Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Right now, more than half of working Americans don't have a four-year college degree, but many of them have something else, skills, skills they picked up through community college, military service, 'boot camps', certifications, apprenticeships, or just learning on the job. These workers are sometimes called STARS, Skilled Through Alternative Routes, STARS. Yet, research shows these workers are often shut out of well paying jobs, not because they can't do them, but because a degree is used as a shortcut to determine who's qualified.

Now we'll continue a series of conversations that we've begun here on the Brian Lehrer Show looking at economic mobility for STARS, how the job market treats them, how policy might better support them, and what real people navigating this space want to share. This is actually the second of 10 total segments we'll be doing on the show with a Gates Foundation grant focused on these issues.

Joining us today, Audrey Mickahail, Senior Vice President of Private Sector and Membership Experience at the nonprofit, Opportunity@Work, which is pushing for fairer hiring practices that open doors for STARS. Aaliyah Siddiqi, a marketing operations specialist in Philadelphia who entered the tech field without a college degree and built her career by tapping into alternative pathways to learning.

Audrey, Aaliyah, welcome to WNYC. Thank you so much for coming on.

Audrey Mickahail: Thank you, Brian. Thanks for having us.

Aaliyah Siddiqi: Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we also invite your calls. If you have built a career without a college degree, or if you've tried and struggled to get ahead, what's worked for you and what barriers have you hit? 212-433-WNYC, if you want to tell a story. What are the specific skills, credentials, or certifications you earned that may have helped you land a job without a bachelor's degree? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Call or text. Or with any questions for our guests. Maybe you're just starting out down one of these paths and you have a question.

Audrey, let's start with the basics. What is a STAR? I gave what the acronym is for, but in a little more detail, and how many people in the US labor force would you say fall into that category?

Audrey Mickahail: Thanks for the question, Brian. There are 70 million STARS active in the labor market in the United States right now. You set it up so well by saying that these are workers who are skilled through alternative routes. That's what STAR stands for. It's folks who have been through the military, or community college, or who have had experience with training programs. So many of the 70 million are folks who, like everyone, are learning skills, are building their skills by showing up every day and doing the work.

One more thing that I would mention is particularly as folks get further into their career, one of the just very true realities is where you went to college or what you studied in college becomes a lot less relevant pretty, pretty quickly. There are 70 million in the United States, overall. There are almost 4 million STARS in the New York City area. I think, in general, we're talking about half of the labor market, and it varies certainly by region, but it's a very significant and hard to ignore part of the workforce. Unfortunately, for too long, they simply have been ignored.

Brian Lehrer: Aaliyah, you want to tell our listeners a little bit of your own story? Because if people's first response to this whole topic is, "Yes, you can make a living without a college degree," people become plumbers, people become carpenters, things like that, but you found your way into tech without a four-year degree. Take us back to the beginning of your story a little bit, would you?

Aaliyah Siddiqi: Absolutely, Brian, and thank you for asking. During the beginning of my journey, I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do. There was so many options out there, but I just wasn't quite sure what was the right fit. I started a bit by taking some classes undeclared in college, and just seeing if anything stuck out to me, anything that resonated with me. I just felt that I couldn't quite find that fit.

Afterwards, I took a break and decided to work at a warehouse for a bit, just to start building my resume and start that career journey there. It was definitely a bit of a challenge working there. It was quite intensive, and the hours were pretty long, and it definitely wasn't the easiest time. I remember getting up in the morning before sunrise, and then exiting the warehouse after sunset. I never saw the sun. Since there are no windows, it was definitely pretty dark there. There definitely wasn't much you could see. The focus was just on the work, on the job.

Despite the hard work, everyone was really kind there and really supportive towards each other, and that really helped us all to push each other and be that support, despite how intensive and the long hours would be. I just remember one day during my break just sitting there and deciding, "Is this something that I want to do for the rest of my life? Is this where my career journey ends?" Being so young, I just felt that I had so much life ahead of me, and I wanted to find something that would be that good fit, something that can jumpstart that career journey for me.

That's when it hit me, the Europe program. That was a program that my older sister had actually joined and she was successful in. With that program, it started the alternative route for me, and it provided the many resources to help young adults get into the corporate journey and start their career and find something that would be that fit and resonate with them.

When I started-- Go ahead.

Brian Lehrer: No, you go ahead.

