Emily Yang (10) | STAFF REPORTER
Imagine you’re a student looking for a summer job, and you confidently send in your application to a local bar, a car wash, and a fast food restaurant. A few days later, you receive an email from the bar saying that a bachelor’s degree is needed for the role and you think to yourself, “That’s unusual…”. The next day, you get the same response from the car wash and the fast food restaurant, and it’s feeling like university rejections all over again.
This phenomenon of degree inflation, where employers require college degrees for entry-level jobs, has become a significant challenge in recent years for both employers and the 60% of the population without a degree. This practice is further aggravated by the trend in which employers directly eliminate candidates who may have higher work experience qualifications than another candidate with a bachelor’s degree and little to no work experience.
Even for job positions that had not formerly required a degree, employers use it as a filter for competitive applicant pools, ultimately favouring candidates with degrees. In response to this dilemma, many employers have attempted to broaden their selection regulations.
Most notably in 2020, Google announced that it would no longer require applicants to have a 4 year degree for roles such as data analysis, software engineer, etc. They also launched their Google Career Certificate Program, offering online courses to provide specific job-ready skills. While Google’s attempt slightly improved their proportion of employees without college degrees, there were many shortcomings that were overseen by the company.
For example, while Google offers a certificate program, the certificates are almost exclusively recognized by Google, and lack recognition in other international companies, resulting in the majority of employers still prioritizing candidates with a 4 year degree.
Instead, universally recognized certificate programs refined by several other large tech companies would allow for employers to place equal emphasis on the degree and certificate, promoting a more fair and well-rounded competition pool.
