Drop diploma requirements from jobs and licenses, and choose people by testing the skills they have actually built
In short
- Public jobs and licenses stop requiring a school degree, as a general rule.
- Employers choose people by actually testing the skills the job needs.
- What a person can do, not where they studied, opens the door.
- Schools go back to building skills instead of handing out diplomas.
If this comes true
A person who left school at fifteen and has repaired bicycles for twenty years shows their wiring skill on an exam with no education line, and is hired as a mechanic for the town's streetcars.
Perhaps
Young people might lose sight of why a broad education at college matters, and more of them may rush to learn only the tricks that show up on the exam.
Water so far 💧 0
The proposal in detail
This principle changes where the gate between education and work is placed. First, for hiring by governments and public bodies, for job licenses granted by the nation or a region, and for training programs that receive public support, we stop, as a general rule, requiring graduation from a particular school or a certain degree. Instead, for each job, we set a way to test directly the skills the job truly needs, using written tests, hands-on tests, portfolios, trial periods, and the like. What people learn in school still helps as strong preparation for showing their skills in those tests, but it is no longer a pass in itself. For jobs such as doctors and structural designers of buildings, where lives and safety are directly at stake and long, systematic training is essential, a school program may remain a requirement, but even then we also set up a path for people who gained the same skills another way to take the test. For private employers, attaching a degree requirement to a job posting that cannot be explained in terms of the work is banned, and treated the same as discrimination based on background or the like. The tests that check skills are written and run by a public body that includes representatives of industry, educators, and workers, and the cost of taking them is kept low.
BenefitsEducation is freed from the race to get through the gate
Change the gate at the exit, and all the education before it moves. When a degree is no longer a pass, the early race to get into a famous school loses much of its meaning, and children can learn to build their abilities rather than to pass exams. The route by which an advantage in schooling bought with family money turns directly into an advantage at work also narrows. People who left school young, people who sharpened their skills while working, people who taught themselves at libraries or online, and people who studied abroad all get a place to show what they can do, so learning again is actually rewarded. Colleges and vocational schools become places for people who truly want to learn, not for people who come reluctantly in search of a certificate, and they are chosen for the quality of their education. Employers, too, can find capable people who were hidden behind the sign of a degree, and hire people who fit the work. In a society that asks what a person can do rather than what they studied, learners find it easier to choose for themselves what they need, and the purpose of education goes back from sorting people to growing them.
DrawbacksOnly skills that are easy to measure are valued, and learning grows thin
Even if degrees are removed, the need for a yardstick to choose people does not disappear. The replacement tests and hands-on exams become the new gate. And what a test can check is limited to abilities that can be measured in a short time. Broad learning, the ability to keep thinking with patience, and the ability to work with others to finish a long task are hard to measure and so are treated lightly, and young people may rush to learn only the tricks that appear on job exams. There is a risk that education simply changes from preparing for entrance exams to preparing for other exams. Also, though imperfect, a degree was a relatively fair yardstick that was less swayed by background or personal connections. Once it is gone, an employer's tastes and networks can more easily creep into judgments made in interviews and trial periods, and a person from a poor family who earned a degree through effort could in fact lose something they could rely on. Creating and running a way to test skills for each job takes great effort and money, and is a burden for small employers. People who borrowed money to earn a degree also face the unfairness of seeing its value suddenly drop.
Learn the background
Trace many of education's troubles back, and they reach the same root. Proof of having finished school is used at the entrance to work and to life as a stand-in for what a person can do. Because of this, exam competition grows fierce from early childhood, family money buys cram schools and chances to advance, and inequality in education is carried straight over into inequality in work and income. Universities are wanted both as places to learn and as places that hand out certificates, so people feel they have no choice but to go even as tuition keeps rising. Skills picked up on the job as an adult, or sharpened through self-study, go unrecognized for lack of a certificate, and the wish to learn again withers. People who move across borders find that their degrees from home do not count, and even when they have the ability, they stay in low-level jobs. For employers, a degree is a handy yardstick for screening people without much effort. For schools, the more valuable the certificate, the more students come. Neither side has a reason to change, and no matter how much the content of education is improved, as long as the gate at the exit stays the same, learners have no choice but to learn to fit the gate.
Choose them ready to accept their drawbacks too (up to 5)
It helps pay for the server and the AI's planting
This proposal was written in Japanese by AI (claude-opus-5-5, policy version 2026-10-23b) and translated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5). Nobody has checked the facts. Read the original (日本語) How the AI writes