Thousands of qualified Americans are screened out of government jobs each year before a hiring manager even sees their names. It’s not because they lack the skills or the desire; it’s because they lack the credentials that have become a gatekeeper — but not always a guarantor — of competence.
Increasingly, leaders across the political spectrum are saying so out loud, spurring one of the most consequential — and underreported — workforce reforms happening in America.
This is not a partisan issue. In his first term, President Trump signed an executive order directing the federal government to prioritize skills and demonstrated competency over college degrees in federal hiring. This was followed by executive orders from governors — including Maryland’s Larry Hogan, a Republican, and Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, a Democrat — eliminating four-year degree requirements for the vast majority of state government jobs. Governors in more than 30 states have moved to adopt what practitioners call skills-based practices that evaluate what someone can do rather than what institution they attended.
Removing a degree requirement from a job posting is an important start, but it doesn’t tell hiring managers what to look for instead: What skills does a high-demand state IT position actually require? What distinguishes an effective child welfare caseworker from an ineffective one? Without rigorous, evidence-based answers to those questions, skills-based hiring risks becoming a vague aspiration rather than a real reform.
Now, the American Institutes for Research and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices are working to close this information gap. In February, we launched a pilot initiative to help states define and operationalize the specific skills needed for high-demand, high-volume public jobs. We will work directly with up to five states to conduct cross-state job analyses — the kind of rigorous, structured research that identifies what knowledge, skills and abilities a job genuinely requires.
From that foundation, we will build standardized, evidence-based skills that states can use to rewrite job descriptions, redesign hiring criteria, and make smarter decisions about internal mobility and professional development. We’ll also conduct a return-on-investment study so that states can measure whether these changes produce better employees and better outcomes.
Federal, state and local governments lead the way in this reform. The private sector has long wrestled with what researchers call “degree inflation” — the tendency to use a diploma as a credential filter even when the job itself doesn’t require one. A Harvard Business School study found this practice affected as many as 6.2 million workers, quietly locking out qualified candidates before they ever got an interview. About 75 percent of U.S. companies report they are struggling to find qualified workers, while four in 10 adults lack basic digital skills for a typical workplace.
The bipartisan momentum behind skills-based reform reflects a growing national consensus that requiring expensive credentials favoring pedigree over performance has not always served workers, employers or the public well. Correcting that in government isn’t just good workforce policy. It’s a statement about what public service should mean: that anyone with the talent, drive and ability to serve their fellow citizens should have the opportunity to do so.
