In March of 2023, Gov. Roy Cooper issued Executive Order 278, designed to lower degree-related barriers to entry for state-government jobs in North Carolina. A year and a half later, the Martin Center is following up on its effects.
Titled Recognizing the Value of Experience in State Government Hiring, EO 278 is intended to help potential applicants who have relevant experience for state jobs but may not have a college degree.
The state hopes that removing this barrier to entry will benefit both potential applicants and employers.“You don’t necessarily need to have a degree to be great at your job,” Cooper said upon signing the order, “and North Carolina is in need of talented people who can get things done. This order makes it clear that we recognize the value of work experience and don’t want the lack of higher education to be a barrier to starting or advancing in a state career.”
As stated in the governor’s press release, recruiting and retaining a skilled workforce has been a challenge for many state agencies. The state hopes that removing this barrier to entry will benefit both potential applicants and employers. While the order does not entirely remove all degree requirements for state jobs, it emphasizes that related experience should be a welcome alternative on job listings. “Under this Executive Order,” Cooper’s press release reads, “a statement will be added to state job postings clarifying that directly related experience can serve as a substitute to education for most state jobs.”
Since the order was put into place, the aforementioned statement has indeed been added to many government job listings. The snapshot below is an example from a listing for an accountant; similar wording can be found under the education-requirement section in other job listings.
State-specific data measuring the impact of this shift is not yet available, so it is difficult to know if EO 278 is having the desired impact. North Carolina has yet to pass any legislation supporting or broadening the order; however, a quick search of entry-level state openings requiring only a high-school degree brings up several pages worth of job listings. Additionally, accepting experience in lieu of a degree could very well bridge the gap between entry- and upper-level job opportunities for some employees.
With the mandated statement now affixed to many job descriptions, applicants can assess their experience equivalency using this useful guide. The following is an example of what an applicant might see:
Example 1
If a vacancy posting indicates “or equivalent combination of education and experience” and requires a minimum education of a bachelor’s degree, it would be equal to:
• An associate degree and two years of related experience
OR
• A high school diploma or GED and four years of related experience
Commonly referred to as skills-based hiring, the practice of removing degree requirements is becoming increasingly popular, with several states implementing policies similar to North Carolina’s or enacting actual legislation. A key player encouraging such reforms is Opportunity@Work, a nonprofit that hopes to make the U.S. labor market accessible to those “Skilled Through Alternative Routes” (STARs), specifically those who have a high-school diploma but no bachelor’s degree.
Founded in 2015 and independent since 2017, Opportunity@Work has spent the last several years testing solutions and gathering data to help “solve the opportunity gap” so that a lack of a degree is no longer a major hindrance to obtaining a desired job. The organization has found that STARs comprise “half the U.S. workforce,” over 70 million people in every field, including hospitality, IT, healthcare, and manufacturing.
While changes are being made at the upper levels of government, the trickle-down impact on applicants appears still to be in the works.According to Opportunity@Work, this year saw six states pass legislation to remove degree requirements and 15 states, including North Carolina, release executive orders to that effect. Elsewhere, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) has published a model executive order for promoting skills-based hiring. AFPI has found that, in all, “22 states have taken some steps to limit unnecessary degree requirements for jobs, and private sector companies like Walmart, IBM, and Accenture have prioritized skills-based recruitment strategies instead of focusing on college credentials.” This is important because “degree inflation—adding educational requirements to jobs that were previously open to any applicants with the necessary skills—has undermined labor productivity, delayed workers’ entrance into the workforce, and saddled millions of Americans with student loan debt.”
AFPI concludes that transitioning from degree-based to skills-based hiring practices is a solution to the struggles our country is facing when it comes to talent acquisition and retention. These struggles are impacting the labor market nationwide, and the connection between degree inflation and hiring difficulties is not lost on those trying to solve the issue.
At a recent Axios/LinkedIn event, Blake Lawit, senior vice president and general counsel for LinkedIn, reminded the audience that “seventy percent of the jobs listed in the United States require a bachelor’s degree. Thirty-seven percent of the workers have a bachelor’s degree, so there’s a mismatch there right off the top.” He put the matter succinctly, stating, “ultimately, a degree is just a piece of paper. Skills are what you use to do the job.”
While these changes are being made at the upper levels of government and society, the trickle-down impact on employees and applicants appears still to be in the works. Business Insider reported recently that, although some employers are forgoing degree requirements, it’s “not leading to widespread hiring.” An ever-present concern is that those doing the hiring may still allow their biases to get in the way. While employers may not require a degree, they may still prioritize those who have one. This is where presumably forthcoming data will come into play, as the numbers won’t lie.
Going forward, we hope to see data showing the hiring rates of applicants with no degree so that we can assess whether Gov. Cooper’s executive order is having the desired impact on the job force. Hopefully, North Carolina’s next governor and legislative officials will continue supporting skills-based hiring practices, as they could significantly benefit both employees and employers alike, bridging the gap between skilled applicants and government job opportunities. As these hiring practices continue to be implemented, it will be interesting to see what the data reveal regarding the effectiveness of the executive order in our state, as well as similar changes elsewhere.
Ashlynn Warta is the state reporter for the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.