Trump signs order prioritizing job skills over college degree in government hiring

I actually like this idea.

I work in government, and I think this will really help to fill vacant positions.

It sounds good. But there's got to be an evil motivation behind it.

[quote] there's got to be an evil motivation behind it

It'll be easier for him to hire his unqualified friends for government jobs.

Vetting for degrees usually keeps a lot of people out of government jobs, because it's scrutinized very closely.

And the degree has to specifically match the skill requirements, in addition to experience.

It’s so he can hire strippers

I also work in the fed, and will agree that his employment-related Executive Orders are an attempt at improvement. I don't think there is an ulterior motive, just distaste for inefficiency.

My cousin’s kids both got bachelors degrees at private college$ & then went to public community colleges for a 2 year degree so they could get jobs. More & more people are doing it instead of graduate school,

It's to help him hire more of the stupid, unqualified friends, familiy members, and fools who have made up the bulk of his incompetent administration.

It's to help him hire more of the stupid, unqualified friends, familiy members, and fools who have made up the bulk of his incompetent administration.

Trump's base is people without a college degree. This is solely about trying to do things to make the base happy before the election.

[quote] It sounds good. But there's got to be an evil motivation behind it.

For one, it's about sticking it to "the elites" and pandering to his anti-education base.

But, in a larger, more general sense, it is also more of the moral vs. establishment dynamic; it is about making the silent majority feel empowered to rise up against their unjust overlords.

This will become more common in the coming years. College degrees don't equate to appreciable job skills.

I agree that it sounds like a good idea. I also agree that with this group there is an evil motivation.

We can take a quick inventory:

—Trump ran a fraudulent for-profit university in his name

—While campaigning, he said “we love the under-educated!”

—He hired Betsy DeVos to degrade and dismantle public schooling in favor of private for-profit charter schools

—Trump’s administration operates through propaganda, lies, “alternative facts,” and it has had the effect of degrading the public’a ability to determine truth from fantasy

—Trump’s administration has convinced 40 percent of the population to believe false information over reality, EVEN now when it comes to protecting themselves and their loved ones from a potentially deadly virus

Had another president done this, I would laud it. Under Trump, it is most certainly a way to further devalue education.

I am critical of placing too much focus on ownership of a degree, which does not always guarantee knowledge or competence. However, higher education almost always makes people more critical thinkers, more open minded and more civically engaged—and Trump and his cabal want less of all these things.

This is welcome news to the thousands who couldn't advance in their job or afford to take time off work to pursue a degree. However, the disdain that many people have for non college educated people is on full display here, the same people who apparently preach for equal opportunity.

R6 I know two women who graduated from liberal arts schools to please their families, and then ended up getting nursing degrees from local community colleges so they could find work. One was an Art major, the other English.

[quote] It's to help him hire more of the stupid, unqualified friends, familiy members, and fools who have made up the bulk of his incompetent administration.

That makes no sense. All the higher ups in his administration, fools though they may be, went to the same Ivies and top state universities as all the other elites.

[quote] Trump's base is people without a college degree. This is solely about trying to do things to make the base happy before the election.

I work in government, and you would be shocked how many positions cannot be filled, due to the degree requirements.

They just sit open for years and years, waiting for someone to be able to qualify.

Again, it's not only the degree requirement, but you must have specific job experience to match the position you are applying for.

This thing he's proposing will make it only slightly easier to fill the position. You're still going to have to have a shit ton of experience - specific experience - to meet the qualifications.

For example, they have random jobs like National Park Ranger, for which not only must you have a Bachelor's or Master's degree in forestry or something, but you must also have two or three years experience having worked out in the field, as well.

Then you have to break down your experience, job by job, and detail how your experience matches up with the qualifications for the position.

It's a very long and tedious process.

You're still going to have to match the experience, but now you won't need the degree. I guess.

It said "some positions," so for other positions a degree will still be required.

Without glancing at the article I'd bet good money that this is about low level, hard to fill positions and not the upper echelons of government. I'd bet that, because I am not a fucking idiot.

He doesn't poll well with voters with a college degree. He probably thinks this will help him.

R18 It will help, although he already has support of most.

