School or skills: How employers feel about ‘tearing the paper ceiling’

In the fall of 2022, a coalition of nearly 50 organizations launched the “Tear the Paper Ceiling” campaign in an effort to convince employers to shed degree requirements for certain jobs. The thinking goes that such requirements are often unnecessary and not only make hiring more difficult than it has to be but also hold back qualified and deserving jobseekers. Just over a year later, researchers are evaluating how the effort is going.

Why tear the paper ceiling?

With the proliferation of online application systems, employers often are inundated with applications when they post open jobs. Many cope with the deluge by immediately filtering out all applicants without a four-year college degree.

But there are downsides to that approach, and people ranging from applicants to business executives to government officials are taking notice.

At its September 2022 launch, the Tear the Paper Ceiling campaign noted that more than 70 million workers in the U.S. had developed skills through community college, workforce training, bootcamps, certificate programs, military service, or on-the-job learning instead of through traditional four-year college experiences.

Tear the Paper Ceiling advocates tout the value of those workers, calling them STARS—those who are Skilled Through Alternative Routes.