The relevance of a degree in the workplace

Throughout my time working within recruitment and consulting, I have seen an increasing amount of roles within the financial services industry where degrees are a requirement.

As much as obtaining a degree does show a certain level of skills such as reliability, organisation, and timekeeping, are these not the same set of skills that we originally learned through studying for A Levels? If a degree merely builds on these, why are employers making it a requirement, especially when this degree often does not have to have any relevance to the role or the industry?

According to a study by Coursera less than 50% of UK graduates use the skills learnt in their degree in the workplace. Enforcing further education within certain industries can end up creating a level of discrimination that causes the recruitment for the role to be unnecessarily limited, and might not always give the best results.

For example, let’s say that one candidate has achieved 4 A*s at A Level in relevant topics and has extensive work experience, would a candidate with a 2:2 in an unrelated topic, and limited work experience be prioritised?

How do we tackle this? Should there be more of a focus on alternative routes of entry such as A Level entrants and Apprenticeships?