JPMorgan CEO Explains Why 80% of Their Jobs No Longer Require a College Degree

A college degree is not as golden a ticket as it once would have been within one of the globe’s most influential banks. This is not a joke. It is a hiring strategy, courtesy of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.

During an interview with LinkedIn’s “This Is Working” series, the Wall Street veteran had the following message to impart: degrees are no longer necessary for most jobs at the bank. 

“Skills,” as Dimon put it, “mean far more.”

That’s right. A company head with over 290,000 employees feels that you don’t need to be an Ivy League graduate, or a graduate of anything, to succeed financially these days. 

“I don’t think necessarily because you go to an Ivy League school or have great grades, it means you’re going to be a great worker or great person.” 

And this is not empty rhetoric. JPMorgan explained that about 80% of its current “experienced hire” jobs, those to which candidates with full-time work history are applying, don’t require a college degree.

Why JPMorgan is Betting Big on Skills

The transformation is not abstract. It’s practical. As of the most recent Census reports, approximately 62% of Americans do not have a college degree. 

That is an enormous category of the workforce that has been historically overlooked because of traditional hiring practices. By eliminating the requirement for degrees for most of their job postings, JPMorgan opened a door for applicants.

These applicants do not have the academic credentials but have gained practical experience and technical skills equal to, and in some cases, surpassing, their academic equivalents.

If you look at the skills of workers, it really amazes you how good someone is at doing something but did not seem to have been listed on their resume. In reality, JPMorgan’s move is echoing a trend across the professional workforce, which recruiters are referring to as the “skills-first” revolution.

The Skills-Over-Degrees Movement Is Catching On

The skills-based hiring revolution did not happen overnight. It received a big boost during the so-called Great Resignation, when historic numbers of Americans quit their employers and employers scrambled to find employees to occupy open slots.

With the number of open positions outnumbering available workers, employers had to redefine what credentials really mattered.

In a survey conducted by ZipRecruiter in 2023, of more than 2,000 US employers, 45% indicated they eliminated the need for degrees for some or all of their hiring demands during the past year. 

More surprising? Almost three-quarters of them indicated they are now more interested in skills than education.

Who is getting hired, and for what, is shifting. Web developers, sales managers, cybersecurity specialists, and building supervisors are among the positions being occupied by those not holding a four-year degree, according to McKinsey & Co. 

They require special experience and/or certification, not necessarily a degree. It’s not surprising that more businesses are inquiring whether the bachelor’s degree should automatically be used as a screening tool. 

Not only does college cost you a pretty penny, some $30,000 a year, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect one’s real capabilities.

Are Companies Keeping Up?

Here is where it gets complicated. Even as more and more companies are claiming to use skills-based hiring, not all of them are doing what they are saying.

A recent Harvard Business School and Burning Glass Institute study focused on hiring patterns from over 11,000 employers for the period between 2014 and 2023. 

Its conclusion was that only 20% of employers who said they had removed their degree requirements changed their hiring patterns in some considerable way.

So what is going on? The report states that too frequently, there is a gap between executive intent and what occurs in the field. 

Even if a CEO goes on record saying “no more degrees required,” out-of-date hiring systems, legacy HR software, and hiring managers with established habits can hinder actual change.

That’s one reason why JPMorgan’s turnaround is so significant; it’s from the top down.

Schools Need to Evolve Too

But Dimon does not stop there with hiring. He thinks America’s educational system needs to get on board, too. Schools need to change their teaching a bit, he stated in the interview with CNBS.

High schools in particular need to be instructing job-prep curriculum, including project management, personal finance, data analysis, and cybersecurity, that can propel kids into $65,000-a-year careers straight from the classroom.

It’s not solely an economic issue, Dimon contends, but a social issue as well. He explained this brilliantly,

“It’s great for society. It’s great for lower-income. It’s great for the companies. And I think, you know, most companies want to do it. It’s just, we haven’t been doing that in this country.”

Dimon is not a newcomer to this fight. JPMorgan invested $350 million back in 2019 to support underprepared workers so they could compete with skills to succeed in an ever-changing economy.

This effort included investments within community college programs, apprenticeship platforms, and workforce networks.

A New Definition for “Qualified”

What all this implies is a wider general recategorization of what constitutes being “qualified.”

In today’s work environment, knowing how to code, fix a server, manage a team, or prepare analytics reports is more necessary than knowing whether or not you’ve been through four years of general ed coursework.

For roles like financial analysts, customer support, or tech operations, roles JPMorgan tends to recruit for, this kind of practical knowledge is essential. Still, there is one main challenge: perception.

Most job applicants still feel that they cannot get into a field such as banking or computer science without a bachelor’s degree. And most parents still embrace the “college = success” slogan even as prices rise and debts pile up. 

Dimon and others are trying to push back against that, and they are having some success.

His message is clear: If you’ve got the ability, the opportunities are there.

The Bottom Line

No, JPMorgan Chase is not abandoning the college degree. But they’re not using them as the magic ticket anymore. And that shift, led by CEO Jamie Dimon, may unlock the door to millions of deserving employees who’ve been unjustly excluded from the best jobs for no valid reason.

In an environment where the economy is on shaky ground, tuition is high, and the employment market is transforming, that is not a policy tweak. This is a game-changer.

The more companies follow JPMorgan’s lead and put their words where their mouth is, the expectation is that a degree is not going to be the only, or necessarily the greatest, determination of whether you are competent to join.

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