- Making a career change without a degree is becoming easier with online learning.
- During the pandemic, online learning became more popular as people lost or switched jobs.
- New research also indicates that many job descriptions needlessly require four-year degrees.
Juan Medina immigrated to Clarksville, Indiana, from Colombia in 2013. He started taking classes at a local community college to earn a degree. When he realized it would take him seven or eight years, he opted for a different path.
Medina signed up for an online course on web development on Udacity, before taking an immersive full-stack JavaScript and software-development program at Eleven Fifty Academy, a coding boot camp in Indianapolis.
He started working as a web developer before completing the Salesforce Pathfinder training program, a free training from the software company. Now, Medina works at a bank as a Salesforce administrator, a job that has an average salary of $97,413 in the US, according to Glassdoor.
People like Medina are starting to realize that there are many pathways to success. A recent survey of high schoolers aged 14 to 18 found that half are open to pursuing educational opportunities outside of the four-year degree, and only a quarter believe a college degree is the only path to a high-paying job.
As a result, many online-learning providers such as Udemy and LinkedIn are seeing a boost in enrollment and interest. These educational tools are viable alternatives to four-year degree programs. Employers including Google, Netflix, and Apple have removed degree requirements from their job descriptions.
Online certificates can lead to a job or be a path to a degree
While using a college degree as a filter in hiring seems easy for employers, the actual tasks of a position may have little to do with higher education.
According to a new report from Bain & Company, 60% of jobs that pay a living wage required a bachelor's degree, but only 25% of those positions involved skills that candidates would gain in college, according to an internal analysis of job postings.
This is important for job seekers, because it means the overall candidate pool is actually much wider than job descriptions make it seem. For example, according to Betty Vandenbosch, chief content officer at Coursera, more than half of the people who take Coursera's Google IT Support certificate, are from underrepresented groups, military members, or women making less than $30,000 a year.
Getting an entry-level certificate from Coursera gives some learners the qualifications for a job that makes upwards of $50,000, or the confidence to continue learning and pursue a degree, Vandenbosch said.
Take Beau Batchelor, a business analyst at the men's golf apparel company TravisMathew. Batchelor did not have a direct career path. He dropped out of community college in California to join a company that cleans up oil spills in the Midwest, became a manager at the company, drove for Uber, and worked as a bartender before getting into accounting.
After taking an accounting class, he got an internship at TravisMathew. He worked his way up to a staff-accountant role before signing up for a coding bootcamp program at the University of California, Irvine's Division of Continuing Education.
Batchelor said many of his colleagues in accounting and business analysis have four-year degrees. He added that people in his life are still encouraging him to pursue a traditional degree.
"It's a signal of safety to a lot of a different generation," he said, "I think product and provability is going to be a much better currency for jobs than just education on its own."
Dan Brodnitz, head of global content strategy for LinkedIn Learning, said the amount of global hours spent on LinkedIn Learning from July 2020 to July 2021 increased by 53%. He said there are two things driving the increase of learners on the platform.
"There was a year and a half where folks were kind of frozen, so there is some pent up mobility," Brodnitz said. "But we think there's something bigger and more profound going on where people are trying to take control of their lives and careers."
One of the ways people are taking control is by investing in themselves, Brodnitz said. Online learning is an efficient way for people to close skills gaps they need to get the job they want.
An option for career changers
These types of programs are also a good option for those pursuing a career shift.
Stephanie Brown has a bachelor's degree, a master's, and a law degree, in addition to more than 10 years of experience in the US Air Force. When the pandemic hit, she was working as a hotel chef with the goal of starting her own food truck. Then she lost her job.
Contemplating her next move, Brown knew she wanted to be in technology. Like Medina, she signed up for a Salesforce program and got a Trailhead certification. She worked more than 50 hours per week on the program, taking advantage of additional benefits for military veterans. Now she works as a Salesforce consultant at SETGO Partners.
Brown said it "takes a lot of self-motivation" to pursue an alternative path to career readiness. The rigor and self-directed nature of these technical training programs are not for everyone, she added, but the same could be said for college degrees.
"College is probably the last thing I'll recommend right now," she said.
Aman Kidwai contributed to an earlier version of this article.
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