R16 My father didn’t go to college. He grew up dirt poor in rural NC—his family didn’t have running water—and he went into the Navy as did most of the men in his family before him. He settled in the DC area, took an entry-level job with the Navy Department, stayed there for a longtime and got training at a tech college for computer programming in the 70s and he ended up at a very high level at the Department of Defense. When he was eligible to retire (at age 55!), his office pressured him like crazy and offered major financial incentives for him to stay—because they couldn’t find a qualified replacement. Although he didn’t have an undergraduate degree, his position was created on paper at that time to require a graduate degree in science, minimum, with a preference for a Ph.D., and decades of specialized experience working with all armed forces. He told them that their requirements were offensive to him because they suggested he was not qualified to do the job he did his whole career—the one they begged him not to leave—and because he felt like a few people in his office could have been promoted to replace him, but they didn’t meet the educational requirements.

One “funny” thing: When I was a teenager, as my dad had his retirement in view, his boss told him he was sending him to Harvard to get a professional graduate degree. My dad asked why—was he not doing his job? What did he need to know? And his boss told him, listen, you’re not qualified to do your job on paper even though you are great at your job, and this Harvard program is short and you can get a master’s without having to get an undergraduate degree first. My dad told his boss that he was not going to leave his family to get a bullshit degree when he was years from retiring. He said they brought it up every year during his annual review.

r2 the billionaires and the government don't want an educated population. The more you know the better you will be able to understand what bullshit they are trying to pull over you eyes.

But there is a need for workers skilled in a variety of trades, the other thing we need are people highly skilled in the areas that Trump just cut out of the workforce in his suspension of work Visas.

Those jobs are in university research labs etc. So in some cases we need trade workers and in some cases we need more skilled in science, tech etc.

The father of Jeffrey McDonald — of family murder fame — was an engineer at Brookhaven Laboratory but didn’t have a degree. That’s what my mother told me.

I'm happy about this. There are plenty of smart people who went to college and didn't like it because no else there was smart. It's not a college degree means anything but that you sucked some old professor's dong either metaphorically or literally. I could see how stupid people could use it though.

I left like out lol.

Next time you should try to sound less defensive about not having a college degree r22.

Umm...shouldn’t it be a combination of both? If someone has skills AND a college degree, shouldn’t those people get the job?🙄

R24 I can see where I came off defensive but I've seen so many people with college degrees get screwed over that it makes me sad. They bought into that dream and then they woke up to a nightmare reality.

[quote] However, the disdain that many people have for non college educated people is on full display here,

That flies both ways. Some of the most disdainful people you can ever meet are those who didn't go to college and have some deep-seated animosity/insecurity towards those who did pursue post-high school education.

I bet they are talking about positions that demand unnecessary PhDs & masters degrees. Probably everything else will at least require an AAS.

Elon Musk does the same thing in his companies. He doesn't care if you have a degree as long as you have the skills.

The problem is that most government employees actually don’t have the skills. The system is a way to hire poorly qualified vets, protect and move around poor performers, and then hire contractors to fix things for a lot more money.

[quote]The problem is that most government employees actually don’t have the skills.

Exactly. So many government employees I’ve met are fucking idiots. If anything, they should be required to have both skills and a degree.

Expect the government to become even more stupid than it already is.

Does it let them pay less. Stagnant wages endure?

It means the Trump Administration is desperate to hire uneducated trash because it can't attract educated people with principles and savvy

I'd love to have real world examples of what they're talking about.

How can people with no degree obtain the skills required for a job that previously required a degree?

And there's a huge myth in the US around college educations. The bottom 60% of colleges /universities are jokes - they're really just high school degrees for those who did not study in high school.

I'm not surprised there are plenty of people with B.A.s who can't get jobs - it has been that way for a couple of decades. By the time you graduate from high school, everyone knows whether or not you are a serious student.

Graduation from mediocre and bottom rung schools and then being in the bottom half of these classes means you really didn't learn shit in college. Don't expect the world to open up for you when you did the bare minimum to get a high school and college degree.

He did say that he loves the uneducated people

We all know he only hires the best people

Let's just listen to Nepotism Barbie herself explain the new policy, shall we?

