A new article from Vox details how Governor Hogan has “set off the trend” in both the public and private sectors for removing unnecessary college-degree requirements for jobs that don’t need them, opening pathways to success for millions of workers.
Last year, under Governor Hogan, Maryland became the first state in the country to do away with the four-year college degree requirement for thousands of state jobs. According to the piece, “When Biden highlighted those non-college jobs at the State of the Union, it was…nearly one year after Maryland’s Republican governor Larry Hogan set off the trend. Since the president’s State of the Union, Alaska’s Republican governor Mike Dunleavy has also followed suit…The moves are the result of a concerted effort, backed by staggering research and a multi-million-dollar advertising campaign, to educate employers on broken hiring practices that have needlessly locked two-thirds of the workforce out of higher-paying American jobs. For decades, more and more job postings have reflexively required college degrees. Now it’s finally being recognized this was a mistake.”
As Governor Hogan wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last October, “A good education is the foundation to a successful career and a healthy civic society. But a good education doesn’t necessarily require a four-year degree, especially when such excessive credentialism falls on the taxpayer’s dime…It’s time to debunk the fiction that a prestigious degree is the only key to the American dream believes it is time to debunk the fiction that a prestigious degree is the only key to the American dream.”