Employers Nix Degree Requirements, But Data Shows Most Still Value College
Credit: Oscar Wong / Moment / Getty Images- Removing degree requirements has increased hiring of nondegree-credentialed workers by only 2 percentage points.
- 76% of employers prefer candidates with a bachelor’s degree, and 78% prefer candidates with an associate degree, even when jobs do not require them.
- The information and technology sectors are more likely to hire credentialed workers.
U.S. employers are increasingly dropping degree requirements from job postings, but they’re not hiring nondegree candidates at the same clip.
In a 2026 Lumina Foundation-Gallup survey of 2,000 U.S. employers, 23% said they had removed degree requirements from some roles over the past three years, and another 20% said they were in the process of doing so.
But new research from OneTen and the Burning Glass Institute shows that change alone does not move many more nondegree credential holders into jobs. The report analyzed hiring patterns across more than 1,000 major U.S. employers and found that companies that remove degree requirements see only a 2-percentage-point increase in the share of hires with nondegree credentials.
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At the same time, most employers still say that college matters. About half of Gallup’s survey respondents say most jobs in their organization require a degree to be successful, and around three-quarters of employers say they prefer candidates with an associate or bachelor’s degree.
That doesn’t mean employers think degrees alone prove job readiness. Only 54% of employers said U.S. colleges and universities are graduating students with the skills their organizations need, and 69% said recent college graduates need a moderate amount or a great deal of additional training once hired.
How to Know Which Credentials Are Valuable
The Burning Glass research says the real divide is not whether employers support skills-first hiring as a goal, but whether they have the systems in place to recognize which credentials actually signal job-ready skills.
“The biggest barrier today isn’t talent. It’s translation,” Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute, said in a March news release.
Sigelman said companies have made skills-based hiring commitments, but their systems still struggle to recognize work-readiness signals other than degrees.
Want to learn about nondegree credentials? Read more:
The challenge for both employers and students determining which microcredentials are legitimate is a crowded market In a December 2025 report, Credential Engine found almost two million unique credentials offered in the U.S. An emerging initiative among education accreditors could help both companies and workers determine which credentials pass muster.
Recently, the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) — one of the country’s largest higher education accreditors — endorsed four organizations that provide short-term credentials. These endorsements acknowledge that the providers meet high-quality standards, according to HLC’s press release.
The Burning Glass report found that employers who effectively identify the credentials that provide value to their businesses see measurable returns. Debbie Dyson, CEO of OneTen, states that “this report makes clear that credential fluency—knowing which credentials matter, and how to operationalize them—gives companies an undeniable competitive edge.”
Nondegreed workers, too, can focus on which credentials give them a better chance of gaining traction in the job market. According to Burning Glass, the information and technology sectors value certifications as evidence of job-relevant skills and hire accordingly, while the healthcare sector enables greater mobility for workers who earn role-specific credentials.
Nondegree Credentials Still Pay Dividends for Underrepresented Workers
The impact of nondegree credentials is also evident in wage data, particularly for workers who have historically faced barriers in hiring and pay.
While the Burning Glass report found an increase in earnings for credential holders across all demographics, women who earn a credential see average annual wage gains of $1,600, compared with $916 for men. One year after earning a credential, Black workers saw average annual wage gains of $2,116, Hispanic workers saw gains of $1,695, and white workers saw gains of $1,106.
According to the report, this trend demonstrates that credentialing helps rectify historical wage disparities. Companies are now seeing an objective, up-to-date measure of a worker’s abilities, which, in turn, helps properly value those abilities in the job market without subjective factors influencing that valuation.