Bank of America Corporation and Lockheed Martin Corporation are falling short on promises to hire more workers without college degrees, according to a new report.

They are among the 45 per cent of large United States companies that declared a college degree unnecessary for many roles, but then did not change their hiring practices, according to an analysis from Harvard Business School and Burning Glass Institute, a labour-focused non-profit organisation.

Another 18 per cent of companies – including Delta Air Lines – made progress early on, only to revert to old patterns later.

Researchers studied a sample of 11,300 roles at companies that had changed degree requirements over the past decade, and found that just one in 700 workers hired in 2023 benefited from a recent shift away from mandatory degree requirements.

“No one doubts the sincerity of the commitments being made, but there is a big gap between what is being said in the C-suite and what is getting executed by hiring managers around the country,” said Mr Matt Sigelman of the Burning Glass Institute.

“For a lot of hiring managers, skills-based hiring can feel like an unnatural act. It feels very risky.”

Roughly two-thirds of Americans do not have a college degree.

When they are hired for roles that previously required degrees, their salary increases by about 25 per cent on average.

Companies also benefit – the retention rate for workers without a degree is 10 percentage points higher than college-educated colleagues, according to the Burning Glass report.

Bank of America says a four-year college degree is not required for many roles.

Ms Christie Gragnani-Woods, a senior vice-president of talent acquisition and head of community partnerships at the bank, also sits on the client advisory board of Year Up, a non-profit group focused on creating career opportunities for young adults without bachelor’s degrees.

A Bank of America spokesperson said approximately 40 per cent of its 2023 hires were filled by candidates without four-year college degrees, and that figure has been increasing in recent years.

Delta has adopted a “skills-first” approach to hiring in recent years to remove what it called “unnecessary barriers” to filling certain roles, including pilots.

In 2021, 94 per cent of non-executive job openings did not require a college degree.

The company also has an apprenticeship programme with OneTen – a coalition of US employers that has promised to help hire and promote one million black workers into higher-paying jobs over a decade.

A Delta spokesperson said the company “remains committed to our skills-based talent strategy that has removed barriers to entry and broadened our talent pools”.

“Our focus is hiring the best candidates for every role – regardless of where they acquired the skills,” the spokesperson added.

Lockheed Martin pledged in 2018 to create 8,000 apprenticeship opportunities across five years, and met that goal one year early, according to a spokesperson.

The company invests in “the right outreach efforts to hire the best talent to reflect our community”, the spokesperson said. 

“Our people are our greatest asset, and we strive to build a workplace that drives innovation and embraces diverse perspectives.”

There are several reasons these policy shifts have not resulted in a big change in behaviour. 

A job posting is just the first step in a process that includes various screenings and assessments – many of them now automated – and ends with a decision by a hiring manager, who is under pressure to limit the time and cost of the recruitment process.

A college degree may also be viewed as a proxy for skills such as communication or critical thinking.

Other biases can creep into the process.

“Hiring is a relative phenomenon: If you have four candidates, and you’re satisfied any of them can do the job, how are you going to pick?” said Harvard Business School Professor Joseph Fuller, one of the report’s authors. 

“Why wouldn’t you take the person with the college degree?”

That sort of thinking has stymied broad-based efforts to reform hiring practices.

In December 2020, more than 80 companies including Walmart, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Pfizer joined a multi-year initiative to downplay the importance of academic pedigrees.

They said the move was to address inequities in employment, but they were also motivated by the need to find skilled workers to fill empty roles.

The job market has changed since then. Many companies are cutting jobs, especially in tech. 

With companies less desperate for talent and diversity, equity and inclusion programmes are no longer on the front burner, and initiatives like skills-based hiring can lose momentum.

“The chief executive’s attention flits onto something else, and they never systematise the change,” Mr Sigelman said.

“As a result, they’re back to where they started from.” BLOOMBERG