Workers without a bachelor’s degree accounted for a slightly larger share of new hires after employers dropped degree requirements. A U.S. study published in October 2026 found an average increase of 1.2 percentage points, or roughly one additional worker without a bachelor’s degree for every 100 hires into the affected jobs (Lyttelton et al., 2026).

Diversity.com’s earlier article examined what hiring managers say they value in a college degree. Hiring records let us follow the question one step further. When an employer opens a role to people with equivalent experience, how often does someone without a degree actually get the job? Read the earlier article on employer degree preferences.

Why Is a Degree Requirement an Inclusion Issue?

Consider someone who learned payroll by handling it every Friday for a small business. When a payroll job requires a bachelor’s degree, that person’s experience may never reach the hiring manager. Removing the requirement gives them a reason to apply. Whether they earn an interview depends on what the employer accepts as evidence that they can do the work.

That’s why Diversity.com is looking at who actually gets hired. A job seeker reading “equivalent experience accepted” should be able to identify which experience counts. An employer making that change should be able to see whether applicants who qualify through experience make it onto the shortlist and, eventually, onto the payroll.

How Much Did Hiring Change After Employers Dropped the Degree Requirement?

Lyttelton et al. (2026) matched U.S. job postings to 446,500 job starts recorded between 2011 and 2021. They identified jobs that had previously required a degree and examined who entered them after the requirement changed. The 1.2-percentage-point increase describes hiring during those years.

A separate study gives employers a closer look at how much that outcome varied from one organization to another. Sigelman et al. (2024) examined 11,300 roles at large employers. They counted one occupation at one employer as a role and used workers’ career histories to compare hires before and after the employer dropped its degree requirement. Across those roles, the share of new hires without a bachelor’s degree rose by about 3.5 percentage points.

The researchers identified three patterns among the employers they studied:

• 37% of employers accounted for nearly all the overall increase in hiring people without bachelor’s degrees.

• 45% changed their postings and saw little change in whom they hired.

• 18% initially hired a larger share of workers without bachelor’s degrees, then returned toward their previous hiring pattern (Sigelman et al., 2024).

The two studies used different samples and methods, so their estimates cannot establish a trend from 2024 to 2026. For a hiring manager, the most useful finding is the variation across employers. An organization could change its postings, hire differently for one round, and find a year later that its old pattern had returned.

What Did Access to These Jobs Mean for Workers?

Workers without a bachelor’s degree who moved into jobs that had dropped the requirement earned about $4,600 more per year than comparable workers without a degree who moved into jobs that had never required one. That earnings advantage lasted at least five years. The figure describes the difference between those two groups (Lyttelton et al., 2026).

The researchers also found that workers without degrees who entered the newly accessible jobs were more likely to be Black, Hispanic, or female than the workers they replaced (Lyttelton et al., 2026). The overall shift in hiring was modest, yet for workers who secured those positions, it could mean access to a better-paying career path.

Where Can a Qualified Applicant Get Screened Out?

Consider a hypothetical employer hiring a payroll specialist. The revised posting accepts experience resolving payroll discrepancies. A shift supervisor applies and describes spotting an overtime error, checking time records across two pay periods, and working with payroll to correct employees’ pay.

The recruiter has a concrete example to evaluate, provided the application reaches them. An old screening question could still require a bachelor’s degree to advance. Even if the application gets through, a reviewer looking only for the title payroll specialist could overlook the work described under shift supervisor.

Before the next opening, the recruiter and hiring manager can agree on what earns an interview. For this role, they might look for evidence that an applicant can trace a discrepancy, verify the amount owed, and explain the correction. Those criteria give the reviewer a way to assess the supervisor’s experience and identify what to ask next.

How Can Employers Check Whether Their Own Hiring Changed?

Start with one role your organization fills regularly. Record when the degree requirement changed, then review three points in the hiring process:

1. Test the application. Walk through it as an applicant who has the advertised experience and no bachelor’s degree. Can that person answer the screening questions accurately, submit the application, and reach a recruiter?

2. Find the stage where outcomes changed. Compare similar hiring rounds before and after the revision. Look at who applied, reached an interview, received an offer, and started. If your existing records include education, keep missing information in an “unknown” category. A blank field tells you nothing about whether someone holds a degree.

3. Read the decisions behind the numbers. If qualified applicants rarely reach an interview, inspect the screening rules and shortlist notes. If they reach interviews and rarely receive offers, look at how interviewers scored their evidence. For a small hiring pool, reviewing individual decisions can tell you more than a percentage on its own.

A useful question to put to the hiring team is one an applicant might ask: “Where in your process will someone evaluate the experience you say qualifies me for this job?” The answer should identify a person or step, the evidence they consider, and how that evidence affects the decision.

What Should Employers Take Away?

Across the roles studied, removing degree requirements opened a route into better-paying work for some people without bachelor’s degrees. Employers varied considerably in how often they hired through that route and whether the change lasted (Lyttelton et al., 2026; Sigelman et al., 2024).

If your team has already revised a posting, bring one recently filled role to your next hiring review. Ask the recruiter and hiring manager, “What evidence of equivalent experience earned someone an interview?” If they can point to a specific example, use it to clarify the criteria for the next opening. If they struggle to answer, revisit the point where the applicant’s experience was supposed to receive consideration.

For help reviewing degree and experience requirements before your next vacancy goes live, download Diversity.com’s free Inclusive Job Description Guide.

Get Started with Diversity.com

At Diversity.com, we connect employers with qualified candidates through inclusive hiring, and help job seekers find employers committed to it.

For Employers & HR Professionals:

✔ Post a job and reach candidates across healthcare, higher education, government, nonprofits, and private industry
✔ Browse our resources for guides, checklists, and reports on inclusive hiring
✔ Join our community in LinkedIn for hiring and compliance updates

For Job Seekers:

✔ Find Inclusive Jobs at organizations that chose to post here
✔ Create a free account to apply and get matched to new openings
✔ Browse our resources for career guides and tools

Have questions? Reach out to our team. We're here to support you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does dropping a degree requirement lower hiring standards?

These studies measured changes in who got hired. Their findings do not establish a change in the quality of employees’ work. A team reviewing its standards can start by naming a responsibility the role requires and deciding how applicants can demonstrate they can handle it (Lyttelton et al., 2026; Sigelman et al., 2024).

What can applicants ask when a posting accepts equivalent experience?

Ask, “What experience would earn someone an interview for this role?” Then connect a specific example to a responsibility in the posting. For the payroll opening, explaining how you found and verified a pay error gives the recruiter something more concrete to assess than “strong attention to detail.”

What if we hire only one person into the role each year?

Review the shortlist while the decisions are fresh. Could applicants use each qualification route the posting offered? Can reviewers point to the evidence that moved each finalist forward? Keep the same records for the next comparable opening. That gives you a way to spot recurring decisions even when there are too few hires to draw a reliable conclusion from percentages.

Related Articles

• Amazon and Target’s DEI Policies in 2026: What Job Seekers Can Verify

• What to Ask an AI Résumé Screening Vendor to Show You With Two Sample Résumés

• Neuroinclusive Onboarding: A Manager’s Plan for the First Week

• The Job You Interviewed For Is on Hold. What Should You Ask the Recruiter?

  ---

  Sources & References

• Lyttelton, T., Nelson, D. K., & Wilmers, N. (2026). Decredentialed jobs and upward mobility among non-college workers in the USA. Nature Human Behaviour. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02610-5

• Sigelman, M., Fuller, J., & Martin, A. (2024, February). Skills-based hiring: The long road from pronouncements to practice. Burning Glass Institute. Full research report (PDF)