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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday June 30 2020, @12:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the we-don't-need-no-stinkin'-degree dept.

New Executive Order Fights Credential Inflation In The Federal Workforce:

On Friday, President Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to fill job vacancies based on merit, rather than require a minimum level of education for candidates seeking open positions. The order rightly recognizes that a job candidate with several years of relevant experience may be just as qualified, if not more so, than one who has collected a stack of advanced degrees.

"Employers adopting skills- and competency-based hiring recognize that an overreliance on college degrees excludes capable candidates and undermines labor-market efficiencies," the order reads. "Currently, for most Federal jobs, traditional education — high school, college, or graduate-level — rather than experiential learning is either an absolute requirement or the only path to consideration for candidates without many years of experience."

The order still allows federal agencies to prescribe minimum educational requirements for job candidates if the degree is legally required by the state or local government where the federal employee will be working. Additionally, they may consider a candidate's education if the degree "directly reflects the competencies necessary" to do the job.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @04:42PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @04:42PM (#1014568)

    A cynical reading (an angle which proves to be remarkably applicable to everything the current administration does) is that this allows them to easily hire unqualified people into positions. For instance, you want your EPA science team to be staffed with people with Ph.D.s in a related field, well now you can hire that Kansas science teacher who has been teaching that creationist-based environmental science course (about how God will save us from mercury poisoning from our drinking water). I would need to hear an analysis from someone who understands the intent of this order, but given that it is being enacted as an executive order tells me that it isn't being done to fix a problem, but rather to get around an impediment.

    Tangentially related to your example of your Dad, there are veteran preferences in most all hiring in the Fed Govt where if the vet application meets the requirements of the job position, the employer is required to take the veteran over the other candidates. However, I don't know when that was enacted, so it might not have been applicable in the 70s.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @05:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @05:14PM (#1014579)

    Could that impediment be that a majority of higher education is ideologically captured, so requiring university credentialing has evolved into being tantamount to also preferring a particular political belief system? Or it's simpler and just that jobs that don't require anything taught in college have had requirements inflated to reserve the jobs for middle class folks and inflate salary.

  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 30 2020, @05:22PM (1 child)

    You're half-assing your cynicism so you can dislike Trump. A true cynic would note that the current setup would have the government forced to turn down Stallman or Wall for an entry-level codemonkey position.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @12:55AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @12:55AM (#1014802)

      And you are half assing your trolling.

      "A cynical reading (an angle which proves to be remarkably applicable to everything the current administration does) is that this allows them to easily hire unqualified people into positions."

      That quote is 100% accurate, and the fact that you're still waving the TDS flag shows how education is still valuable even if you can pay the bills without it.