来源：《哈佛商业评论》2023年3月4月双月刊
Earning a bachelor’s degree can expand one’s mind, widen horizons, and provide a pathway to a well-paying, satisfying career. Yet for those who don’t complete four years of college, the lack of a BA or BS looms as a barrier. Millions of people are locked out of promising job opportunities because too many companies default to hiring workers with four-year degrees, even for positions that don’t require that level of education. The trend began decades ago but spiked during the Great Recession: Research shows that from 2007 to 2010, job postings requiring at least a bachelor’s degree increased by 10%. That number dropped somewhat as the economy recovered, but scores of jobs remain inaccessible to people who have the skills and talent to succeed at them—but not a college diploma.
获得学士学位可以拓展思维，开阔视野，并为获得高薪、令人满意的职业生涯提供途径。然而，对于那些没有完成四年大学学业的人来说，缺少文理学士学位是一个障碍。数以百万计的人被剥夺了有前途的工作机会，因为太多的公司默认雇佣具有四年制学位的员工，即使是不需要那种教育水平的职位。这一趋势始于几十年前，但在大衰退期间急剧上升：研究表明，从2007年到2010年，需要至少学士学位的职位增加了10%。随着经济复苏，这一数字有所下降，但对于那些有技能和天赋但没有大学文凭的人来说，仍然有许多工作是无法获得的。
Unnecessary degree requirements don’t just hurt workers. They also deprive companies of talent while yielding little to no benefit. Hiring managers may think that a bachelor’s degree serves as a good proxy for things like collaboration skills, a sense of initiative, and the ability to think critically, but there’s virtually no evidence to support that notion. In fact, when a team from Harvard Business School and Accenture recently analyzed “middle-skill” jobs, they found no boosts in productivity when those jobs were done by college graduates.
不必要的学位要求不仅会伤害员工，还让公司失去人才，而几乎没有带来任何好处。人力资源经理可能认为学士学位可以很好地代表协作技能、主动性和批判性思维能力，但实际上没有证据支持这一观点。事实上，当哈佛商学院和埃森哲的一个团队最近分析“中等技能”工作时，他们发现当这些工作由大学毕业生完成时，生产力并没有提高。
Companies that use the bachelor’s degree as a filter when filling positions that don’t require it are hiring inefficiently. They’re also overlooking workers they desperately need, particularly in growing fields such as tech, where the demand for people with specialized skills far outstrips the supply. At a time when many employers are struggling to fill vacancies and retain their current workforce, a gatekeeping mechanism with no proven benefit creates a competitive disadvantage.
在填补不需要学士学位的职位时，使用学士学位作为过滤条件的公司招聘效率低下。他们也忽略了他们迫切需要的工人，尤其是在科技等不断发展的领域，对专业技能人才的需求远远超过了供应。在许多雇主都在努力填补空缺并留住现有员工的时候，一种没有被证明有好处的把关机制会造成竞争劣势。
Moreover, degree requirements undermine organizational commitments to improving racial diversity. Although U.S. Census data from 2021 shows that a majority (about 65%) of Americans who are 25 or older do not have a bachelor’s, the proportions are highest among Black Americans (72%), indigenous populations (80%), and those who identify as Hispanic or Latinx (79%). An unnecessary insistence on credentials is, in short, blocking employers’ access to a diverse, capable pool of talent, and the workers who are taking the biggest hit are those who are already marginalized.
此外，学位要求破坏了组织对改善种族多样性的承诺。虽然美国2021年的人口普查数据显示，大多数(约65%)25岁或以上的美国人没有学士学位，但这一比例在美国黑人(72%)、土著人口(80%)以及西班牙裔或拉丁裔(79%)中最高。简而言之，不必要地强调学历，会阻碍雇主接触到多样化、有能力的人才库，而受到最大冲击的是那些已经被边缘化的人。
It’s no secret that we’re living in a time of profound economic inequality. Workers and occupations are increasingly concentrated at the low and high ends of the economic ladder. The middle class in the United States is hollowing out, and a raft of research across multiple disciplines has found that this is perpetuating racial disparities, tearing the social fabric, and undermining democracy. It’s time to fix our broken approach to talent management, for the good of not just workers and companies but also society as a whole.
众所周知，我们生活在一个经济严重不平等的时代。工人和职业越来越集中在经济阶梯的低端和高端。美国的中产阶级正在空心化，跨越多个学科的大量研究发现，这正在延续种族差异，撕裂社会结构，破坏民主。现在是时候修补我们支离破碎的人才管理方法了，这不仅是为了员工和公司，也是为了整个社会。