https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jobs-college-degree-requirement/
These are the top fields in which more companies are considering applicants without four-year degrees.
Almost every job I've had in the past 30 years 'required' a degree but I never had any problem getting hired without any degree.
Wherever I worked it was always degree or equivalent experience. A degree just gives you (or used to) a good baseline.
Same.
The hardest one to land was the first ‘proper’ job - and that was a technical interview in a self-taught discipline I’d been freelancing in for a few years at that point. Every subsequent role had a degree (or post-grad) as essential. I have zero academic qualifications for the job I’ve been doing for the last 20 or so years.
I was raised in a family where not getting a higher education was doom. I felt like a failure for not completing it. I turned my self-taught skills into a software engineering position at one of the big dogs. I had terrible imposter syndrome for the first six months. But later on, fuck that.
Fun fact: I don't have a high school diploma either because credits weren't going to transfer between schools and I'd have to graduate late. Got a GED and started uni classes while my friends were in their senior year.
The other fun thing that needs to change about job requirements: five years experience for an entry-level position. How the fuck do you expect anyone to break into an industry?
I'm guessing they want someone to fill a slot that had someone with 5 years plus experience so they don't have to do much training. They want to hire and get back to full production.
"We've seen larger technology and software companies prioritize skills over degrees because of the speed at which the industry evolves. Often, somebody may have gone to college quite some time ago, so what you learned in college doesn't necessarily translate to skills that the job market demands," Nguyen said.
Shift toward skills-based hiring Other industries in which companies are loosening degree requirements for job candidates include finance and insurance, health care and social services, education, and information services and data, according to Intelligent's report."
“We’ve seen larger technology and software companies prioritize skills over degrees because of the speed at which the industry evolves. Often, somebody may have gone to college quite some time ago, so what you learned in college doesn’t necessarily translate to skills that the job market demands,” Nguyen said.
This has been the case for 30 years. The most basic point of hiring people with degrees were, it was used as a litmus test to see if you could commit to something that is difficult and expensive and follow through for 4 years. The second, and more important, was to help ensure you would get someone that knew how to read, write, analyze, and employ critical thinking.
Saved you a click (I added the bold):
Also, holding a college degree doesn't necessarily translate to success in the workplace, Nguyen added, particularly in rapidly evolving fields like technology, where information and skills learned in school can quickly become outdated.
Other industries in which companies are loosening degree requirements for job candidates include finance and insurance, health care and social services, education, and information services and data, according to Intelligent's report.
Some states have even passed legislation to open up job opportunities to applicants without a college degree. In January, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed an executive order eliminating college degree requirements for more than 90% of state jobs.
Nearly 60% of business leaders said they removed degree requirements for entry-level positions, while 54% said they did so for mid-level roles and 18% said they did for senior-level roles, according to the survey.
Personally, I favor requiring a degree for most education jobs -- specifically for teaching k-12. First: teachers need to learn how brains develop over time and what the developmental markers are. Second, teacher should learn different methods of learning and teaching to better reach all students. Third, teachers should learn how to create useful tests and what IS a useful test at different age levels. A 2nd grader is not going to write an essay that displays synergistic understanding of two unrelated fields, but a 2nd grader CAN display synergistic learning in other ways. I've gone on too long, but you get the idea.