No Bachelors Degree means no job?

[jennifermd]

What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state? VA

I worked for a Fortune 10 telecommunications company for the past 16 years. During my tenure, I was promoted several times and extremely successful in every position held. After the last merger, the company culture took a turn for the worse and I knew that if I did not become an evil, backstabbing liar, I would not survive. I choose to accept a voluntary separation package, sure that I would find another job within the coming year. A year later I am still unemployed.

Unfortunately, I do not yet have my bachelors degree. I had been working on it for years, but it had always been placed on the back burner to make myself available 24/7 to the corporation. Now I am being punished for my decision to put the company first.

I have extensive operations management experience, a successful and well documented track record, numerous leadership awards from the CEO, a stellar resume and contacts. The harsh reality is, without that degree, I can not get an interview.

What hurts the most is that I know I already have the knowledge and skills that someone would obtain from completing a bachelor's program. I don't feel as though I am learning anything significant that I don't already know. I ace every class and it is not challenging at all. I have a 4.0 GPA, but I am running out of resources to pay the bills and college. I wonder if McDonalds will still hire without a college degree?

I feel like I am being discriminated against. If there is no law against this type of discrimination, there should be. I know there must be millions of people who started working for one company right out of high school who devoted all of their time to their work and now have nothing to show for it.

What are my options here?

 

[Beth3]

Finish your degree.

Most employers require a college degree to be considered for the level/type of position you are seeking. They may be missing out on a great employee by not considering you but this is not any form of prohibited discrimination.

 

[jennifermd]

Thank you for your response....It poses these questions:

If I was qualified enough without a bachelor's degree to obtain a mid level management position at a Fortune 10 company, how is it that another company can legally require one for a similiar position?

Is it only because there are no laws in place to protect applicants from being eliminated from the screening process based on education alone? It is obvious to me that if they were screening for more than just education, I would at least be contacted for an interview in most instances.

 

[Beth3]

If I was qualified enough without a bachelor's degree to obtain a mid level management position at a Fortune 10 company, how is it that another company can legally require one for a similiar position? Because every employer gets to establish their own job requirements. If one Fortune 500 employer wishes to dictate that to be CEO one only needs a high school diploma, and another won't consider any candidate with less than an executive MBA, that is their choice.

Is it only because there are no laws in place to protect applicants from being eliminated from the screening process based on education alone? Yes but that would be impossible to legislate. Would, for example, you want a medical clinic NOT to be able to disqualify candidates who applied for a staff physician opening who DIDN'T have an M.D.?

I understand your frustration but the realilty is that you are quite disadvantaged in pursuing the level of position you are interested in without a college degree. You may find you need to pursue a lesser position, finish your degree while there, and then go after a position more suitable to your experience and career interests.

Good luck.

 

[cbg]

Jennifer, I am not kidding when I tell you that in the current job market, a single job posting can and does generate literally hundreds of applicants. While I do not do recruiting any more, I have friends and clients who do, and have seen with my own eyes on more than one occasion, a stack of applications literally three inches thick - and that's only the ones that came in, in the first 24 hours.

In that kind of a climate, you cannot assume that the SOLE reason you are not being contacted for a job, is your lack of a degree. There are just too many qualified people out there, some with degrees, and some without. The employer cannot interview EVERYONE who qualifies, nor are they legally required to. If they were, it could be six months or more before they finish interviewing everyone, and I'm not exaggerating in the slightest.

But at the same time, since many of these qualified applicants DO have their degrees AS WELL AS the same level of experience you do, you are going to be at a disadvantage without the degree. That's just the way life it.

 

[Katy W.]

degrees

Maybe I'm off base here, but I think requiring a degree is not all about an employee's job skills. Finishing 4 years of college shows a certain amount of committment and responsibility, also attending a university usually gives graduates a certain amount of polish, if you know what I mean. Sure, some people skate through it, but most have to work pretty hard, like yourself, and I think that is part of what an employer looks for.