Aaliyah Siddiqi: Oh, okay. When I started that program, it also was a bit of a challenge in itself since that was completely virtual, and when my sister had joined it, it was in person, and she was going to the site and taking the classes with everyone there and face-to-face. For me, it was completely virtual over the computer and taking classes that way. Definitely what helped a lot was to have study groups and meet with my peers to be able to get through the classes and the intensive work that we had to do. It was definitely a lot faster pace. The great thing about the program was that it also offered college courses as well. I was able to get some college experience while I was there, and at the same time, have that training to be able to break through and get into the corporate realm and start my career journey.

From there, they also provide internships. I had started my internship while I was within the program, and I did that for some time, for about six months. It was a really amazing experience. Everyone there was so kind and helpful to help me and provide me the resources that I needed to be successful on the journey. Unfortunately, at the end, there was no headcount at the team. I ended up being put into or asked if I was interested in joining an apprenticeship. At that time, I actually wasn't sure what an apprenticeship was. It was definitely new to me, but I was open to trying it. I wanted to see if this would be a good fit for me. This would be something that I would be interested in for the rest of my career journey.

Ended up ended up doing it, and I ended up loving everything that I did and everything that I was being taught, and learning things about tech and things like that. It was such an amazing experience, going through that and gathering all that experience. I felt that this was definitely a great fit for me, and I love what's being presented here to me with the company, and I really want to stay. The great thing was that I had such a great supportive manager who had helped me get into the company and find a position that I can start off with. From there, it's just been great, and here I am today.

Brian Lehrer: It's a great story, and I think it's an inspiration probably to some people listening right now, figuring out what they're going to do with their lives and how they're going to get there.

Audrey Mickahail from Opportunity@Work, sometimes the stories don't have the right ending or have an even more complicated path. Like some people who have stories like Audrey's have, what you call proven skills but paper gaps. What does that mean in real world hiring scenarios? I guess it's people who can do things but don't have the degree, right?

Audrey Mickahail: Absolutely. We have been studying this issue, Brian, for a number of years. Aaliyah really brought to life the experience, a very human experience that workers experience. We've studied 130 million job transitions in the labor market. I'm not going to bore you with too many data points here, but I think the themes are very clear.

One of the things that has become really clear to us as we've looked at the data over the last several years and built our body of knowledge, is that workers without degrees, STARS, really experience a very different outcome in the labor market. First of all, they're far less likely, when they make transitions in the labor market, to experience mobility than the non STARS do. That means that over time, what you end up seeing is that STARS really struggle to get those wage gains that so many non STARS enjoy with relative ease. It used to be almost like a truism that if you are looking to change jobs, you should do that when you are going to experience roughly a 15% wage increase. That's pretty regular occurrence for someone with a bachelor's degree. It is a relatively rare occurrence for a STAR.

Part of the reason for that is that, to put it simply, employers tend to take risks on non STARS that they do not take on STARS. That's not just me, Audrey, saying that as an assertion. We see it in the data, and we see it because we've studied these transitions and know what we call the skills distance is between each job and every other job. When we look at how STARS move through the labor market, they do make skills based transitions, but really the theme that I want to leave you with on this point is simply that STARS are really having to prove themselves in ways that the bar is far higher for them than it is for non STARS.

I will say that I have had people take risks on me as a worker, and invest in me as a worker. At every turn, what we look at and what we see is that STARS just have a very different experience. Aaliyah's story is one of breaking through, and it's amazing. We are starting to hopefully see the patterns of employment, and employer behavior and practices start to shift. It's been a long road, and over the past 25 years, frankly, the story hasn't been quite that rosy. We are starting to shift that downward trajectory, but it's a downward trajectory that has been building since 2020.

Brian Lehrer: Let's hear from a few of our listeners who have stories to tell. Then we'll hear some more from you and from Audrey about getting prepared to make a living and having employers open enough doors without college degrees. One listener writes, "My husband and I live a middle class life as homeowners in Monmouth County, New Jersey, neither having a degree. He is a non-union factory worker for 43 years, sent two kids to college. Hard work and overtime did it for us."

Another listener writes, "I came right out of high school and worked in the insurance industry. I started as an assistant and they paid for schooling to obtain my insurance license. I worked my way up by either getting promoted within an agency or moving to a new agency. I'm in my 41st year in the industry and 19 years at my current employer."

There are a couple of very long timers who've built careers through basically their whole adult lives for more than 40 years in each of those cases. Let's take a call from somebody who's currently in school. Zoe in Amherst in Massachusetts. You're on WNYC. Hi, Zoe, thank you for calling in.

