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Questioning whether college degrees should be required for employment often draws accusations of dismissing higher education entirely. In response to my article “Do Degrees and Credentials Actually Prove Competence at Work?,” Jonathan commented, “If you think it’s all a waste, do everyone a favor and stay away.”
This reaction misses the point. It is reasonable to ask if a degree should be a prerequisite for gainful employment and whether the labor market must rely on academia for job training.
[RELATED: Higher Education Fuels Corporate Profits at the Expense of American Workers]
The answer isn’t unknowable—just contested. In Texas, education leaders push college as a workforce pipeline, especially for fields like computer science. (I disagree with the push to steer students into computer science, as it appears to be a degree track that doesn’t deliver the promised career prospects, especially as American students will increasingly face competition from H-1B visa holders for these jobs.) Meanwhile, other states are shifting toward skills-based hiring, reflecting growing skepticism about higher education’s effectiveness.
I side with states removing degree requirements. Outside of fields where a degree is truly essential, it serves as little more than an arbitrary barrier. My reasoning—anecdotal but revealing—is twofold: (1) Until I switched to journalism, I never needed my history degree—not even in politics. (2) Even when credentials matter, the exams that grant them often test on things completely unrelated to the job.
Do Degrees and Credentials Actually Prove Competence at Work?
— Jared Gould (@J_Gould_) February 24, 2025
Does pointing this out make me a conservative troll? I don’t think so. Nor does it mean I believe higher education is a “waste of time.”
A strong liberal arts education, for example, cultivates civic virtue, self-government, and responsibility. As Liza Libes notes in “Conservatives Must Save the Liberal Arts,” a liberal arts education also develops one’s “critical thinking prowess and cultural awareness.” Developing these skills and values is not a waste of time.
[RELATED: If You Want Young Adults to Grow Up, Don’t Bar Them from Serious Work]
But this is where we need to consider two ideas simultaneously.
A good education has intrinsic value, but that doesn’t mean employers should require it. The misalignment between education and the workforce is too great to claim that degrees reliably signal job readiness. Education’s worth extends beyond job prospects: it enriches thought, strengthens civic engagement, and deepens our understanding of the world. These are noble aims—but they are not prerequisites for work.
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Image: “Woman Filling Out a Job Application” by Amtec Photos on Flickr
Re the excerpt describing our earlier exchange
‘In response to my article “Do Degrees and Credentials Actually Prove Competence at Work?,” Jonathan commented, “If you think it’s all a waste, do everyone a favor and stay away.” ‘
I will stick with my admittedly somewhat acerbic statement. Sure, if you want to major in chamber music or gravitational waves or something else with no concern about employability, I would say go ahead, but keep in mind that at least one of the esoteric fields I listed can lead to employment opportunities, though it may take some enterprise.
No, my statement really was intended to reach people, like many people on the “right,” who seem determined to convince themselves and everyone else that college is a waste of time in the practical, employability purposes, with other purposes as simply being a waste.
No, really, if you think that way, then really, do everyone a favor and skip it. First of all a favor for yourself. But also everyone else, because it really is a drag to have cynical, bored, anti-motivated.
Now, I have to say, I enjoyed this little morsel:
‘Until I switched to journalism, I never needed my history degree—not even in politics.’
No, I never needed my degree, until I did in my current profession. But before that, I didn’t need history in politics.
What a damning statement about our politics!
Jonathan, what are you saying? Are you arguing that I’m incorrect in claiming that some educational routes don’t have practical applicability? Also, yes, it is a damning statement about our politics; it was meant to be.
I’m saying that it’s a great idea to stay away if one is going to poison the atmosphere for those who want to be there. But don’t claim that everyone is wasting their time or getting ripped off. Especially, as in the case of someone like J.D. Vance, that one is gaining immense from benefit from college.
I don’t think this is too complicated.
Do some educational routes not have practical applicability? You bet. If you flunk out of laziness or lack of focus, it’s a terrible waste, probably. As I say, please stay away!
Are some routes completely impractical? I doubt that that is common, if one thinks along the way about one’s career path. If you’re going to major in chamber music — which I would encourage in a qualified way! — work, I hope with the music school, on figuring out what to do with this. I think we should do a good deal more in this direction with students.
I’m glad to hear that you were making a damning statement about our politics, not the value of history education. It seems that we agree!
I wonder how much, when you were in school, did the history program worked on career planning, about how history training would or would not be of use in political work? I have a sense that in the ancient days, say, the time of the initial GI bill, there would have been more of this in college.
I think more today would be of beneficial to everyone, including the health of the humanities programs. I posted a link here about an article in hechinger report that claimed, among other things, that younger faculty are waking up to this.
One of two things is happening: either I’m not explaining my position clearly, or you’re wildly misinterpreting my argument. I actually agree with everything you just said.
Jared: glad to hear that. It clears things. Perhaps we have just been blowing past each other.
Ed: Sad that Scalia would feel it worthwhile to make such a statement. I’m glad that I always stayed clear of law school. It always made me suspicious.
As for taking the “best and brightest” all going to the top schools — what a negative effect that has had on our country, at least in my opinion. Every school has a distribution. There are some top notch students in the mid-level schools. Same with the faculty. I daresay that the sciences are far more healthier in this respect.
Jonathan, here is what Justice Scalia said about Yale Law:
“By and large,” Scalia said during the April 24 law school appearance, “I’m going to be picking from the law schools that basically are the hardest to get into. They admit the best and the brightest, and they may not teach very well, but you can’t make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse. If they come in the best and the brightest, they’re probably going to leave the best and the brightest, OK?”
QED, suffer through a useless Yale education for the credential…
Jared, what you are missing is the US Supreme Court Case of Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424 (1971) — and the subsequent regs that the US EEOC wrote in response to it.
Without going into the weeds, private employers were told that they could not have aptitude exams for either employment or management positions if the results of these exams had a disparate impact on minorities (i.e. fewer Blacks passed them).
However, you could require a college degree — in anything, from anywhere — in lieu of an aptitude exam and that’s what employers immediately did. (And the colleges loved it.)
And that’s how you got college degrees being required for jobs that had never required them before…
“… other states are shifting toward skills-based hiring.>/i>
State governments, as employers, were completely exempt from EEOC oversight until recently and even now it’s a complicated question as to EEOC jurisdiction over state employment. States also have sovereign immunity protections — and usually such extensive affirmative retribution programs that they dis proportionally hire me
What’s more relevant is that the international accounting giant Ernst and Young stopped requiring college degrees in England a decade ago — but not in the US!
Anything that requires any sort of state-issued license, e.g. health professions, isn’t an issue because those without a license aren’t qualified, it’s against state law to hire them.
But outside of that, the only thing that will change things in the private sector without an assurance that the EEOC won’t come after them for not hiring the percentages that the EEOC thinks it should.
And the ultimate irony here is that no one anticipated that Black male college enrollment, which had dramatically increased in the late 1960s, would not continue to increase after the Vietnam draft ended in the early 1970s. Griggs now winds up helping women at the expense of the Black males it was intended to help…