(And be sure to read the comments on the tweet.)

Go back and read the fine print. Along with ending requirements for degrees, his order also throws out written questionnaires. In other words, "talent" and "skills" will be judged arbitrarily by the person doing the hiring. You know, just like Trump has always hired "the best people" in his administration... This is strictly a move to pander to his base.

“How can people with no degree obtain the skills required for a job that previously required a degree?“

R34 I take exception with a lot of what you wrote. A few things:

—Degree requirements are overinflated today to a ridiculous point. At my office in DC, they literally will not hire someone to answer the phone and place office supplies without a bachelor’s degree, minimum. Most people at my job are vastly overqualified on paper and this is standard at most organizations in DC, with the exception of the federal government.

—The issue is competitiveness. You can’t get by with a high school diploma even for a clerical job that will never require a college-level education in any field. This is a MAJOR problem socioeconomically because (as you may have heard) DC public schools are abysmal and mostly black people go there because they are poor. They get shitty educations and by and large are not reared to be college bound—and then they can’t even get a job answering a fucking phone in their own city except with the government. This disparity is a huge make-or-break problem for a lot of people who are never considered.

—But supply is higher than demand and so it’s all about degrees—and brand-name degrees, at that. I went to a community college because my family was pretty poor and my sister and I are the first generation to have gone to college in our family and it just seemed to make sense to us not to waste money. Then we transferred to a public state university. I have a BA in English (summa cum laude) and an MFA. I work with a lot of people with graduate degrees from Georgetown, Michigan, UC, AU and GWU and one from Harvard. All are intelligent people. All depend on me to edit their writing, and only two require little revision. This is just to say that each of us is a competent specialist in our respective fields, and the Georgetown grads whose work requires substantial amounts of writing, to be honest with you, are what I would expect from a junior-year bachelor’s student in any non-scientific discipline major. Your comment about “mediocre colleges” to my peers would mean the university I attended, and my program was rigorous and not mediocre. Yet my university is devalued in this city where brand names trump actual quality of instruction.

—And speaking of that—you talk about mediocre and low-rung universities, which implies that elite universities always are superior and graduate superior minds and workers. Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump all graduated from Penn (Ivy); Ivanka was admitted to and Eric Trump and Tiffany Trump both graduated from Georgetown (Law in Tiff’s case). Meghan McCain graduated from Columbia. George W. Bush has degrees from both Harvard and Yale. It is really fucking time for smart people to acknowledge and admit that selectivity does not convey better students with better minds. The difference between Harvard or Georgetown and most public state universities is the difference between a cotton Versace tee shirt and a cotton Target tee shirt: sticker price.

[quote]Does it let them pay less. Stagnant wages endure?

Oh I never thought of that! I bet you’re right! This whole thing is an excuse to pay people less when they don’t have a degree.

He wants officer Joel Tudberry (10 years a cop, he knows the law) on the Supreme Court.

Liberal arts and general ed higher education creates a civic base that is intelligent and which thinks critically and analytically.

This administration is working from every angle to reduce education to skills-based job training so that they will become more impressionable. I work in higher ed at a national association and I promise you this is an intentional effort from K-12 through higher education.

I hate Trump with a passion but I actually agree with this. At the firm I previously worked for in London, HR would screen out job candidates if they didn't go to specific universities (the usual: Oxford, Cambridge, etc.) I told HR to stop doing that for any positions on my teams and just send us the CVs to review directly. That wasn't popular at first with the other members of the exec team but I explained to them that I found the greatest success on candidate searches when I look at their skills or experience and their education matter little. I know it sounds corny but what I learned after many years of working for British companies are that they are still very class focused when it comes to hiring. "Oh, he didn't go to this school so we're not going to even consider him" or even "Oh her, she's from the North. Don't bother..."

Everything he does from now til election day will be photo ops for his Deplorables. Why did he wait til 4 mos. before the election to get off Twitter and start doing something for America?

When he gets out of the White House he's going to try and use his "incredible" Presidency and renown to make money in shithole countries, building golf clubs and casinos.

