that major employers including Accenture, USAA and Cisco Systems Inc. are removing bachelor-degree requirements for some entry-level jobs, including in the cyber security space. Many of these companies have also set internal goals to hire more Black talent.
“This is the largest private-sector-led effort focusing on access to earn your way into the middle class for Black talent without four-year degrees of any in my lifetime,” Jones said. More than 39 million Americans have some college and no credential, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. And about 20% of the 7.2 million students with some college but no degree that entered college in 2013 or later were Black individuals.
Jones said that corporate partners interested in joining the coalition must be hiring for jobs that meet four criteria: no four-year degree requirements, living wages, less than five years of experience required and no short-term risk of the job being replaced by automation. “This is an effort to match with talent they’ve been leaving on the sideline at a time when they're trying to fill 11 million unfilled jobs,” Jones said. “You're literally talking about a systemic barrier that prevents them from earning their way into middle class.”