CLARENCE PAGE: A GED for college? Not as far-fetched as it sounds

When I saw the Wall Street Journal headline, “Some CEOs suggest dropping degree requirements in hiring,” I was impressed. At last, I thought, the business establishment is starting to see things my way.

Employers increasingly in recent decades have fallen under the spell of what critics call “over-credentialing” or “degree inflation,” demanding a bachelor’s degree for jobs that traditionally did not require one.

Because fewer than one-third of the adult population has earned a four-year degree, a preference for college-educated employees taps a limited pool, creating a mismatch of supply and demand in midlevel positions (supervisors, technicians, sales representatives, data analysts and the rest).

A growing number of companies appear to be getting wise to this trend and, without discarding academic qualifications, letting the world know that lack of a college degree won’t necessarily shut the door on their opportunities.

And that’s the spirit behind a new initiative behind the headline that caught my eye.

Called OneTen, the initiative seeks to train and promote a million Black Americans over the next 10 years, for “family-sustaining” jobs (translation: paying a wage high enough to support a family) that don’t require a four-year degree to start, according to the co-founders, Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier and Ginni Rometty, executive chairman of IBM.

Once employed, they will have opportunities to gain further training and promotions. Other companies in the effort include American Express, Delta Air Lines, Nike, Target and Walmart.

But does that exclude promising applicants who don’t happen to be African American? “This is a startup,” Rometty said, when asked that inevitable question on “CBS This Morning.” “While we’re starting with Black Americans, we intend to expand to other Americans. With any startup you have to start somewhere. We’re going to start with the group that’s at the top of our list — and, I think, when we do this for one group we can (expand) to do it for everyone.”

I was quickly reminded of an idea I endorsed almost a decade ago: A collegiate version of the GED (General Educational Development tests) long used by high school dropouts to earn a high school equivalency diploma.

I credit the idea to my semiretired economics professor Richard Vedder at Ohio University who also is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute. When I called to get his view on the OneTen initiative, he was delighted to read about an effort based on the same idea that inspired his collegiate GED idea.

“I know the SAT and ACT (college entry exams) are looked on with less favor at the moment, for a variety of reasons,” he said. “But the concept and benefits of testing are well established. The military, the government — the foreign service exam is a very good example — everybody does it and they get favorable results.”

So why isn’t everybody talking about the possibility of a college-level GED? You don’t have to be an economics professor to understand why the higher education establishment would look negatively at the idea. “It’s competition,” said Vedder, author of a 2004 book called, “Going Broke By Degree: Why College Costs Too Much,” that was not universally welcomed by that establishment.

But in this era of constantly changing education and training needs, we need to think hard about removing systemic barriers to promising young talent of all races.

— Contact the Chicago Tribune’s Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.