Harris to Cut Degree Requirements
A modest proposal for Civil Service reform.
Reuters (“Kamala Harris says she will cut degree requirements for certain federal jobs“):
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said on Friday she will cut college degree requirements for certain federal jobs if elected president as the Democratic presidential candidate and her Republican rival have been making economic pledges to woo voters.
Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump are in a tight race for the Nov. 5 U.S. elections. Harris has previously said she will aim to pass a middle class tax cut, while Trump has advocated for cutting taxes on overtime pay. Both candidates have supported eliminating taxes on tips.
“As president, I will get rid of the unnecessary degree requirements for federal jobs to increase jobs for folks without a four-year degree,” Harris said in her speech in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
More than 62% of Americans age 25 or older did not hold a bachelor’s degree, according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau in early 2023. Americans without college degrees made up three out of five voters in 2020.
The Democratic presidential candidate said on Friday the U.S. should recognize the value of paths to success beyond a college degree, like apprenticeships and technical programs.
A degree does not necessarily indicate a person’s skills, Harris said. She added: “And I will challenge the private sector to do the same.”
I don’t have a strong opinion on whether this is a good idea although, I guess, by definition “unnecessary degree requirements” are, well, unnecessary and should therefore be eliminated. We almost certainly require credentials that are unnecessary too often as a proxy for the possession of certain talents and attributes. It makes culling applicants easier but presents unnecessary barriers.
I’ve recounted before that my late father’s last job in the Army, as a master sergeant, was as a chief instructor at the Military Police School, then at Fort McClellan, Alabama, a major’s billet. Upon his retirement, he tried to get back on at the school as a civilian employee as a mere instructor but was deemed “unqualified” because he only had an associate’s degree and the job required a bachelor’s degree.* He eventually got said degree and got hired, but it was obviously silly.
That said, since I’m rather sure these jobs are currently being filled, the only way this proposal will “increase jobs for folks without a four-year degree” is at the expense of those with one. To the extent the former are, as in my father’s example, actually more qualified for the job, that’s to the good. But this doesn’t actually create any jobs.
As always, Harris’ proposal looks great compared to her opponent’s plan for reforming the Civil Service by firing people who disagree with him.
*Years later I applied for a GS-12 job there with a PhD but was deemed unqualified because the job called for a BA in Education and, while the Civil Service guide specifically deemed a doctorate and relevant experience made me qualified, the HR folks ruled that the waiver should only be granted if there were not applicants with an Education degree.
It’s an important move insofar as it pushes back against the ridiculous obsession with four year degrees. People take on a lifetime of debt for a Civil Service job? It’s a small move to counter the education elitism of the Left. It won’t create more jobs, but it will make the process more fair. Good for her.
In my experience college degrees are useful up until about age 30 because they demonstrate a person’s ability to buckle down and accomplish something at a young age.
After that point, however, you have proven what you can and cannot do, and your on-the-job accomplishments are far more important indicators of your capabilities and interests.
I welcome this change, as a guy who got his bachelor’s degree at age 46 – mostly because it was a regret from early adult life, not to fulfill any sort of job supplement to my IT career.
Using college degrees as a hiring mechanism for most jobs strikes me as a lazy filtering mechanism – akin to throwing away half the resumes because you don’t want to hire somebody who is unlucky.
Well done Madame President (to be)
This is a familiar theme to Pennsylvania voters, as Josh Shapiro campaigned on something similar two years ago. Per the WaPo,
I 100% support this. There are a lot of jobs in government where a for year degree isn’t necessary.
Expanding the options for folks to work on government is also great from a civic health perspective.
@Matt Bernius: Just to amplify part of what I think you’re saying:
This is great first because it opens up jobs to people who have been denied access for no good reason, but also because it opens up the agencies to workers who come from vastly different backgrounds and bring a separate set of assumptions and beliefs into the workplace.
This appears a minor encouraging sign Harris has understood a need to address the US Left overweightedness to the Uni graduate BoBo fraction.
@Michael Reynolds: The statistics do say that “lifetime of debt” is a mirage from the Left discourse dominated by activists and persons coming out of the most expensive segment of the US Uni system – who do tend as well to dominate the online discourses, the journalism, and become (certainly unconscious) sources of distortion. It is a reality of a relatively already comparatively elite (sans doubt not without challenges but over-mediatised as compared to that significant fraction of under 30 who are not on upper-level Uni 4+ yrs degree tracks). The mirage and over-focalisation on the challenges of a comparatively narrow fraction of even the Uni educated (and adoption of their language, their agendas) is a source of weakness.