Zoe: Hi, thank you for taking my call. I called in because this is something that I've actually been thinking a lot about. I started working officially at the age of 16 on the Hudson River Sleep Clearwater. A lot of my education, my work experience was very hands on. It's a physical labor job, but it's also an educational space where you're teaching students, some grad students and also younger students, variety of ages, about the ecology of the Hudson River.

I also learned how to be the ship's engineer and all of these other things while on the boat, and really some of the most valuable things that I still take to, to this day. While I'm at school, I'm currently at this point in my life where I'm reevaluating the type of education that I'm having and the choice of being here, and whether I'm currently applying out to transfer to potentially a less traditional artistic school. Some of the people that I've met on that job there and in other manual labor positions have been some of the most educated people I know, but are also some of the most very anti-higher education people I know, and have always been telling me to drop out or just to pursue sailing or other things.

Now I've been doing that for five years and I'm almost at a captain's license. It's an alternate type of education, and it's also a manual labor job where people are very educated but also feeling very disenfranchised from modes of traditional education.

Brian Lehrer: Zoe, I'm curious as a follow up to what you said about people who you know being down on going to college. Is it for culture war reasons? We know what's going on with Trump and things like that with how college is viewed from a culture war perspective. Is it from a student loan perspective like, "Oh, I'm going to get into so much debt. It's not even going to be worth it," or some other reason?

Zoe: I think a lot of the people that end up in the sailing tall ship industry do-- a lot of people I know have gone into colleges, universities, and then dropped out because that type of standardized education just wasn't working for them, or also financially. That's also something that I'm thinking about about right now as loans are an issue for me, and whether my education is worth debt that I have to carry on. The nature also of working on large sailboats, it's a live work position. You live and you learn new experience, but your amenities are also taken care of to a certain degree.

Brian Lehrer: Zoe, thank you very much for sharing your story. Let's go right to another caller with his story, Jonathan in Newark. You're on WNYC. Hi, Jonathan.

Jonathan: Hi, good morning, Brian. I'll be very concise with my story. I grew up in a rural community in northern Indiana, and I went to university for three years. When I was traveling, I met a friend that helped me get a job at one of the largest airlines in the world. Best decision, riskiest decision I ever made in my entire life. I was being groomed to take over the family business, which is a family farm and insurance business. I totally dropped those opportunities in pursuit of moving to this region of the country.

After being here roughly 4 or 5 years, I've been here about 15 now, I have recently purchased my own property. I met someone about eight years ago that has two advanced degrees, master's in international affairs from Tufts, a MBA from NYU. We've been together now for eight, nine years. I see in his daily experience of his job working in finance, how miserable he is, how he makes tons of money and he has all these advanced education, but he's so miserable. Also I see a lacking in creativity and innovation that a lot of my friends who pursue these advanced degrees, they don't--

The resourcefulness of being able to reinvent yourself, sometimes it goes by the wayside of the system that we're in. Many of my friends that live in Europe, I notice the European systems, they generally prioritize-- or not prioritize, but there's more equality when it comes to people who work with their hands in different ways, or go through apprenticeships. There's not the divide that exists in the United States. Simply there's generally not the debt that people take on. I think our system is totally flawed in how it's set up, and it's on the university level, and it's also on the employer level by employers not even looking at people like me. That's just my own pursuit. I came from baling hay bales on the farm, selling insurance during my years I was in college, to now working on an airplane and going to Europe three or four times a month, minimum.

Brian Lehrer: Jonathan, thank you so much for sharing that story. As we continue, if you're just joining us in this series of conversations, we're having on the Brian Lehrer Show through a few weeks from now, looking at economic mobility for STARS, which stands for Skilled Through Alternative Routes, people who are skilled through routes other than a four-year college degree. Our guest, in addition to our callers, are Audrey Mickahail, Senior Vice President of Private Sector and Membership Experience at the nonprofit, Opportunity@Work, which is pushing for fair hiring practices that open doors for STARS.

Aaliyah Siddiqi, a marketing operations specialist in Philadelphia who entered the Tech field without a college degree and built her career by tapping into alternative paths to learning.

Aaliyah, I'm curious what you were thinking as we just heard two calls, two texts, four different listeners with their stories of being STARS.

Aaliyah Siddiqi: Absolutely. I think that it's truly amazing to be able to find different routes, different alternatives, to be able to find that job or that passion that truly sticks to what you want to do in life. I believe that being able to dabble into different things, having that open mind, will really help open those doors and bring in further opportunities.

