Companies eliminating degree requirements open the door to giving your remote job to someone else

Article

Companies eliminating degree requirements open the door to giving your remote job to someone else

A four-year degree has long been heralded as a must-have to advance in corporate America. But that might not be the case much longer.

General Motors recently announced that it would be removing degree requirements from job listings where they’re not completely necessary. The move to prioritize skills over a college education circumvents a needless barrier to workplace diversity, Telva McGruder, the company’s chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer, told Fortune’s Phil Wahba.

There’s a 20 percentage point gap between white and Black Americans with college degrees as of 2018, per research from nonprofit Lumina Foundation. Plus, skyrocketing tuition (up more than 500% since the 1980s) has made graduation an even harder feat—to say nothing of the student debt crisis.

“An engineering degree is ‘wow’ and very well respected. I have one myself,” McGruder said. “But it’s not necessarily the be-all, end-all indicator of someone’s potential.”

......