Over the past decades, most industries demand higher educational standards for most of job vacancies. This trend also happens to middle-skill jobs. The companies mostly require the applicants to have college degrees even for positions that actually need middle-level skills. Employers generally believe that college-educated individuals are smarter, more creative and productive, as well as having more commitment to their jobs.

In fact, the United States do not have enough college-educated people to fill in the positions. Only a third of US adult population graduated from 4-year program in college. As a result, there is misalignment between the demand and supply for certain kinds of jobs.

Problems with the Current Middle-Skill Jobs

Because of the trends, observers and analysts have begun to suggest that the industries stop requiring college-degree for middle skill jobs. Here are some of the reasons:

More Expensive Labor Costs

College-educated employees are higher paid than senior high school graduates are. As a result, the companies have to allocate more for labor costs. Middle-skill jobs such as supervisors, technicians, data analysts, sales representatives, support specialists, or production managers can be filled by diploma graduates. On the contrary, when such positions are filled by college-educated employees, the company have to pay more.

Lower Engagement Level

College graduates, particularly millennial, love the challenges related to their knowledge and skills. When they are overqualified for the jobs, they do not feel being challenged. As a result, they tend to be less engaged in their jobs. For the companies, lower engagement level leads to some adverse effects, particularly higher turn over rate and eventually lower productivity levels of the organization as a whole. How can the college-graduate employees feel being challenged when they have to compete with high school graduates?

Tighter Competition

Misalignment and underachievement are only parts of the consequences when the companies require college degree for middle-skill jobs. A worse result is tighter competition for the working-class citizens to get a career path. As result, achieving a decent standard of living will be even more difficult, since they have to compete with better educated segments of population.

Expected Solutions for Middle-Skill Jobs

Of course, it is the time for the industries to consider alternatives. Here are some options First of all, if the companies believe that working-class citizens without college degree have lower quality, they should begin investing in talent development programs. They include skill learning, courses, co-programs, paid apprenticeships, or any other types of work-based learning opportunities for those workers.

Furthermore, the following are some recommended strategies to reduce the dependency upon college-educated employees:

• The policy makers, educators, and the industries need to collaborate in preparing the middle-skill workers to enter the industries in a systematic way. All parties need to encourage adoption of such approach.
• The companies need to do comprehensive efforts to identify jobs that really need college-educated workers and those that need middle-skill workers. This way, they can specify required skills for each position.

Reducing dependency upon college-educated employees for middle-skill jobs will benefit the industries in many ways. Instead of paying more for monthly salary, investing in human resource development would be more effective and efficient.