The Trump administration is moving to strip education requirements and create skills-based tests in hundreds of federal jobs as it seeks to reshape the civil service to be younger and more accessible to workers without a college degree.
The Office of Personnel Management has targeted more than 600 job classifications to review and already started removing “arbitrary” measures of competence, including college degrees, listed as requirements, OPM Director Scott Kupor told Bloomberg Law. The process is expected to take more than a year.
This would be a generational shift in how federal employees are recruited and hired, months after the Trump administration purged more than 300,000 people from the federal workforce.
1. Stripping education requirements for “skill-based tests” creates a subjective metric into the hiring system. It can also be arbitrary as well as selective by specific criteria that the hiring agency is looking for at that time. In this case, it’ll most likely be political affiliation. There’s no reason why certain questions can’t be injected into these things.
2. Less educated individuals are – unfortunately – more likely to simply follow orders if they’ve never been exposed or prepared for the task being asked of them and the purpose behind it. They’ve not been given the extra time in higher education to enhance their critical thinking skills and may not know when it’s the proper time to question the why’s of the situation.
3. Decreased pay.
4. I hate to say it, but depending on the agency, the quality of that agency’s service is going to decline drastically. again, this is no slight to the less educated, but again it needs to be emphasized that they could be going into their position less prepared.
razz-boy on
They have to because no one educated and with qualifications and self-respect would want to work for this administration
Kjellvb1979 on
Only the worst for America.
mmuffley on
“Let’s protect Western civilization by hiring people who learned nothing about it!”
nsfwgoldmine on
Ahhh more loyalists I see
AdHopeful3801 on
The “skills-based” evaluations the Trump regime will entail a lot more assessment of one’s skill at following certain political requirements than at the actual duties of the job.
AceofKnaves44 on
And yet I still can’t find a fucking job.
JadedIT_Tech on
On one hand, this ***could*** be a good thing given that Colleges these days are no where near as good at teaching practical skills as they used to be. I’m in IT, I couldn’t tell you how many recent grads come out of the big Tech schools that don’t know anything when they come into the job (My workplace is good at training them up, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect more).
On the flip side…… ***It’s Trump***, so you can only assume that they’re doing it for the dumbest and most nefarious reason possible.
Closet-PowPow on
On a related note, all federal offices will be stocked with an unlimited supply of Brawndo
ElBori1 on
They’re lowering the bar on skill-level and intelligence because they can’t pack the government with a bunch of inept maga loyalists otherwise.
Responsible-Pain-620 on
This was literally in Project 2025
Agnos on
“Brawndo has what the plants crave. It has electrolytes”
IronyElSupremo on
Ain’t needin nun of that skoolin’… nosiree.
(then again if the job becomes copy and paste from pre-formatted “Ask the AI” questions..).
FlyFisherman4Life on
There are many smart people without college degrees, but to understand how government works, or understand the technology, as stated below – ” tech-driven economy”, good luck with high school graduates. Ever wonder why Tesla hires foreign engineers over US graduates.
How is the going to be improved?? – “This would be a generational shift in how federal employees are recruited and hired, months after the Trump administration purged more than [300,000](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/without-doges-chainsaw-federal-worker-cuts-lean-on-new-tactics) people from the federal workforce. Scrapping education requirements, which has had bipartisan support in the past, aims to meet the demands of a rapidly changing, tech-driven economy.”
AirGoat23 on
So they can employ dumb people like the Idiot in Chief.
ColdBostonPerson77 on
I just wrote a paper about this very subject.
I don’t really disagree with this move but it really has to be done methodically. There are tons of qualified people who can do jobs but aren’t hired due to lack of a degree. Applicants can have all the skills, demonstrated quality work, and well versed in their field but never have an opportunity.
There’s an argument to be made but again it needs to be methodical.
Here are 2 links that I used for some of my research.
