every-time it makes a headline at reason. Excuse me but I think your bias is showing.

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