Dive Brief:
- California removed college degrees and other educational requirements from almost 30,000 state jobs, the governor’s office announced Monday.
- Gov. Gavin Newsom also proposed rolling back such requirements for another 32,000 state jobs as early as next year. California officials are negotiating the proposal with the state’s labor unions.
- Removing the degree requirements is part of a statewide initiative to establish high-paying career paths for workers, including those without college degrees. Newsom announced that the final version of his “Master Plan for Career Education” will be released early next year.
Dive Insight:
States and private companies have increasingly moved away from requiring four-year degrees to fill certain jobs, citing the need for a wider talent pool. When Utah Gov. Spencer Cox announced his own state would nix degree requirements for most state jobs, he criticized them as prioritizing “a piece of paper” over “demonstrated competence.”
As of mid-November, at least 20 states were reevaluating degree requirements for public positions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Minnesota, Virginia and Pennsylvania are among the states that have already dropped degree requirements for most public jobs.
California is now moving to join their ranks.
“Every Californian deserves the opportunity to build real-life skills and pursue a fulfilling career — including those that don’t require college degrees,” Newsom said in a statement Monday.
The state’s policies on degree requirements could have a wide impact. California, the most populous state in the country, is an economic powerhouse, with the International Monetary Fund ranking it as the fifth largest economy in the world.
Over half of residents, 55.4%, have some form of education beyond high school, according to the Lumina Foundation. But only 45.6% of Californians hold a college degree, just below the national average of 46.5%.
Under Newsom’s proposal, the state would create standardized learning and employment records, which would combine academic records with experience outside the classroom, such as military service, job training and volunteer work. The records are intended to allow job applicants to showcase the full range of their skills to employers.
The new system would help “shift hiring practices toward valuing skills over just degrees,” the governor’s office said Monday.
The state-level shift away from college degrees comes as Americans are reevaluating the worth of higher education. Some college officials have worried the change could steer young people away from a sector that’s already experiencing a decline in traditional-age students.
However, education and policy experts argued that employers will still likely value degrees when making hiring decisions — even if they loosen their job requirements.
“Higher education certainly isn’t perfect, but we have a lot of reason to believe that degrees command a wage premium because graduates develop a range of broad and targeted skills that are really useful for developing strong careers,” higher education expert Ben Wildavsky told Higher Ed Dive earlier this year.