R42 Same in DC in my experience. And actually, most non-entry-level candidates are network referrals, and networks often relate to university networks.

My boss inherited management of me, but he hired everyone else on his team through friends or friends of friends—with one exception other than me, who was hired as a favor to the wife of our CEO; he’s her best friend’s son.

Uh, his executive order will make it even easier for his department heads to hire “friends of friends.”

Ah, this may have been what he meant when he had his brain freeze while talking to Sean Hannity two days ago. Hannity asked him about his agenda for a second term. Instead of answering, Trump went off into an incoherent reverie about “skills and experience.“ He had malfunctioned and was talking about this order.

Bang, R38! You really nailed the heart of this issue.

R19, that's an incredible story. And it seems to highlight the problem with government jobs, and why it's so hard at this point in time, to find qualified people for those jobs. It's because no one is qualified any more!

Something has to be done about the problem of these jobs being out of the reach of most people.

Americans are already so poorly educated compared to much of the world. Decades ago it wasn't like this, but now it has become pathetic .

I've seen students in British Unis from places like Cambodia, Kenya, Malaysia etc. who know more about US history than Americans. Far better critical thinking skills as well.

Trump is up to no good here, but his motivation is not yet clear. Not to me at any rate.

Liberal Arts colleges are the heart of American classism- where it disguises itself as meritocratic. Graduates leave full of dogma and social etiquette, but lacking in practical job skills.

Trump knows classism is the left's greatest weakness, because it's so fundamental to liberal thought and identity- but political suicide to admit to.

As with most actions he takes, it's designed to be a win-win.

On the one hand, he gets to take a public dig at the Democrats, which they can't openly acknowledge without harming their image among the electorate.

On the other, make it easier for the government to fill vacancies, maybe save a little money.

Classism in America existed before liberal arts colleges, and will likely endure if they were suddenly shut down. All education is political, and it reflects the values of those doing the educating. Likewise, those who bash such an education have their own dogmas and issues.

For the record, I was graduated from a small, private, liberal arts college rated in the "most highly selective" category. My professors were politically, culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse (far more than the students). The only dogma I can recall is the belief that a BA was the beginning of an education, not the end. I didn't learn about social etiquette there, but I did learn the practical job skills of thinking and problem solving, math, writing, and speaking multiple languages. First job was as an interpreter. I studied music on the side, and currently work as a music director for a theatre company. Like most people, I live paycheck to paycheck, have very little savings, and worry that I could lose my medical insurance if Trump gets his way. I benefitted from a great deal of privilege due to being a white, middle-class, male (not being straight or Christian made me aware from a young age that privilege is a very real thing), but my life, good or bad, is not just the result of privilege or lack thereof. I have worked hard, studied and learned, and done my best to give back to my community and make things better for others. I have met the elitist, classist snobs that [R49] seems to think liberal arts colleges produce, but my experience is that those people were elitist, classist snobs on the first day of classes.

There’s already several idiots in government positions. Now they’re going to be uneducated on top of that? Sad.

Lol at the people in here saying there's a growing disdain for college education, when half the comments on DL prove otherwise. It can be extremely classist on here at times.

College should've never become necessary for entry level positions. Maybe in the 90s I would've agreed that it opens minds, but anyone that has read about the current state of higher education should know better than to argue that. Younger generations are not coping so well and are completely opposed to anything that requires critical thinking. It is "triggering". There's been numerous articles about the change in climate on campuses.

When I was a kid, it was possible for a high school graduate to get a job that allowed home ownership and raising a family. College was not necessary to get a job. And if you did go to college, a BA was sufficient for almost every profession. But in the 80s suddenly you had to have an MBA and absolutely no ethical sense if you wanted a career. The 80s were the beginning of the end, with college becoming solely about getting letters after your name and bragging rights, rather than actually learning anything. Now these Gordon Gecko robber barons have kids of their own in college, getting triggered by anything that challenges their entitled little minds. BUT this is not all kids, nor is it all schools. There are fantastically-intelligent and well-prepared young people out there who attend schools where they learn and become educated. But they are sadly becoming a minority.

^^ because those kids went to private schools.

This is just more dumbing down of the USA. If I had children they'd go to private British schools and to public British Universities Best in the world IMO.