 

[Shay-Pari'e]

Maybe I'm off base here, but I think requiring a degree is not all about an employee's job skills. Finishing 4 years of college shows a certain amount of committment and responsibility, also attending a university usually gives graduates a certain amount of polish, if you know what I mean. Sure, some people skate through it, but most have to work pretty hard, like yourself, and I think that is part of what an employer looks for.

But you are not the employer, and your giving a personal opinion,.

That makes no difference.

 

[cbg]

Yes, Katy, you are off base here.

 

[purple2]

When I was an employer, I did change job descriptions to require college degrees, mainly for the reasons Katy indicated.

 

[Beth3]

But if that's the only reason you made those changes and the jobs themselves don't dictate that college degrees are a reasonable requirement, then you may well have opened yourself up for a disparate impact claim.

 

[Katy W.]

Please tell me more about this:

Beth, an employer who decides that employees who have a 4 year degree show more responsibility than those who don't, and decides he prefers to hire these applicants over applicants with no degree, is leaving himself open to a disparate impact claim?

Not all, but some, job opening ads require the applicant to have a BA, BS, etc. Some, not all, of these employers don't specify or require that the degree has to have anything to do with the job skills needed, just that they have a four year degree. Is this leaving these employers open to a disparate impact claim? Are you talking about ADEA claims?


The words "I think" did indicate that I was expressing my opinion in this post.

 

[cbg]

It depends.

There was a ground-breaking US Supreme Court case back in the 70's (I think it was the 70's - it might have been a bit earlier) when an employer in a Southern state (I forget which one) required a high-school education across the board for all positions. They thought they were being non-discriminatory because they weren't asking it for only women, or only minorities, or only certain positions, but of everyone. But then a black man applied for a job as a janitor. He was turned down because he didn't have a high school diploma. He sued, claiming that a high school education was not required to sling a mop around. After the case made its way all the way up the ladder to the Supremes, he won the case. IN THIS PARTICULAR INSTANCE, requiring a high school diploma was considered discriminatory because in that part of the country at that period of time, there were significantly more blacks than whites who didn't have a high school diploma; therefore such a requirement has an adverse impact on blacks. This is the case that set the parameters for an adverse impact claim.

But in order to claim adverse impact, the otherwise non-discriminatory rule has to significantly adversely affect members of a particular protected group, AND it has to be unnecessary. The job ad does not have to explain why a degree is necessary, but there does have to be a necessity for it. I used to work for a bio-tech lab; we didn't put in our ads that a BA in one of the appropriate sciences was required for a job in our lab, but it was quite unlikely that anyone without a degree would have had the requisite level of knowledge to do the job. And while we would have looked at someone who had the knowledge without the degree, someone who had worked long enough to have acquired the knowledge without the degree and who was applying for what was essentially an entry-level position, would have raised a few red flags right there. Requiring a degree would not in any way have created an adverse impact because that level of knowledge was a BFOQ (bona fide occupational qualification) for the position.

On the other hand, we didn't look for a degree for someone to work in shipping. You needed a certain level of computer skills, but anyone who'd graduated high school or trade school would probably have had enough. So in that case, if we'd tried to require a college degree for a shipping clerk, we might well have run the risk of an adverse impact.

Is that any clearer?

 

[HomeGuru]

And I am adversely impacted when I order fast food because the workers have no college degrees and get my order wrong.

 

[Beth3]

Beth, an employer who decides that employees who have a 4 year degree show more responsibility than those who don't, and decides he prefers to hire these applicants over applicants with no degree, is leaving himself open to a disparate impact claim? Yes, it's a possibility. If a degree isn't reasonably necessary to perform the job and the requirement for a degree serves to unduly rule out a segment of the population in a particular protected class, that's disparate impact.

cbg has done such a good job of explaining the issue, I don't need to elaborate further.

 

[Katy W.]

Wow

Thank you both, that was awesome. You should teach.
If you know any information, like a party's name, I would really like to try and read that. Is this still cited, or however you say that?

Now the question is, supposing freeadvice were around back then, and the plaintiff came online and posted the following:

I am a black male living in Birmingham, Alabama, and I applied for a job at a store mopping floors, and the boss said he won't hire me because I didn't graduate high school. Is he violating my rights?

what reply do you think he would get?