Pennsylvania
took a simple yet effective step to combat credentialism last week.
Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) signed an executive order dropping the college degree requirements from roughly 65,000 state jobs in Pennsylvania. Instead, the state will put a greater emphasis on skills and prior work experience in hiring.
“In Pennsylvania, the people should decide what path is best for them, not have it decided by some arbitrary requirement or any arbitrary limitation,” Shapiro
said
during the executive order signing ceremony last week.
What Shapiro did is a great idea, and any states that have not already done this should follow suit. Regardless of whether a politician is a Democrat or a Republican, they should care about the credentialism plaguing our workforce.
Arbitrary degree requirements are an expensive barrier to entry that disproportionately affect the working class. In a country where people carry
nearly $2 trillion
in student loan debt, higher education costs are a problem. Therefore, it makes sense for the government to enact policies that help people earn a living wage
without spending tens of thousands of dollars on a college degree
.
Ideally, our society would be a meritocracy. But credentialism is the antithesis of meritocratic: Jobs with blanket bachelor’s degree requirements exclude most of the workforce. In 2021,
62.1%
of people 25 and older lacked a bachelor’s degree, and 51.6% lacked an associate’s degree-level education.
So why should the government exclude these people from being considered in the job hiring process? That is not to say the state must hire only people without college degrees. However, they deserve a chance in the hiring process like anyone else.
The state should want to hire the best person for the job. If the best candidate for a position has a master’s degree, that’s fine. And if the best candidate is a high school graduate who is a hard worker, that’s fine too.
States, and countries, can manage fine without arbitrary credentialism. For example, 49 states allow people to become
florists
or
fortune tellers
without a government-issued license. Additionally, four states allow people to become
lawyers without attending law school
if they can pass the bar exam.
Half of the European Union countries
do not issue barber’s licenses. Plus, there was no epidemic of emergency room visits due to
at-home haircuts
when the United States was locked down in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Yet, 50 states require people to obtain a government-issued license to become a barber.
Credentialism is a legal form of discrimination. Thankfully, other governors can copy Shapiro and take a tangible step toward ending it.
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Tom Joyce (
@TomJoyceSports
) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts.