The people cheerleading for Trump must be bots.

Do you think he gives a shit about skills? What skills do Jared and Ivanka have?

This doesn't make sense to me. I work in the DC metro area. Of course, the blue-collar jobs don't require degrees. For many white-collared jobs, you can qualify based on either a relevant degree OR a certain amount of specialized experience. (So a degree is not required.) For these positions, veterans are typically given preference, so many of these positions are ultimately filled by people without degrees. (And there's no reason to complain about that.)

Some positions that absolutely required a four-year degree are the special agent positions (e.g. FBI, Customs, Secrete Service, DEA). It would make sense to open up the special agent positions to people who don't have a degree but who have worked as police officers or who are high-level military veterans. Other than that, I don't see how this really changes anything.

Something most definitely is at play here. Who put this idea in Trump's head and why? He's always bragged about attending the "best schools in the world" and about being a top student, so this is far out of character

R56 DC here and that does not comport with my experience. Yes re blue-collar jobs—people who work in retail or service jobs don’t need college degrees. But for even entry-level work in any office I’ve worked in? People definitely need a degree. A woman I work with was hired 12 years ago literally just to answer the phone after she graduated from American University. She was a temp office assistant for close to a year, and she didn’t get promoted until she enrolled in a graduate program at GWU. (Her grandparents paid for both her undergrad and grad school, and so it wasn’t a difficult decision for her.)

Good.

A college education is straight up worthless at this point, unless in STEM and at a high level. Especially with the trend of dropping admission standards.

R59 It’s only practically useless from a skills perspective.

It’s still useful/necessary to gaining entry to certain positions since we are after all a classist society.

George W. Bush is not an intellectual by anyone’s definition. Despite his father having been president and CIA director, George W. Bush would not have reached the office of the presidency without his Ivy-league credentials. The degrees he purchased from Harvard and Yale were the golden tickets he needed to justify his governorship and his presidency. He never would have held those offices without those credentials, which, let’s admit, he purchased.

Likewise, Meghan McCain’s pedigree as John McCain’s daughter would have gotten her book deals from the vantage point of being the daughter of that man, but it’s her Ivy credential that gets her a role as a political commentator on television. It doesn’t matter that it’s a BA in art history; all that matters and all that is mentioned is that she graduated from Columbia. It’s a US version of boarding school/finishing school. And it’s only accessible through wealth.

Looking at it another way, degrees from elite, hyper-selective universities are like plastic surgery seen on the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Those surgeries do not make anyone look youthful. They are obviously mutilating and monstrous; yet, they are immediate evidence, combined with thinness, that a person has great wealth, and that gains them access to greater wealth.

We have signs and signals in this country. All of us participate in this collective delusion. Because some smart kids are admitted to Harvard and Georgetown, we all opt into this belief that universities like these are for “the best” and that all of “the smartest” are funneled through these universities. It simply is not true. Brilliant students go to public universities. Brilliant, poorer students whose families are not experienced with navigating the elite university system, whose admissions process for most begins with pre-kindergarten resume building. Most students who are admitted to Harvard, Yale, Penn, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown—they’re rich and/or their parents know how to play the game, and that’s all.

But this is a capitalist classist system, and American people equate certain brands with “the best” because they are the most expensive and have branded themselves as elite—hence ivies with their coats of arms that pop out Dubyas and Meghans.

So what? I don’t even do background checks!

[Quote]A college education is straight up worthless at this point, unless in STEM

Unless in STEM is huge caveat! We need way more Americans who are trained in STEM, we need to be encouraging more college education.

The next step of course will be to reduce the pay of govt workers because they don’t have college degrees

R49 you said it best.

I have worked with various government offices and, truthfully, the jobs that require college degrees are the ones filled with smart, efficient people.

The ones filled with people without college degrees are filled with fine people, of course, but just not at the same level of work as those with college degrees. The writing alone is pretty terrible.

Germany, the Netherlands, the Nordics all have a tracking system to channel lower performing high school students into a greater variety of vocational careers and reserve true university education in both science and humanities for about the top 10% of students.