With Trump’s defunt Dept of Education there is now no way to evaluate education among states, and there is no way to evaluate high school diplomas. I can definitely show examples where kids are graduating high school while not passing basic state tests in math and Reading. And now these same students who could not pass basic standard tests will be running our government.
kingcakeaholic on
The USSR did exactly this to swap out knowledge people in Eastern Block countries and put dumb asses to screw over the pro democracy ones.
zirky on
i once heard someone say “dei isn’t to get unqualified minorities into positions over qualified whites, but to ensure unqualified whites weren’t chosen over qualified minorities”
sssddmm on
The more uneducated the better to follow immoral orders and easier to install friends and family in positions of influence. It’s like Amerikkka is turning into Iran.
nigpaw_rudy on
He really does love the highly UNeducated lol
Bishopjones2112 on
Trump loves dumb people
liftbikerun on
When your president publicly states that he hangs out with losers because it makes him feel better about himself, and that he hates guys that are successful because he likely people who listen to his success…..
It’s par for the course and gross. Any *good* leader wants those around him to be better than him, they want the very best around him. Trump is the opposite, just like every other dumb ass throughout history who just wanted yes men that would do their bidding.
Silly-Heat-1466 on
OK, let’s say an agency gets sued, such as the US Forest Service for a plan to log a section of a National Forest. This happens all the time. The employees who worked on the permit are called to testify in court to defend the case. They are supposed to be subject matter experts. If they don’t have have a degree in their subject area, such as forestry, wildlife biology, archaeology, range science, etc., the government will lose the lawsuit. This is one reason OPM upped the education requirements several years ago.
Imagine going to the VA to meet with a doctor only tk find out they never went to medical school?
elementality883 on
Only the best and brightest, right folks?
JMDeutsch on
I understand how/why this is frustrating and puts us in a position where MAGA zealots are easily hired.
BUT the truth is that college degrees really aren’t needed for many jobs and this “must have a degree” mindset has inflated the value of something that evolved from elite privilege to a way to keep your kid from dying facedown in a rice paddy.
I am in favor of anything that destroys the abusive debt cycle of “higher education being required” and turns young Americans into work-a-day wage slaves so they can pay back banks on usurious loans.
digger70chall on
Needed to make the change after nominating markwayne
SpiceNoodles on
Glenn Youngkin ordered the same thing in Virginia a few years back. It’s not inherently a bad thing – removing barriers while maintaining *effective* screening means qualified candidates (through their work experience for example) are eligible for positions they previously wouldn’t have been for.
That being said, I certainly don’t trust this administration to maintain effective screening practices.
Made_Human_Music on
If we had a normal government I’d say this isn’t a bad idea. With the exorbitant costs of college it’s a great idea to reevaluate the degree requirements for many jobs. There are plenty of people capable of doing the work without spending four years and thousands of dollars for the chance
But with this regime I’m positive there’s a sinister motive behind this and they’re just looking for more ways to bring the government down from the inside
Nand0_456 on
He’ll hire a bunch of WULs (white, unqualified, & loyal)
ThistleroseTea on
“We don’t want people trained to think logically”.
smitherenesar on
> Scrapping education requirements, which has had bipartisan support in the past, aims to meet the demands of a rapidly changing, tech-driven economy.
So we have a high tech economy, so naturally people without degrees are great with technology?
> Agencies shifted to cheaper alternatives, such as self-attestation, in which applicants list their own skills. Those are not always vetted.
So we’re going to have a lot of unskilled liars working for the government.
AccountantBoring1313 on
Translation: we (the Trump/Heritage Foundation) don’t want people with critical thinking skills. We want mindless “yes-men” (especially white men).
b_k-king on
Homeschool preferred
BonJovicus on
DEI for white dudes who can’t even get a college degree. Funny how this happens at a time when we have so many women and minorities getting degrees.
coco8090 on
“Today, 47% of U.S. women ages 25 to 34 have a bachelor’s degree, compared with 37% of men.” Might that have something to do with it. Women belonging in the kitchen and all that.
Ok_Vermicelli_6359 on
To be fair, Republicans hate funding higher education, so why require a degree they didn’t value in the first place? Makes sense with this braindead administration.
ScholarFit4426 on
MAGA = DEI for dummies.
ThePhonyOrchestra on
I thought DEI was bad?
snowcat0 on
All part of the plan, they gutted the Federal Workforce now time to fill it with supporters to sabotage any future administration.
Upper-Chemist-7524 on
As someone more left-leaning I don’t think I see a problem with this. People can be trained for most entry-level service jobs without a college degree in my experience. If we want university to be more accessible for all, then this is a way to decrease the value, thus decreasing the price of a degree. As a new grad, I have gotten the sentiment from many of my coworkers that they don’t even use their bachelor’s degree. I agree my job has almost nothing to do with my degree and I could have done this job out of high-school with proper training and maturity.
