Are you currently a college student and worried your traditional degree alone won’t help you land a job post-graduation? You’re not alone.

Employers are starting to move away from traditional degree-based resume requirements and shifting more toward skills-based prerequisites when looking for ideal job candidates, and rightfully-so. Skills-based requirements look beyond the knowledge learned in the classroom and seek out competent, more specialized applicants. This doesn’t mean that the importance of higher education is fading away – it is simply challenging colleges and universities to offer more training opportunities for students to go in conjunction with their traditional degrees. 

According to eLearn Magazine, “2022 will also see a trend towards mixing traditional degree-based learning and skills-based learning. There will always be learners that seek to pursue the traditional degree-learning programs. However, other cohorts of students will look to complete skills-based learning that allows them to enter the workforce quickly or enable career progression opportunities in a cost-effective and short time period. As a result of this, higher education institutions will likely start investing a greater proportion of their budgets into delivering skills-based learning and career development programs that reach a larger cohort of students.”

How should universities approach this new hiring trend to benefit their students? Emsi - Labor Market Analytics & Economic Data suggests keeping up with the labor market changes and working it into the curriculum by “strengthening employer partnerships, creating hybrid and work-based learning programs, and sharing curriculum between institutions to share the work of keeping up.”

Where did this shift originate? Forbes says we can thank the COVID-19 pandemic. “The pandemic broke some old conventions and accelerated other trends. One convention that, for many tech employers, fell by the wayside was requiring degrees for every position. A trend that accelerated during the pandemic was skills-based hiring.” They go on to say that employers limiting their candidates to only those with 4-year degrees are missing out on valuable applicants who are educated through training outside of the classroom. “While the pandemic accelerated inequity, it may have broken the ratchet of degree inflation and caused major employers to get serious about identifying job critical skills and “screen in” talent by verifying skills.”

Does your college or university offer students a more skills-based, robust education? Let us know in the comments!

Cover photo by Marten Bjork on Unsplash