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The value of a college degree is under further scrutiny as employers increasingly pivot toward skills-based hiring, leaving many Gen Z and millennial graduates questioning the value of their qualifications.
Michael Bush, CEO of workplace culture authority Great Place to Work, says the world’s leading companies are “not even talking about degrees anymore. They’re talking about skills.” His organisation surveys more than 23,000 companies across 170 countries each year and partners with Fortune to compile the highly influential 100 Best Companies to Work For list.
Bush, who has spent the last decade analysing workforce trends, says the overwhelming focus among top employers over the last five years has been squarely on capability, not credentials. Talking to Fortune, he said: “Almost everyone is realizing that they’re missing out on great talent by having a degree requirement,” he says. “That snowball is just growing.”
He points to a global rise in AI-driven hiring models that assess candidates based on skill sets rather than academic backgrounds.
“When you want to start matching people to complex problems, a degree doesn’t help,” he explains. “What helps is perseverance, passion and the skills required to solve the problem. AI is already doing this using skills databases, not degree histories.”
Gen Z joins employers in calling degrees ‘worthless’
The shift is being reinforced by younger workers themselves. A recent survey by Indeed found that over half of Gen Z graduates believe their degrees were a “waste of money.”
While some degrees, particularly those in STEM and healthcare, still lead to six-figure salaries, many young professionals are increasingly disillusioned with the return on their educational investment. According to Federal Reserve Bank of New York data, aerospace engineering majors have the highest mid-career earnings at $125,000 annually, while advanced medical degrees can lead to salaries exceeding $200,000.
Still, the broader market trend is that demand for practical, demonstrable skills now outpaces academic achievement in many hiring processes. Top firms including Google, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, and most recently Deloitte, have all scrapped long-standing degree requirements in favour of more inclusive, skills-first approaches.
Bush attributes the shift to talent shortages and a rise in hiring managers who themselves lack traditional academic credentials. “It’s not that someone woke up and had an epiphany,” he said. “It’s that there’s a growing awareness that great talent often lies outside the university system.”
Redefining what makes a ‘Great Place to Work’
Bush says truly inclusive employers now prioritise giving all candidates a fair chance to succeed, regardless of their academic background.
“These are requirements of being a great place to work for all - that there’s opportunity for all. And ‘all’ includes people who don’t have degrees,” he says.
While he acknowledges that degrees can still have personal value, Bush urges employers to rethink rigid hiring filters. “It’s gaining acceptance in workplaces to focus more on true performance, and less on things that might be keeping you away from great talent, and degrees have a way of doing that.”
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