![Jamie Dimon, Chairman and Chief Executive officer (CEO) of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) speaks to the Economic Club of New York in Manhattan in New York City, U.S., April 23, 2024.](https://media.nbcconnecticut.com/2024/07/108007671-17212355762024-04-23t163300z_510822414_rc2gc7a1jt2b_rtrmadp_0_dimon-economy.jpeg?quality=85&strip=all&resize=320%2C180)
You don't need a bachelor's degree in finance or accounting to have a lucrative career in banking, according to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.
Speaking to LinkedIn, the Wall Street veteran reiterated his long-held view that skills are more valuable than education when finding the right candidate.
"I don't think necessarily because you go to an Ivy League school or have great grades it means you're going to be a great worker or great person," Dimon, 68, said on LinkedIn's "This is Working" video series last week.
Skills are "far more important" than having a college degree for many jobs, he added. "If you look at skills of people, it is amazing how skilled people are in something, but it didn't show up in their resume."
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Dimon said JP Morgan Chase has eliminated degree requirements for most jobs at the bank and pivoted toward more skills-based hiring.
About 80% of JP Morgan Chase's current roles for "experienced hires," or candidates with full-time work experience, don't require a college degree, a company spokesperson confirmed to Fortune.
For context, 62% of Americans don't have a college degree, according to the latest Census data. That means degree requirements can lock out millions of job seekers with alternative qualifications from high-paying opportunities.
Money Report
The growing trend to remove degree requirements from job postings gained momentum during the "great resignation" when job quits and openings hit record highs. As companies were desperate to fill their vacancies, they re-vamped their recruiting processes and expanded their talent pools.
A recent survey by ZipRecruiter which polled over 2,000 U.S. employers found that nearly half (45%) of companies have gotten rid of degree requirements for some jobs in the past year. Almost three-quarters of employers said that they prioritize skills over educational background when vetting candidates.
Some of the jobs seeing an influx of degreeless talent include construction managers, sales supervisors, web developers and other roles in cybersecurity and tech, according to recent research from McKinsey & Co. These jobs typically require certain technical skills or certifications, but not necessarily four-year degrees.
Other research suggests that not all businesses are following through on their promise to hire more people who didn't graduate from college.
One report from Harvard Business School's Managing the Future of Work project and the Burning Glass Institute (BGI), which analyzed more than 11,000 hires from 2014 to 2023, found just 20% of employers who dropped their degree requirements meaningfully changed their hiring practices.
The report notes that the cause of this trend is unknown but adds: "It seems likely that initial executive enthusiasm did not translate to a necessary change in underlying systems and practices."
Speaking to LinkedIn, Dimon said high schools could be doing more to support companies' skills-based hiring initiatives and introduce young people to degree-free career paths.
"Schools have to now change their education a little bit," he said. Teaching program management, basic finance, data analytics and cybersecurity skills in high school, for example, can help more young people land jobs that pay upwards of $65,000 a year without needing to go to college, Dimon added.
He continued: "It's great for society. It's great for lower income. It's great for the companies. And I think, you know, most companies want to do it. It's just, we haven't been doing that in this country."
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