In the United States, due to a shrinking of the job market in recent years, in part due to the Covid-19 pandemic, so-called “good jobs” have become available to those workers without a college education.

In March this year, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (R) announced that college degrees would no longer be required for many state jobs. The decision generated some controversy, as, despite being welcomed by some as a sensible way to deal with the shortage of labor and offer greater opportunities for less qualified workers, others expressed concern about the reduction of quality standards in higher education.

According to an announcement by The Washington Post, the initiative, identified by Hogan as the first of its kind in the country, “made hundreds of job openings immediately available to people who don’t have a four-year degree but have other experience or training”.

A month after the announcement, Colorado Governor Jared Polis (D) also directed government agencies in his state to embrace hiring workers for skills, not degrees. Private sector employers are also reversing the same requirements.

While labor shortages in some sectors of the US economy have allowed employers to consider hiring based on candidates' experience or skill, according to a recent publication by The Post, “workforce advocates have been pushing back for years with some success against so-called degree inflation triggered by the Great Recession. When the economy tanked in 2008 and millions of laid-off workers began competing for scarce jobs, employers got pickier about who they hired and increasingly added four-year degree requirements to some ‘middle-skills’ jobs that had frequently been filled by workers without degrees”.

This growing availability of good jobs for those without a college degree raises another important issue: the challenges of traditional higher education. During the pandemic, there was a vertiginous decline in university enrollments, emptying one million places in courses lasting two to four years.

The lack of a college degree for decades has excluded workers from their desired professions and the accumulation of wealth that comes with them: “Sixty-two percent of Americans over 25 have no bachelor’s degree, and that number rises to 72 percent for Black adults and 79 percent for Hispanic adults. Any shift in the workforce to the advantage of workers without degrees carries obvious implications for economic mobility and equity”, according to The Post.

Some workforce observers see reasons to believe employers will keep that door open for workers without degrees, even if the economy sends more college graduates their way.

“Businesses like Google, IBM, and Accenture have also made high-profile moves to boost skills-based hiring. […] In January, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia examined a subset of middle-skill jobs and found that the proportion of job listings asking for a college degree dropped 4 percent between the first quarter of 2020 and the second quarter of 2021. […] that means 700,000 more of what it calls ‘opportunity jobs’ — positions open to those lacking degrees that pay more than the U.S. yearly median of $36,660”.

Joseph Fuller, a management professor at Harvard Business School, told The Post that he doesn't believe most employers will ever again require a college degree in these types of jobs, even if the most qualified applicants return to apply. However, workers will still need some alternative way to develop the skills needed to continue being hired.

“A bachelor’s degree still holds prestige as a ticket to the middle class, but its value has received increasing scrutiny. In the last several years, rising tuition and student loan debt have led more Americans to reconsider an investment in postsecondary education. When Gallup asked Americans in 2019 about the value of college degrees, just 51 percent answered ‘very important’, down from 70 percent in 2013”, according to the publication.