Virginia Joins the Movement against Credentialism

College students take classes they don’t care much about to satisfy arbitrary requirements. Many times, they do as little work as they can to get the grade they want. When asked what the most memorable parts of college were, most graduates would tell you something about their social life, not something from the classroom. Which is probably fine because most of what was taught in the classroom has little relevance to job performance anyway.

The moment students graduate, we pretend this rigamarole was some tremendous formative experience that has now produced skilled employees. Research shows that students retain little of what they learned, but many employers pretend that having earned a college degree, in and of itself, is a vital qualification for employment.

Starting with former governor Larry Hogan in Maryland, state governments are no longer pretending. Pennsylvania, Alaska, Utah, Colorado, New Jersey, and North Carolina have already joined Maryland in abolishing degree requirements for many state-government jobs. Virginia is doing the same starting July 1.