Trump Team Scraps College Degrees for Hundreds of Federal Jobs

The Trump administration is moving to strip education requirements and create skills-based tests in hundreds of federal jobs as it seeks to reshape the civil service to be younger and more accessible to workers without a college degree.

The Office of Personnel Management has targeted more than 600 job classifications to review and already started removing “arbitrary” measures of competence, including college degrees, listed as requirements, OPM Director Scott Kupor told Bloomberg Law. The process is expected to take more than a year.

“We can change the classifications of all these jobs to say, let’s focus on actual demonstrations of merit, as opposed to what I believe are proxies for merit,” Kupor told Bloomberg Law.

This would be a generational shift in how federal employees are recruited and hired, months after the Trump administration purged more than 300,000 people from the federal workforce. Scrapping education requirements, which has had bipartisan support in the past, aims to meet the demands of a rapidly changing, tech-driven economy.

More than half of the federal workforce had a four-year college degree or higher as of February, and 71% had at least an associate’s degree or attended some college, according to OPM data.

Although some low-level positions don’t require a degree, the middle and higher rungs do, with top positions—which can come with six-figure salaries—requiring advanced degrees and doctorates. A 2014 study found that bachelor’s degree holders working in the federal government had a median salary 52% higher than those with a high school diploma or less—a difference of more than $30,000.

While loosening the requirements could create opportunities for many workers who lack a degree, including those who can’t afford to go to college, former federal HR officials worry it could backfire, especially in an administration used to breaking tradition.

Some of the most scrutinized DOGE hires, such as Edward “Big Balls” Coristine—who drew attention and scorn for his inexperience and was later accused of exposing the personal data of Social Security recipients—was 19 and had few, if any, formal credentials.

“There’s a very, very strong argument to be made that degrees are not necessary in every position,” said Janice Lachance, who directed the OPM during the Clinton administration. However, “it has to be done with a scalpel and not a sledgehammer. I think you have to be very careful about where it’s appropriate.”

“But,” she added, “that’s not the way this administration has behaved.”

President Donald Trump has tightened White House control over federal workers, who he has described as corrupt and hostile to his agenda, even as Kupor has talked about hiring new talent.

The OPM has laid the groundwork to reclassify as many as 50,000 civil servants, giving Trump the authority to fire them without due process. He has gutted some agencies, such as the US Agency for International Development, and canceled collective bargaining agreements for thousands of federal workers.

Qualification Questions

Replacing degree requirements will mean developing new skills-based assessments for workers, a pricey and time-consuming process, according to former White House and government HR officials.

Testing new applicants for federal jobs slowly fell out of favor throughout the 20th century as the size of the government ballooned, said Gabe Menchaca, a former senior adviser in the Biden White House budget office who studies civil service reform. Agencies shifted to cheaper alternatives, such as self-attestation, in which applicants list their own skills. Those are not always vetted.

Cutting degree requirements before creating a new test would result in unqualified applicants gaining entry.

“If they just stop at degree requirements, that’s not going to cut it,” Menchaca said.

Moving to testing requires careful examination of each job, since some professions—such as doctors, engineers, and scientists—require specific skills and credentials.

“If you’re hiring a civil engineer and you’re eliminating degree requirements, I’d have a problem with that,” said Peter Bonner, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists and former OPM hiring manager during the Biden administration.

Support But Not Funding

Previous efforts to create an assessment-based system for federal workers have been hobbled by lack of funding.

In 2024, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Chance to Compete Act, instructing agencies to move away from educational requirements in favor of job knowledge tests, work-simulations, and other real-world assessments. But it didn’t allocate any additional funds for agencies.

“Part of the challenge that they have to figure out is how to pull this off under existing resources,” Menchaca said.

The OPM launched an effort this week to hire more young workers—a distinct departure from the DOGE-driven campaign to fire tens of thousands of probationary employees who were new to their jobs.

“Bring what you know, learn what you don’t, and do meaningful work that impacts millions from day one,” touts a newly launched OPM website to attract young workers. “Your country needs you — join us.”

The website offers links to internships and a “career quiz” to help identify e government roles that align with various interests.

In December, the OPM launched the US Tech Force, a program that aims to hire young technologists across the government through partnerships with xAI, OpenAI Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Uber, Palantir, and others. One- and two-year fellows are promised mentorship and, at the end, could seek employment with one of the companies or remain with the government.

All applicants take a test administered by a third party, Kupor said, though the program hasn’t been fully rolled out.

“We can literally see a percentile,” he said. “We have to use actual assessments to determine skills.”