A college degree
Last week, Ernst & Young, one of the biggest global accountant company in the U.K has announced it will be removing the degree requirement from its hiring criteria, saying there is “no evidence” that a degree from University correlates with the needed skills in the working environment. From now on, the company will be conducting more testing during interviews to select job candidates. This announcement is creating a big shock all over Europe and several countries in Africa and Asia. Previously, the company requires a college degree with the equivalent of B grades (Above Average) as a qualification to apply for the job, but in recent years, there are so many graduates with a degree but without minimum skills. Today many degrees, primarily from some online schools are considered “worthless.”
In a similar move, Penguin Random House Publishers also announced that it is also scrapping degree requirements for its jobs. A representative of the company said that they will use more assessment to judge the potential of applicants because a “college degree,” especially from some countries and universities does not mean anything. He said: “Academic degrees will still be taken into consideration when assessing candidates, but will no longer act as a barrier to getting hired. ”
In the past few months, many large technology companies, including Google, Facebook, Uber and Amazon also focused more on a rigorous assessment of candidates rather than depending on the college degrees as requirements. A technology executive said: “Our own review of over 600 graduates found that hiring students based solely on degree and academic performance was the wrong approach. Many degrees do not equate to skills as many schools have inflated the grade of the students so they look good on paper. The fact is these students learn to memorize a lot of things just to pass tests and get degrees without knowing that a degree does not mean much in this competitive world. Last year, We tested over 600 college graduates and found only 125 passed our basic tests. That means the education system has failed these students by not providing them with the skills they need to get a job. In the past few years, we imported many foreign workers, but we also found that many of them have a degree but do not have skills so we begin to look at the countries and the schools that these workers came from stop hiring graduates from those schools.”
One of the people who advocates more interviews and testing instead of relying on the degree is Google 's senior vice president Laszlo Bock. He said: “it does not matter where candidates have a degree or not, if they have the skills that we need, we will hire them. I order all managers to use structured interviews where all candidates follow the same basic list of questions for a particular job. We focus on the skills, the ability to solve problems, the role-related knowledge, but not the degree. We like people who are curious, quick learning who can master whatever challenge given to them. We like people with a broad knowledge, who read a lot, who are willing to step in a role when needed and step down when they complete the task, the people who solve the problem and relinquish power if necessary so that someone else can handle the next challenges. Bock calls this “emergent leadership.”
In the world of technology, these messages carry a lot of influence, and as more companies are beginning to test applicants for specific skills and characters, many universities are under pressure to change the way they teach. One professor said: “With many students stop going to university but learn from Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and still get a good job at top technology companies, we must change quickly else, we will have no job.”
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