The Trumps and DeVos aren't thinking this way - they was commercial diploma-mill credentials for the Idiocracy - but there should be some more diversity in post-secondary education than just Ivy, state school, community college, DeVry or McDonald's.

I really don't know the purpose of this announcement from the orange toad king. I mean, who really gives a fuck about this stupid shit right now. He installed his hideous kids in the WH when no one wanted them. The only job skills they have is sprouting out of his hateful, weak loins.

[Quote] Most students who are admitted to Harvard, Yale, Penn, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown—they’re rich and/or their parents know how to play the game, and that’s all.

Really? I know a ton of Ivy graduates and their parents run the spectrum of wealth, most being in the middle class, but rich and poor too

Anti-intellectualism and fascism walk hand in hand

This is a good idea, and I agree that the only reason Trump is doing it is due to some nefarious reason. Before I retired I was instrumental in getting my company's requirements for job applicants changed to not require a college degree for many management positions if the applicant had work skills and a work history that made up for a lack of a degree. I had seen far too many more than qualified applicants passed over for jobs, and far too many applicants with college degrees coming into the company and making a right mess of it from the get go because they had no practical experience.

Sadly the days of a college degree signifying that a person is actually intelligent are long gone. It boggled the mind some of the degreed applicants I met with personally who could barely string 5 words together to form a cohesive sentence. The main thing they were interested in was how quickly they could expect a raise in salary and how much vacation and sick time they would get.

[quote]The main thing they were interested in was how quickly they could expect a raise in salary and how much vacation and sick time they would get

You are delusional if you think that isn't the priority of every employee r79.

R70*

Yes it is, but intelligent applicants have more sense than to bring that up before they're even offered a job.

A college degree is a proxy for intelligence and analytic ability. That doesn’t mean each person with a degree has those things but it means, in general, the education was rigorous and encompassing many subjects.

So when there are hundreds of people applying for a job, one quick way to narrow it down, is to look only at those with college degrees.

It’s just a fact of life.

The problem with allowing people without college degrees to apply for the same jobs is you’ll have to wade through a lot more applicants to find the gems.

That said, when a job requires lots of expertise and experience, I would select those over a college degree. BUT, there are also tons of people with college degrees who have lots of experience

Just go to college. In a recession, jobs that don’t require degrees are the first to fire everyone

[Quote] The main thing they were interested in was how quickly they could expect a raise in salary and how much vacation and sick time they would get.

And those without college degrees aren’t interested in those things?

[quote]A college degree is a proxy for intelligence and analytic ability.

Work ethic is a big one. A lot of people start college and don't finish.

Finishing a degree shows some level of work ethic and commitment.

How many people without College degrees has Trump allowed around him?

How many of Trump’s kids were allowed not to go to college?

How many people without College degrees has Trump allowed around him?

How many of Trump’s kids were allowed not to go to college?

How many of the people around Trump don’t have college degrees?

How many of Trump’s kids were allowed not to go to college?

R68, I don't know any ivy league grads who were born poor.

I've met many people over the years with undergraduate degrees from Ivy League schools. Not one was smarter, more erudite, or better at their job than the mere mortals who went to other institutions. What they did all have was a highly-developed sense of personal entitlement -As though a BA from Harvard meant they had Achieved All That Needed To Be Achieved. I've said it before and I'll say it again: You can get a first-rate, world-class college education at just about any accredited institution of higher learning. They all provide opportunities -It's up to the students to take them. If you attend a big-name school, and attend classes solely for the sake of getting a big-name degree, you will likely get that degree but remain an uneducated idiot. Please note: many people who never attend college could be said to be less educated, but that in no way means they are idiots. Idiocy is a term that should be reserved for people who waste their opportunities.

Maybe he's just admitting he never graduated from Wharton before it gets leaked.

Unfortunately some positions do require skills that are taught in college/university. But most entry level admin type positions do not - they can learn on the job. Honestly I blame HR for the hiring mess in every company. They don’t know what the jobs require and shouldn’t be the guardians at the gate. I can’t tell you how many times my resume has had everything they list in the requirements but no interview. I’m actually quite good in interviews and usually get the job if only I get to talk to the hiring manager.