Should You Care About a College Degree?

Americans might have good reason to question whether college is worth the money, but are employers ready to disregard those degrees on résumés?

According to a new report from the Burning Glass Institute and Strada Institute for the Future of Work, 52 percent of graduates are underemployed a year after graduation — meaning that they are working jobs that don’t usually require a college degree. A decade after graduation, 45 percent are still underemployed.

This new data comes as faith in college degrees is already faltering: The percentage of Americans who said they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education fell from 57 percent in 2015 to 36 percent in 2023, according to Gallup. And 56 percent of Americans don’t think a degree is worth the cost, according to another poll.

And yet, this new report reinforces the value of on-the-job experience during college: Graduates who had at least one internship had 48.5 percent lower odds of underemployment than those who didn’t have any internships.

Some companies have already started putting more emphasis on ability and experience over degrees, fueling a movement coined “skills-based hiring.” Amazon, Accenture, and IBM have all adopted this approach, and overall, the share of jobs requiring a college degree fell from 51 percent in 2017 to 44 percent in 2022.

But, “for all its fanfare, the increased opportunity promised by Skills-Based Hiring has borne out in not even 1 in 700 hires last year,” according to another report from the Burning Glass Institute, this time in conjunction with Harvard Business School’s Managing the Future of Work Project.

Still, if employers can find a way to implement skills-based hiring and do it well, the benefits could be significant. Reports link hiring for skills to greater job performance, and the above report found that non-degreed workers had a stronger retention rate than degree-holders.

“This win-win outcome suggests that Skills-Based Hiring should continue to gain momentum,” it concluded, “despite its slow start.”