44 Comments
The Trump administration is moving to strip education requirements and create skills-based tests in hundreds of federal jobs as it seeks to reshape the civil service to be younger and more accessible to workers without a college degree.
The Office of Personnel Management has targeted more than 600 job classifications to review and already started removing “arbitrary” measures of competence, including college degrees, listed as requirements, OPM Director Scott Kupor told Bloomberg Law. The process is expected to take more than a year.
This would be a generational shift in how federal employees are recruited and hired, months after the Trump administration purged more than 300,000 people from the federal workforce.
Read more at the full story [here](https://news.bgov.com/daily-labor-report/trump-team-scraps-college-degrees-for-hundreds-of-federal-jobs?utm_source=reddit.com&utm_medium=lawdesk).
-Elliot
They are planning to hire MAGA people.
It’s like DEI except for stupid people.
“I love the poorly educated!”
This does a few things:
1. Stripping education requirements for “skill-based tests” creates a subjective metric into the hiring system. It can also be arbitrary as well as selective by specific criteria that the hiring agency is looking for at that time. In this case, it’ll most likely be political affiliation. There’s no reason why certain questions can’t be injected into these things.
2. Less educated individuals are – unfortunately – more likely to simply follow orders if they’ve never been exposed or prepared for the task being asked of them and the purpose behind it. They’ve not been given the extra time in higher education to enhance their critical thinking skills and may not know when it’s the proper time to question the why’s of the situation.
3. Decreased pay.
4. I hate to say it, but depending on the agency, the quality of that agency’s service is going to decline drastically. again, this is no slight to the less educated, but again it needs to be emphasized that they could be going into their position less prepared.
They have to because no one educated and with qualifications and self-respect would want to work for this administration
Only the worst for America.
“Let’s protect Western civilization by hiring people who learned nothing about it!”
Ahhh more loyalists I see
The “skills-based” evaluations the Trump regime will entail a lot more assessment of one’s skill at following certain political requirements than at the actual duties of the job.
And yet I still can’t find a fucking job.
On one hand, this ***could*** be a good thing given that Colleges these days are no where near as good at teaching practical skills as they used to be. I’m in IT, I couldn’t tell you how many recent grads come out of the big Tech schools that don’t know anything when they come into the job (My workplace is good at training them up, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect more).
On the flip side…… ***It’s Trump***, so you can only assume that they’re doing it for the dumbest and most nefarious reason possible.
On a related note, all federal offices will be stocked with an unlimited supply of Brawndo
They’re lowering the bar on skill-level and intelligence because they can’t pack the government with a bunch of inept maga loyalists otherwise.
This was literally in Project 2025
“Brawndo has what the plants crave. It has electrolytes”
Ain’t needin nun of that skoolin’… nosiree.
(then again if the job becomes copy and paste from pre-formatted “Ask the AI” questions..).
There are many smart people without college degrees, but to understand how government works, or understand the technology, as stated below – ” tech-driven economy”, good luck with high school graduates. Ever wonder why Tesla hires foreign engineers over US graduates.
How is the going to be improved?? – “This would be a generational shift in how federal employees are recruited and hired, months after the Trump administration purged more than [300,000](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/without-doges-chainsaw-federal-worker-cuts-lean-on-new-tactics) people from the federal workforce. Scrapping education requirements, which has had bipartisan support in the past, aims to meet the demands of a rapidly changing, tech-driven economy.”
So they can employ dumb people like the Idiot in Chief.
I just wrote a paper about this very subject.
I don’t really disagree with this move but it really has to be done methodically. There are tons of qualified people who can do jobs but aren’t hired due to lack of a degree. Applicants can have all the skills, demonstrated quality work, and well versed in their field but never have an opportunity.
There’s an argument to be made but again it needs to be methodical.
Here are 2 links that I used for some of my research.
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210126-degree-inflation-how-the-four-year-degree-became-required
https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/dismissed-by-degrees_707b3f0e-a772-40b7-8f77-aed4a16016cc.pdf
With Trump’s defunt Dept of Education there is now no way to evaluate education among states, and there is no way to evaluate high school diplomas. I can definitely show examples where kids are graduating high school while not passing basic state tests in math and Reading. And now these same students who could not pass basic standard tests will be running our government.
