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Google co-founder Sergey Brin says degrees are now less essential than attitude and skills-based learning and other CEOs agree with him.
Speaking to Stanford University (Brin's alma mater) engineering students last month, Brin said his own educational path, was not over laden with qualifications or other credentials.
“I chose computer science because I had a passion for it,” he said. “It was kind of a no-brainer for me. I guess you could say I was also lucky because I was also in such a transformative field.”
Brin cautioned students against shifting their academic pathway over fears of automation and the rise of AI. “I wouldn’t go off and switch to comparative literature because you think the AI is good at coding,” he said. “The AI is probably even better at comparative literature, just to be perfectly honest anyway.”
From Stanford labs to skills-based hiring
Brin said that Google has shifted away from focusing on elite educational credentials. “In as much as we’ve hired a lot of academic stars, we’ve hired tons of people who don’t have bachelor’s degrees,” he said. “They just figure things out on their own in some weird corner.”
Between 2017 and 2022, the share of job postings at Google requiring a degree declined from 93% to 77%, according to the Burning Glass Institute. Other major employers such as Microsoft, Apple, and Cisco have also reduced degree requirements, signaling that skills-based hiring models are gaining traction.
It's a trend that is prompting business leaders to question what a degree actually measures. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told an audience in 2024, “I don’t think necessarily because you go to an Ivy League school or have great grades it means you’re going to be a great worker or great person.”
He added that resumes often fail to capture real capability: “If you look at skills of people, it is amazing how skilled people are in something, but it didn’t show up in their resume.”
CEOs challenge credential culture
Palantir CEO Alex Karp has also been openly skeptical of expectations based on academic qualifications, despite holding three degrees himself.
“If you did not go to school, or you went to a school that’s not that great, or you went to Harvard or Princeton or Yale, once you come to Palantir, you’re a Palantirian. No one cares about the other stuff,” he said during an earnings call last year.
Great Place to Work CEO Michael Bush said this is no longer a fringe viewpoint. “Almost everyone is realizing that they’re missing out on great talent by having a degree requirement,” Bush told Fortune. “That snowball is just growing.”
The implications extend beyond job descriptions. As hiring power shifts from credentials to skills, Brin believes universities themselves will have to adjust. “I just would rethink what it means to have a university,” he said.
