Dropping Degree Requirements Changed Fewer Than 1 in 700 Hires

Over the past decade, hundreds of employers announced they would stop requiring college degrees for many jobs. Governors issued executive orders for state roles. Large companies rewrote job postings. The movement promised to open good jobs to millions of capable workers without four-year degrees.

The reality has been slower. A 2024 report by the Harvard Business School Project on Managing the Future of Work and the Burning Glass Institute, titled The Long Road from Pronouncements to Practice, measured what actually happened after employers changed their postings.

What the study found

The researchers found a nearly fourfold increase from 2014 to 2023 in the annual number of roles where employers dropped degree requirements. But across about 11,300 roles at large firms, the share of workers hired without a bachelor's degree rose by only about 3.5 percentage points.

The study tracked hiring for at least a year before and after each change, which let the researchers compare who companies said they would hire with who they actually brought on.

Because only a small share of roles dropped requirements, the overall effect was tiny. The authors estimated the change created new opportunities for about 97,000 workers out of roughly 77 million annual hires, or fewer than 1 in 700 hires in 2023.

The results also varied sharply by company. About 37 percent of firms were classified as leaders, increasing their share of hires without degrees by nearly 20 percent. About 45 percent changed in name only, with no meaningful difference in who they hired. The remaining 18 percent were backsliders that made early gains and then reverted, ending up with a smaller share of workers without degrees.

Why posting changes are not enough

Removing a requirement from a job posting does not change how recruiters screen resumes or how hiring managers judge candidates. Many still view a degree as a signal of reliability or ability, even when it is no longer listed. Applicant tracking systems may still filter on education. Interviewers may still favor candidates with familiar backgrounds.

The report concluded that successful adoption requires deliberate changes to hiring practices rather than new language in postings alone. That means defining the skills a job truly requires and measuring them directly.

What leading firms did

The companies that made real progress shared several habits. They identified the specific skills each role needs and built assessments around them. They trained recruiters and hiring managers to evaluate those skills instead of credentials. They tracked outcomes to see whether hiring patterns actually changed.

The payoff showed up in retention. At the leading firms, workers without degrees who were hired into roles that formerly required them had retention rates about 10 percentage points higher than their colleagues with degrees.

The leaders included a mix of large private employers and public agencies. The report named companies such as Walmart, Apple, General Motors and Tyson Foods, along with government employers like the State of Minnesota and the City of Denver. Their range suggests the approach can work across very different industries and job types.

Leaders also communicated the change. They told candidates directly that experience and demonstrated skill counted, so qualified applicants without degrees did not screen themselves out before applying.

Putting it into practice

Start with the job description. Separate the essential functions from the nice to have extras and ask whether each requirement is needed on day one. Our guide to writing job descriptions walks through that process.

Use assessments that measure skills directly. Work samples, job knowledge tests and structured interviews all predict performance better than credentials alone. Research summarized in our guide to structured interviews shows that a consistent, job-related interview format is among the strongest predictors available.

Check the screening tools. Review how your applicant tracking system filters candidates and remove education filters for roles where the degree is no longer required. Employers using automated screening should also review state AI hiring rules, explained in our AI hiring law report.

Build training pathways. Apprenticeships and on-the-job training programs let employers develop skills instead of buying them. Our report on Registered Apprenticeship explains how these programs work.

Many employers face persistent shortages in skilled trades, health care support roles and technical jobs. Millions of working-age adults have relevant experience but no four-year degree. Reaching them requires more than a new line in a posting. It requires hiring systems that recognize what candidates can actually do.

The firms that got it right found a larger talent pool and workers who stayed longer. The ones that changed only the words found neither.