The USSR did exactly this to swap out knowledge people in Eastern Block countries and put dumb asses to screw over the pro democracy ones.
i once heard someone say “dei isn’t to get unqualified minorities into positions over qualified whites, but to ensure unqualified whites weren’t chosen over qualified minorities”
The more uneducated the better to follow immoral orders and easier to install friends and family in positions of influence. It’s like Amerikkka is turning into Iran.
He really does love the highly UNeducated lol
Trump loves dumb people
When your president publicly states that he hangs out with losers because it makes him feel better about himself, and that he hates guys that are successful because he likely people who listen to his success…..
It’s par for the course and gross. Any *good* leader wants those around him to be better than him, they want the very best around him. Trump is the opposite, just like every other dumb ass throughout history who just wanted yes men that would do their bidding.
OK, let’s say an agency gets sued, such as the US Forest Service for a plan to log a section of a National Forest. This happens all the time. The employees who worked on the permit are called to testify in court to defend the case. They are supposed to be subject matter experts. If they don’t have have a degree in their subject area, such as forestry, wildlife biology, archaeology, range science, etc., the government will lose the lawsuit. This is one reason OPM upped the education requirements several years ago.
Imagine going to the VA to meet with a doctor only tk find out they never went to medical school?
Only the best and brightest, right folks?
I understand how/why this is frustrating and puts us in a position where MAGA zealots are easily hired.
BUT the truth is that college degrees really aren’t needed for many jobs and this “must have a degree” mindset has inflated the value of something that evolved from elite privilege to a way to keep your kid from dying facedown in a rice paddy.
I am in favor of anything that destroys the abusive debt cycle of “higher education being required” and turns young Americans into work-a-day wage slaves so they can pay back banks on usurious loans.
Needed to make the change after nominating markwayne
Glenn Youngkin ordered the same thing in Virginia a few years back. It’s not inherently a bad thing – removing barriers while maintaining *effective* screening means qualified candidates (through their work experience for example) are eligible for positions they previously wouldn’t have been for.
That being said, I certainly don’t trust this administration to maintain effective screening practices.
If we had a normal government I’d say this isn’t a bad idea. With the exorbitant costs of college it’s a great idea to reevaluate the degree requirements for many jobs. There are plenty of people capable of doing the work without spending four years and thousands of dollars for the chance
But with this regime I’m positive there’s a sinister motive behind this and they’re just looking for more ways to bring the government down from the inside
He’ll hire a bunch of WULs (white, unqualified, & loyal)
“We don’t want people trained to think logically”.
> Scrapping education requirements, which has had bipartisan support in the past, aims to meet the demands of a rapidly changing, tech-driven economy.
So we have a high tech economy, so naturally people without degrees are great with technology?
> Agencies shifted to cheaper alternatives, such as self-attestation, in which applicants list their own skills. Those are not always vetted.
So we’re going to have a lot of unskilled liars working for the government.
Translation: we (the Trump/Heritage Foundation) don’t want people with critical thinking skills. We want mindless “yes-men” (especially white men).
Homeschool preferred
DEI for white dudes who can’t even get a college degree. Funny how this happens at a time when we have so many women and minorities getting degrees.
“Today, 47% of U.S. women ages 25 to 34 have a bachelor’s degree, compared with 37% of men.” Might that have something to do with it. Women belonging in the kitchen and all that.
To be fair, Republicans hate funding higher education, so why require a degree they didn’t value in the first place? Makes sense with this braindead administration.
MAGA = DEI for dummies.
I thought DEI was bad?
All part of the plan, they gutted the Federal Workforce now time to fill it with supporters to sabotage any future administration.
As someone more left-leaning I don’t think I see a problem with this. People can be trained for most entry-level service jobs without a college degree in my experience. If we want university to be more accessible for all, then this is a way to decrease the value, thus decreasing the price of a degree. As a new grad, I have gotten the sentiment from many of my coworkers that they don’t even use their bachelor’s degree. I agree my job has almost nothing to do with my degree and I could have done this job out of high-school with proper training and maturity.