Fighting Credentialism Creep

An ultra-tight job market is forcing a rethink of burdensome job requirements

- Jordan Yadoo

Carnissa Lucas-Smith is more than a year into what she hopes will be a long legal career. If it hadn’t been for Covid-19, she would’ve had another hoop to jump through first.

After she graduated from New York University School of Law, the next goal for Lucas-Smith was to work as a public defender in her native King County in Seattle, where she’d interned the previous summer. Any other year, that would’ve required passing a two-day, 12-hour exam—after completing a $3,000 preparatory course—to qualify for the bar.

But Washington was one of four states to waive that requirement for the pandemic-challenged class of 2020. The unprecedented, if temporary, move has triggered calls for permanent changes that can open entry paths to an elite profession for a wider group of candidates.

The Covid crisis has reignited a debate over what kind of credentials are really essential for American workers, as well as which requirements could be ditched at a time when job openings are at historic highs. It’s happening in the public sector— Maryland just scrapped college-degree requirements for thousands of government jobs—and the business world, where giants such as IBM Corp. have been taking similar steps.