Working in IT long enough changes the way you look at talent.
At some point, you stop being impressed by stacked credentials on paper and start paying much more attention to something else: can this person actually solve a problem?
Can they walk into a messy situation, ask smart questions, sort signal from noise, test assumptions, communicate clearly, and keep moving when the answer is not obvious?
Because that is the real work.
As a manager, and as someone who has spent years in technical environments, I think we are watching a real shift happen across IT, skilled trades, and a lot of technical career paths. For a long time, people were sold a very clean promise: get the degree, maybe get an advanced degree, and the opportunities will follow. But the market is getting less sentimental and more practical. Employers still value education, but they are increasingly looking for proof that someone can actually perform, adapt, and think.
That does not mean degrees are worthless. It means degrees by themselves are no longer enough.
And honestly, that makes sense.
A diploma tells me somebody completed a program. It may tell me they can study, follow through, and absorb theory. Those things matter. But when systems are down, users are frustrated, budgets are tight, and the documentation is outdated, theory is not what gets the organization through the moment. Problem-solving does.
The market is not rewarding credentials the way people were promised
The first thing worth saying is that the data does not support the lazy claim that higher education has no value. In fact, the opposite is still true in broad terms. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, workers with a master’s degree had lower unemployment in 2024 than workers with only a bachelor’s degree, and they also earned more. Master’s degree holders had a 2.2% unemployment rate and median weekly earnings of $1,840, while bachelor’s degree holders had a 2.5% unemployment rate and median weekly earnings of $1,543.
So no, this is not an argument that education does not matter.
It is an argument that the old promise has weakened.
Because if the degree alone were enough, recent graduates would not be struggling the way many of them are now. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that the unemployment rate for recent college graduates rose to about 5.7% in the fourth quarter of 2025, while the underemployment rate climbed to 42.5%, the highest level since 2020. That means a lot of people are leaving school with credentials and still not landing the kind of work they were told those credentials would unlock.
That is where the disconnect is.
People were told to optimize for school. The market is increasingly optimizing for capability.
Employers are saying the quiet part out loud
One of the more telling pieces of data comes from NACE. In its Job Outlook 2025 survey, 88.3% of employers said they look for problem-solving skills on a candidate’s resume. That was the top attribute, ahead of teamwork, written communication, initiative, work ethic, and even technical skills.
Read that again.
Not the prestige of the school.
Not the length of the transcript.
Not how many academic letters sit behind somebody’s name.
Problem-solving.
And this is not just talk around the edges anymore. NACE also reported in early 2026 that 70% of employers in its Job Outlook 2026 survey were using skills-based hiring, up from 65% the year before.
That does not mean degrees have disappeared from hiring. They have not. In fact, NACE still reports that many entry-level roles require a bachelor’s degree, and Harvard Business School and the Burning Glass Institute found that the shift away from formal degree requirements has been slower and more limited than some of the headlines suggest. In their research, 42% of roles initially required a bachelor’s degree and another 5% required more than a bachelor’s. Over time, some employers dropped degree requirements, but the overall shift was much smaller than the public conversation often implies.
That is why this conversation needs honesty.
The market is not saying education is irrelevant.
The market is saying education is no longer enough on its own.
In IT, the gap is even more obvious
This shows up very clearly in technology.
The broader computer and information technology field is still expected to grow faster than average. BLS projects about 317,700 openings per year, on average, in computer and IT occupations from 2024 to 2034.
So the issue is not that there is no need for technical workers.
The issue is that employers are getting more selective about what kind of technical worker they want.
They do not just want somebody who can define concepts. They want somebody who can function when reality gets ugly. Somebody who can deal with imperfect information, aging systems, frustrated users, budget constraints, platform changes, security concerns, and half-finished handoffs from the last person who touched the environment.
Even at more foundational IT levels, the requirements point toward experience and practical development. BLS reported that in 2025, prior work experience was required for 56.8% of computer user support specialist roles, and on-the-job training was required for 86.2% of them. Across computer and mathematical occupations more broadly, prior work experience was required for 71.6% of workers in 2025.
That tells you something important.
The market does not believe classroom knowledge is the finished product.
It expects people to learn by doing.
This is why practical experience keeps winning
This is also why so many employers would rather look at a bachelor’s degree plus real-world experience than a more advanced degree with limited practical exposure.
Not because learning is bad. Not because theory is useless. But because practical work forces people to develop judgment.
Judgment is built when the script does not work.
Judgment is built when the vendor blames the network, the network team blames the app, and the user only knows it was working yesterday.
Judgment is built when you have to decide what matters first, what can wait, what is likely, what needs testing, and how to explain all of it without making the room more chaotic.
That is why internships matter. That is why entry-level support roles matter. That is why home labs matter. That is why certifications, project portfolios, GitHub repos, apprenticeships, and real troubleshooting stories matter. They show that somebody has been in the arena, not just in the classroom.
And to be blunt, AI is only making that more obvious.
AI can help summarize. It can suggest code. It can speed up research. It can generate drafts, templates, checklists, and ideas. But AI does not remove the need for human problem-solving. In many cases, it makes good judgment even more valuable, because now the person in the seat has to know whether the answer they were handed is right, wrong, shallow, risky, or incomplete.
Anyone can paste a prompt into a tool.
Not everyone can tell whether the output will actually work in production.
That distinction matters.
The hard truth for students and early-career professionals
I think one of the worst things we did culturally was convince a lot of people that the degree itself was the finish line.
It is not.
At best, it is the entry ticket.
For some roles, especially in higher-end technical fields, a degree still matters a lot. In some cases a master’s degree is useful, and in some specialized paths it may absolutely be worth it. The earnings and unemployment data still show real value in advanced education overall.
But if a student leaves school believing the diploma is enough, they are walking into the market with the wrong map.
The people who tend to separate themselves now are the ones who can show more than coursework. They can point to internships, labs, side projects, documented builds, certifications, freelance work, campus IT jobs, volunteer projects, or even just honest examples of how they worked through difficult situations.
That is what employers can latch onto.
Not vague potential. Evidence.
What I think employers actually want now
From where I sit, the most valuable people in technical environments are usually not the ones who know the most trivia. They are the ones who can turn uncertainty into progress.
They know how to break a problem apart.
They know how to communicate.
They know how to learn fast.
They know when to escalate and when to keep digging.
They know how to work hard without making everything harder for everybody else.
They know that being useful matters more than sounding impressive.
That mindset travels.
It matters in help desk.
It matters in systems administration.
It matters in cybersecurity.
It matters in networking.
It matters in management.
It matters in trades.
It matters anywhere real work is being done.
Because every organization eventually hits the same wall: things go wrong, priorities collide, and the people who rise are the ones who can think.
The bottom line
Degrees still matter. Education still matters. Advanced education still has value. The numbers are clear on that. People with more education, on average, still earn more and experience less unemployment.
But the market has become much less willing to reward credentials alone.
Recent graduates are facing a rougher landing than many expected. Employers are openly prioritizing problem-solving and skills. Skills-based hiring is growing, even if the degree requirement has not vanished nearly as much as some people pretend. And in technical fields especially, practical experience continues to carry serious weight.
So no, I do not think the lesson is “don’t go to school.”
I think the lesson is this:
Go to school if it makes sense for your path. Learn deeply. Build the foundation. But do not confuse education with readiness. Do not confuse credentials with capability. And do not expect the market to reward you just because you checked the academic box.
Degrees may open the door.
But when it comes time to actually build a career, solve real problems, and become the person people trust, the degree is not what carries you through.
You do.