Certainly excepting truly technical degrees, there should be paths to substitution of work experience for degree (using Pr Joyner’s paternal example, a sadly familiar story). Personally in our hiring I not only refuse to pay “primes” for the bad habit of ordinary staff doing 4+2 (that is in Anglo terms, going four year and then direct to Masters).
I personally recently had conversations with US officers who came round discussing climate agenda, investment – their heads were fully focused on this type of thinking – wanting to know my perception on constraints on Renewable Energy investment… and very focused on what Universities could do.
My input was that our current European, North Africa (and sas doubt at all American) challenge is an excessive focus on a certain type of Uni education and an idea of Innovation that is roote din and distorted by the lens of the 90s-00s Internet tech ideas as to what education would be best for the future – but are far less valid for the physical industrial world requirements of RE and electrification of physical world industrial (& agri) production. Sophisticated electrical technicians more than Google engineers….
The over-focus of the Biden Administration on the “indebted college students” is a symptom of this set of conceptual blinders.
Why has this not been done yet? Requirement of degrees not directly required for the duties of the position has been illegal since at least the 1960s. It just hasn’t been enforced by management. For example, a bachelor in education is not justifiable since there are many, many professional academics who teach without such degrees. So what duties of the position cannot be done unless the person has a ED degree?
It’s the law, but no government functionaries have been held to account for the creeping violation of the law. Granted, few will know the law, they’ve just been doing what their predecessor did.
But the evil HR ladies prevail. Including one refusal to consider the promotion of someone in a true affirmative action situation (older black man (at least in his teens before 1964) whose education was weak but fully qualified) using regulations already on the books in both our organization and the industry governing agency. But the agency HR head refused to consider it out of hand. Not only would it have promoted a good man, solve a recurring problem for us, but then they denied us from doing temporary promotions for him when they couldn’t supply a person to fill the position.
Oh, look, apparently the Biden/Harris administration let the initiative die during their time in office
The Office of Personnel Management released its timeline Friday for removing degree requirements from the majority of federal job listings and moving to a more assessment-based hiring process.–August 3, 2020
@JKB:
Oh, hi, you’re back. I suppose you missed the question I had for you on another thread:
Explain how school nurses are performing sex change operations at school.
In my engineering career, I worked with lots of people who had degrees (BS, MS, PhD) from good schools, but were mediocre engineers. Then I knew folks who started out as technicians with two year degrees or less, who had talent, and with good on the job mentoring and maybe classes paid for by the employer, became excellent engineers. I was a first generation college grad with a BS from the University of California who taught for a couple of semesters as visiting faculty at two Ivy League schools. When I retired after four decades, with that teaching experience on my CV, my local community college would not consider me as a part time instructor in first year classes because I did not have a masters degree. Not a big deal for me, and I have been happily volunteering as a high school robotics mentor since then. Bottom line for me…smart employers hire people who can best contribute to the enterprise. For some jobs, that clearly requires specialized education. But a smart candidate with good track record, proven applicable skills and work ethic should count for more than the ability to jump through academic hoops.
@JKB:
Your linked story shows that the Trump administration let it die, as the initiative was actually a Trump executive order issued in June 2020, and the administration’s schedule for implementation was December 2020. Perhaps it wasn’t well-conceived. I mean what could go wrong with Ivanka as co-chair of the Workforce Policy Advisory Board behind the proposal? Or maybe it was kicked to the gutter when Trump issued an October 2020 executive order that would have allowed agencies to fire or not hire those perceived to be disloyal to their leaders.
Eusebio- Just so you know, 2020 doesnt really count as a Trump year in the minds of conservatives. It mars Trump’s economic record. Covid should not count against him, though they carefully ignore covid effects that occurred during the Biden years. I really dont think it would occur to them that August 2020 was when Trump was still in office. (WSJ recently had an editorial comparing the economic of Trump vs Biden years. The Trump years were 2016-2019. They stole one of the Obama years and ignored 2020 to make their comparison. Pay attention and you will discover this is not uncommon by right wing writers.)
Steve
@steve: Kevin Drum makes a minor hobby out of pointing out this sort of distortion by WSJ.
this example is particularly egregious as the more normal practice in comparing administrations is to add a year at the end. The idea is that policy and budget during a first year were set by the previous administration and any new policies will take time to have effect. For instance, looking at month-over-month data, inflation clearly started ramping up in Jan 2021, before anything Biden did had any effect.
This is an excellent idea, and is necessary to combat the degree inflation that has expanded over the years.
I am fairly certain I have ranted here before about PR and marketing requirements for entry level jobs that require graduate work, if not graduate degrees. Totally idiotic.
Whatever can be done to begin to correct this, however small a step, is welcome.