Higher education is optional: Elon Musk and other large corporations are ready to take people after courses

Elon Musk said that you don't need a college degree to work at Tesla. Apple, Google and Netflix also do not require employees to have a 4-year education, reports Insider.

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Students think that getting a four-year degree and taking on thousands of dollars of student loan debt is the only way to get into the doors of top companies like Tesla, Apple, IBM, and more.

But it is not always the case. A new study shows that more companies are removing the four-year training requirement from their screening process.

Even the CEO of Tesla doesn't think you need it.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that colleges are "not for learning" but rather for having fun while speaking at the Satellite 2020 conference. how Bill Gates and Larry Ellison of Oracle dropped out of college. Ideally, he added, one could drop out of school and “do something.”

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Musk has joined prominent business leaders who also question the need for four years of training, such as Apple CEO Tim Cook and Siemens USA CEO Barbara Hampton. Cook said in 2019 that about half of Apple's employees in the US last year were people without a four-year education. Cook reasoned that many colleges don't teach the skills that business leaders demand from their workforce, such as programming.

Hampton also rejected the idea that a four-year degree guaranteed career readiness.

“Too often, job openings say a four-year degree is required, when there’s really nothing in the job that really requires a four-year degree — it just helped our hiring managers sort of weed out the crowd and get a smaller pool of qualified applicants,” Hampton said. at the White House in 2019.

You don't need an Ivy League degree to get a job at Apple or Tesla, but on average you'd be paid more if you had one.

Now established companies like Google and Apple are hiring employees with the skills needed to get the job done, with or without a degree. Glassdoor has found that companies like Google, Apple and IBM don't require a college degree to get hired. Google recently launched a new set of courses for the Google Career Certificate, a six-month program that prepares participants for in-demand careers.

"This reset could have major implications for how employers find talent and create opportunities for the two-thirds of Americans without college degrees," the Burning Glass Institute, an independent nonprofit research center, said in a report.

That being said, higher education seems to be paying off. According to a May 2020 report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, workers with at least a bachelor's degree earn an average of $502 more per week than those with only a high school education. In addition, the unemployment rate among those who did not complete high school is more than twice that of those with a bachelor's degree.

But because earning a degree often requires paying off student debt, many Americans can't afford a college degree. According to the US Department of Education, only 42% of high school sophomores go on to earn a two- or four-year degree. Even among students who have graduated from college, a significant number of new graduates work part-time, that is, work in jobs that do not require a higher education.

In an increasingly tough job market, experts see lifting the four-year education requirement as a way to curb labor shortages, as well as create opportunities for a diverse and inclusive workforce.

New census data shows that 20,6% of Hispanics have a college degree, 28,1% of blacks, 41,9% of whites, and 61% of Asians.

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As many expect automation to replace a quarter of the workforce, experts and researchers are already looking at alternatives to help prepare young workers for work. Apprenticeship programs that combine learning in school and learning on the job can better prepare the workforce of the future, according to Business Insider reporter Rich Felony.

“I don’t think getting into college is a sign of exceptional ability,” Musk said at the Satellite conference. Did Shakespeare even go to college? Probably not".

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