How the lack of a diploma affects professionals who would have the capacity to hold positions, but end up barred

Imagine you find a job offer that seems ideal for your skills, but you can’t apply because the position requires a college degree that you don’t have.

In the US, it is often said that people who went through this type of experience were barred by the so-called “paper ceiling”.

This is how the situation of professionals who are unable to reach a position for which they have the capacity, but not the required university degree, has recently begun to be called.

This limitation is widespread in the labor market and affects more than 70 million people in the United States, according to estimates by the NGO Opportunity at Work, which launched a joint campaign in 2022 with other institutions to raise awareness of the problem.

The professionals who suffer from the “paper ceiling” are the so-called “alternative means trained” workers (STARs).

They acquired their knowledge and skills directly on the job, through non-academic training courses or programs, during military service, or through other avenues that do not involve obtaining a university degree.

According to Opportunity at Work, STARs represent more than 50% of the US workforce, including 61% of African American citizens and 55% of people of Hispanic origin. In fact, the number of professionals without a university degree, in general, is even higher among minorities than the national average.

According to the US Census Bureau, 62% of those over 25 do not have a college degree, but that percentage rises to 72% among African-American citizens and 79% among those of Latino origin.

But what are the concrete effects of the “paper ceiling” on working life?

No pay raises or promotions

The entry of professionals without a university degree into the United States has been progressively decreasing over the last few decades.

The wage gap between people with and without a college degree has doubled over the past 40 years, according to Opportunity at Work. The organization claims that, adjusting salaries for inflation, STARs earn less today than they did in 1976.

And the “paper ceiling” is one of the reasons, since, in practice, what happens is that workers who did not attend university face difficulties both in reaching management levels in the companies where they work, and in finding jobs with better pay. in other companies.

And this last possibility was even more reduced after companies began to resort to artificial intelligence programs for their recruitment and selection processes.

These programs tend to use the university degree as a filter and may even favor candidates who have graduated from certain specific universities, as well as previous professional experiences that would require the degree.

“The fact that the algorithms are biased is not necessarily their fault. These algorithms are trained by humans from history. And unfortunately, our job market has historically used the requirement for degrees as a synonym for ability,” says Shad Ahmed , director of operations for Opportunity at Work, to the Marketplace radio show on US public broadcaster NPR.

The increasing demand for university degrees to access certain jobs is part of a phenomenon called “degree inflation”, according to a study carried out by the Business School of Harvard University, in the United States, by the consulting firm Accenture and by Grads of Life organization.

The study reports that “the growing demand for four-year college degrees for jobs that previously required no education is an important and widespread phenomenon that is making the US job market less efficient.”

“Job postings that were traditionally considered mid-skill jobs (requiring professionals to have a high school diploma but not a college degree) in the United States now set a college degree as their minimum education requirement, something that only a third of the adult population has such a credential,” states the study report.

This situation has worsened because, between 2012 and 2019, 69% of new jobs created in the United States correspond to occupations that require a degree or bachelor’s degree.

Negative effects on the economy

It’s not just professionals without a degree who suffer from the “paper ceiling”. Companies and the economy as a whole are also affected, especially at a time when, paradoxically, the United States is experiencing a shortage of professionals.

There are 10.3 million open job vacancies in the country and only about 6 million unemployed people, according to the most recent figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This shortage of workers has forced companies to increase the wages offered to recruit and retain their staff, at a time when the US economy is experiencing the highest levels of inflation in more than three decades.

“As companies struggle to find talent amid perceived ‘skill shortages’ and ‘labor shortages’, many of the job offers have needlessly excluded the half of the country’s professionals who do not have a degree but who have the capabilities to get a higher-paying job”, highlights Byron Auguste, executive director of Opportunity at Work, in a statement to the press in June 2022.

In any case, the “paper ceiling” problem predates the post-pandemic economic situation.

The Harvard Business School study published in 2017 already warned that the practice of requiring a university degree when it was previously not necessary “prevents companies from finding the talent they need to grow and prosper and makes it difficult for Americans to have access to jobs that provide the basis for a decent standard of living”.

Over the past few months, a coalition of nearly 50 organizations — including companies such as Chevron, Accenture, Google, IBM, LinkedIn, Comcast and Walmart — has devised a campaign to raise awareness of the “paper ceiling” in the United States and encourage employers to rule out this practice.

Some of these companies are already reducing their college-level requirements. This is the case, for example, of Accenture, which requires a diploma for only 26% of its jobs. And at IBM, this requirement affects 29% of positions.

This text was originally published here.