Dropping the degree requirement from the job ad changed almost nothing about who gets hired. A February 2024 Harvard Business School and Burning Glass Institute audit of 11,300 roles that lost the requirement found the "skills-based hiring" wave reached about 97,000 workers a year out of 77 million US hires, fewer than 1 in 700.

  • By LinkedIn's count, 30 percent of paid job postings no longer require a professional degree, up from 19 percent in 2019.
  • Just 37 percent of firms that dropped it, including Walmart, Apple, GM, and Tyson Foods, hired more people without degrees.
  • 45 percent changed only the ad; 18 percent improved, then slid below where they started.
  • Where it is real, it works: non-degreed hires' two-year retention ran 10 points above their degreed coworkers', and their own pay rose 25 percent on average.

Judge employers by their hires, not their postings.