Experience is frequently cited as a proxy for education when credentials are evaluated, but I recently encountered a question about turning the equivalency logic the other way around. Someone sought ideas for the number of work experience years that should be credited for scholastic degrees. Like, “if you have an Associates degree, you don't need any work experience.” I have have rarely seen that occur. Education tends to establish minimum primary boundaries for a hire qualification or states the entry threshold job evaluation element which is slightly modified by work experience requirement parameters: e.g.,
- High school diploma and six years experience or
- Associates degree plus four years experience or
- Bachelors degree and two years experience or
- Masters degree and no experience
In those illustrations, education is the fundamental prerequisite and the amount of work experience varies by the level of education possessed beyond the minimum schooling required. But how about generally assuming that a Master's degree equals two years of work experience? That is implied in my prior example. The education and experience must be relevant to be comparable, of course. Nevertheless, I would hesitate before decreeing that education may displace experience in hiring entry standards and compensation classifications.
Practical experience reduces the need for education more often than schooling trumps real-life application experience, I suspect. Positions that demand formal academic certifications or official licenses (i.e., MD, LLB, PE, CPA, RN) usually require passing a combination of essential qualification tests and demonstrated practical proficiency in addition to the established minimal educational foundation.
Perhaps replacing experience with relevant equivalent education is usually not emphasized or envisioned in company policies because it is so swiftly dismissed as illogical by top management. Most executives have learned the hard way that academic courses rarely do more than scratch the surface of actual work applications in certain fields. They are quick to squash any impulse to consider a PhD in Industrial Relations equivalent to six or eight years of experience negotiating labor union contracts. They might, however, hire a Finance PhD as a senior bookkeeper, even though most of that advanced education would not apply to enhance the PhD's value on that job as much as equal years of bookkeeping experience. If they gave the clerk with a doctorate a data entry job, s/he would have no right to expect to earn as much as a veteran peer who had performed that same job for a decade.
Conventional compensation practice says you pay according to the value of the output permitted by the work activity, not the skills of the incumbent. That typically means a wage based on the job assigned rather than the person's theoretical potential.
Once upon a time, I dealt with an inexperienced accounts receivable correspondence clerk who was denied pay status equivalent to someone with four years work experience writing collections letters. The new employee insisted that since she was hired out of college after completing a BA in English, that was worth 4 years of job-related experience writing collection letters. When I pointed out that her boss had already found her writing skills deficient, she indignantly replied that she got her degree for reading rather than for writing but her logic still applied. In her opinion, that degree automatically earned her 4 years of work experience equivalency. Enough said.
Schooling proves you can learn something well enough to pass a classroom test. Work demonstrates you can apply knowledge in a practical way. Some trade schools or Junior Colleges do offer useful courses similar to apprenticeships, but not many. I'm curious about what jobs might exist where experience considered necessary could possibly be waived by college education. It is usually the other way around precisely because academic knowledge does not become fully potent until leavened by actual work experience. Universities don't generally teach the frequently boring and generally narrow applications performed on jobs. No BSME can operate a computerized milling machine as well as a 5-year veteran CNC milling machine operator, for example.
But I could be wrong. What important exceptions am I missing?
E. James (Jim) Brennan is an independent compensation advisor with extensive total rewards experience, specializing in job evaluation, market pricing and pay budget distribution. After corporate HR jobs in manufacturing, he consulted to various industries throughout North America, became Senior Associate of pay survey software publisher ERI and returnied to consulting in 2015. A prolific writer (author of the Performance Management Workbook) and speaker, Jim gave expert witness testimony in many reasonable executive compensation cases and also serves on the Advisory Board of the Compensation and Benefits Review.
"Job Education Buttons" image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
I would say those fields in some form of academia could benefit from the college years directly. But in general there is not a direct "swap" of work experience for education only.
However, I have encouraged using a formula to develop a standard of "career" experience which includes education and work experience. A bachelor's degree is equivalent to 2 years of career experience. This is general life experience and adds to a person's overall competency. That is paired with direct work experience for a total # of minimum years of experience.
I have managers generally tell me, particularly in IT, that they prefer work experience over education and/or certifications. If we say we want someone with the equivalent of a bachelor's degree and 3 years of work experience, then someone without a degree probably has 5 or more years of work experience already as they have substituted the formal education for practical work experience. Often that is even more valuable.
I believe it is the total package which should be evaluated for compensation too. Since a degree often adds value to a job in the comp systems, I would use that to compare the job to the market. Someone without a degree who is deemed qualified due to greater work experience would be treated equally to the candidate who has a degree and less work experience.
Posted by: Karen Kervick | 06/15/2016 at 08:32 AM
Agree, Karen. Math PhDs, for example, can typically carry that honed credential straight into teaching, since advanced degree programs typically require some teaching roles. But that seems to cycle back to the point that a modicum of practical experience "doing" beyond "being taught" seems to be consistently required in almost all jobs.
Judgment is certainly needed to assess the relative values of degrees over experience. As we all know, some experience is "one year repeated 20 times" while other types can far exceed in breadth and depth what could ever be taught in a classroom setting.
Posted by: E. James (Jim) Brennan | 06/16/2016 at 01:10 PM
I think education should be the minimum yard stick to gauge employment capabilities.
Posted by: theophilus | 06/29/2016 at 03:30 AM
I believe it is the total package which should be evaluated for compensation too. Thanks for sharing this good article
Posted by: Keziah | 07/10/2016 at 03:35 AM
Thanks, Theophilus and Keziah, for your reminders that standard valuation practices are logical and generally appropriate. Every element considered has a minimum threshold, the nature and weight of each varies, and their totality should be considered. Reminds me of the story of the blind men inspecting the elephant.
Posted by: E. James (Jim) Brennan | 07/10/2016 at 12:04 PM