Bachelor’s degrees are no longer required for many jobs

Bachelor’s degrees are no longer required for many jobs

2023 was a watershed moment in the history of the bachelor’s degree. Against a backdrop of a historically tight labor market, persistent talent shortages, and rising skepticism of the value of higher education, numerous state governments and major corporations dropped college degree requirements for many of their jobs.

Types of jobs no longer requiring a bachelor’s degree

When we talk about the jobs for which degree requirements are being eliminated, we are not talking about lower-level jobs that never did require a degree, nor about professionals, such as doctors or lawyers. As noted in a CNBC article, we’re looking at “middle-tier jobs like construction managers, sales supervisors, web developers, cybersecurity and IT help desk specialists.”

A report from the Burning Glass Institute describes jobs for which degree requirements are being eliminated as ones that fall “in between, those where degreed and non-degreed workers have long labored together and where the degree is a matter of employer preference and not of necessity.” Among those jobs they list that are most ripe for dropping degree requirements (the percentage reflects the share of postings for these jobs in their study that still require a degree): construction managers (39%), web developers (52%), distribution managers (34%), production and planning clerks (18%), computer programmers (40%), event planners (34%), first-line supervisors-sales (18%), payroll clerks (22%), sales (17%), and document management specialists (29%).

Who is eliminating the requirement

Major companies such as IBM, Delta Airlines, Google, and Bank of America have all removed college degree requirements (state actions follow this story). A 2023 survey found that 53% of hiring managers say their company eliminated a requirement for bachelor's degrees for some roles within the past year. Among the 53% of employers who eliminated bachelor's degree requirements, 70% did it for entry-level, 61% for mid-level, and 45% for senior-level roles. A 2022 survey of tech-focused employers found that 40% have added behavioral skill-based requirements to hiring procedures.

A November 2023 survey of 800 U.S. employers conducted by Intelligent.com revealed that of the 95% of employers they surveyed who require bachelor's degrees, 24% required these degrees for three-quarters of their jobs, while 27% said they required a bachelor's degree for about half of the positions in their company. Nineteen percent said only about one-fourth of their jobs required a bachelor's degree.

Response to labor shortages and focus on equity

Eliminating bachelor's requirements is often an aspect of skills-based hiring or "whole-person hiring," as a Society for Human Resource Management report recently called it. Although removing degree requirements does not immediately translate into skills-based hiring, it can be a key strategy to open paths for an untapped talent pool to fill critical employment gaps.

Research from the national nonprofit Opportunity@Work, reveals that more than 70 million U.S. adults are “skilled through alternative routes” but are effectively shut out of higher-paying and upwardly mobile roles simply because they lack a four-year college degree. The Burning Glass Institute report notes that “37% of middle-skilled jobs do not show a reduction in requiring a college degree, effectively stripping 15.7 million people out of their candidate pool, even as employers struggle to find enough workers.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce noted in June 2024, “If the percentage of people participating in the labor force were the same as in February 2020, we would have millions more people in the workforce today—and this shortage is impacting all industries in nearly every state.”

In the face of labor shortages, it is unsurprising that many companies have reexamined the need to require a bachelor's degree for many jobs. They want access to the estimated 15.7 million workers who could join the candidate pool.

Besides labor shortages, an increasing focus on equity is driving the trend toward eliminating degree requirements. Fewer Blacks and Hispanics earn degrees than whites. As a result, many people from these ethnic groups are blocked from higher-paying occupations. The Intellegent.com survey mentioned above revealed that seventy percent of employers who removed bachelor's degree requirements in 2023 did so to create a more diverse workforce. Additionally, 69% wanted to increase the number of applicants for open positions, while 68% said there are other ways to gain skills. (The SSTI article here discusses how eliminating the bachelor’s degree requirement can advance equity.)

The trend can be good for workers’ paychecks. As noted in the Burning Glass Institute report, “When workers without a (bachelor’s) step into a role that previously required a degree, they experience on average an approximately 25% increase in salary, amounting to over $12,400 in incremental earnings per year.”

State legislation eliminating the bachelor’s degree requirement

Many states have passed legislation eliminating the bachelor's degree requirement for state jobs. Here is a roundup of recent actions.

Since Maryland declared in 2022 that it would no longer require four-year college degrees for thousands of state government jobs, at least 20 states have adopted hiring practices for public-sector roles emphasizing aptitudes over educational pedigree. (see this SSTI story for more on Maryland’s move.)

In April 2022, Tennessee passed HB 1916, which prohibits state agencies from requiring a bachelor's degree as a condition of employment unless the position involves "knowledge, skills, or abilities that can only be reasonably obtained through" such a degree.

In April 2023, Georgia passed SB 3, the Reducing Barriers to State Employment Act of 2023. This law requires the Department of Administrative Services to regularly assess requirements for each job, identify jobs where requirements can be reduced, and reduce the number of jobs for which a four-year degree is required.  

In June 2023, Florida passed SB 1310, the Expanding Public Sector Career Opportunities Act. The law provides that public employers may only include postsecondary degree requirements as an alternative to specified years of direct experience. The statute allows for two years of experience to substitute for an associate degree and four years for a bachelor's degree, with additional year requirements for graduate-level degrees. 

In July 2023, Missouri passed HB 417, which includes provisions that state agencies cannot deny consideration to an applicant solely based on lacking a postsecondary degree and allows applicants eliminated from hiring solely based on a postsecondary degree to appeal the hiring decision. 

In 2022, Arizona passed SB 1159, which removes bachelor’s degree requirements for public school teachers. Under the law, a teacher may be temporarily certified while enrolled in a bachelor’s program and become fully certified upon degree completion.

Note: Laura Lacy Graham, project administrator and policy analyst at SSTI, contributed to this article.

This article was prepared by SSTI using Federal funds under award ED22HDQ3070129 from the Economic Development Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce. The statements, findings, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Economic Development Administration or the U.S. Department of Commerce.