Brian Lehrer: It's not like you just don't get trained. Because I think you've spoken about reskilling and upskilling through different kinds of training. Is that right?

Aaliyah Siddiqi: Yes, correct.

Brian Lehrer: Give us a little example of how you did that.

Aaliyah Siddiqi: When I was in my apprenticeship, the great thing about that program, that organization, was the many resources that they offered their students. A lot of it was surrounded around coaching, and mentoring, and also giving us small courses to be able to do that coincided with the projects that we were given that really helped us cultivate those skills, and be able to understand the field that we're getting into and the type of work that we would expect to see. In a way, gave us that head start before coming into the roles that we have and having that prior knowledge before coming in.

Brian Lehrer: Audrey, why is the default for so many employers still college degree required, even for jobs that don't clearly need one?

Audrey Mickahail: I think some of it, Brian, is frankly unexamined assumptions. That's one of the things we're really trying to address and bring attention to, and have been for some time.

The truth is that, and I alluded to this slightly earlier, but we have seen for decades, STARS lose access to jobs. These are jobs in many cases that they have had access to in the past. They're things like HR manager or admin assistant. That no reasonable person I think would say you must have a college degree for. Part of it a hack of, "I am getting flooded with applications, and how do I cut down on that?" We would argue that that hack is broken. I will say that I think we are starting to see the tide shift a little bit. We're actually releasing some new data in a couple of weeks showing how those losses have slowed drastically in the last five years. Not only that, but according to our new data, we believe that millions more STARS could be in good paying jobs by the end of the decade.

I do want to make sure to make that point because while it's been a tough story since 2000, I have reason for hope. One of the things that you heard from Jonathan and Zoe, your callers earlier, was their very real experiences and the downsides of, one, the college for all argument, two, this tendency to frankly overestimate the proportion of the workforce that has a college degree. I think that's one of the reasons we've seen those losses that we've seen. We are starting to see a shift. I think some of the data that we'll be releasing later this month, as well as examples of employers who are genuinely and with intention making those shifts, not because it's the right thing to do, although it is the right thing to do, but also because it makes good business sense.

You heard from Zoe. She is starting to question in her education whether or not it makes sense for her to get that bachelor's degree. There's tons of research out there, many surveys that have been issued that have shown that this generation of students is really starting to rethink the value proposition of college. I'm not here to tell you that college is or isn't valuable. It's a reliable way to get a middle class lifestyle. I think that college for all argument underserves folks, really tragically.

I think all we're trying to say is we should really be thinking about skills as the way we assess workers, not how they got those skills. I'm hopeful. I think there are some really tremendous shifts that are taking place. We see employers starting to include things like training programs, apprenticeships. We have partners like Train and Accenture that have made huge investments in apprenticeship, which is incredibly exciting and hopeful for a lot of workers for whom a bachelor's degree may not be the right choice. But I think those are some of the things that I would point to as what we can look forward to in this country in terms of the job market.

Brian Lehrer: I think Michael in Brooklyn has a story from his workplace of an unnecessary degree requirement as he sees it. Michael, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Michael: Hey. Hi. Just background. I'm an IT person at a mega law firm in New York City. I have a college degree and an MA Humanities degree. To get the job I had, a college degree was a requirement, but obviously my degrees have absolutely nothing to do with what I do. I just like this stuff and I kind of picked it up along the way and I'm pretty good at it.

On a previous caller, Jonathan, I'm quoting him, he said, "Employers wouldn't even look at people like me because he doesn't have those. I think that's what the issue is here. Employers know college degrees don't matter for what they want. They're an imposed class barrier to keep out people they just don't want to be around. Perhaps keep them out in ways that they can say rather than things they can't say, if you know what I mean. I think that is a real impetus behind the requirement of college degrees. I got my job because of a nonsensical degree that has nothing to do with it.

Just one other point. One of your guests, Ms. Siddiqi or Ms. Mecca, just said I think the value of education is not just the lifestyle it will buy you. If I worked in minimum wage at Walmart, I'd still be a happier, maybe better person because of the education I have. That's not the only value of a college education, but that's secondary.

I just want to say, I wonder if your guests agree with me, that these requirements are just a way to keep the riff raff out, basically.

Brian Lehrer: Well, Audrey, what do you think?

Audrey Mickahail: I do think that there are situations in which our cognitive biases, whether we're conscious of them or not, play a role. One that I've seen quite frequently is what's called mini me bias. You've heard that expressed colloquially as you remind me of me when I was younger. I do think it's alluding to what I said earlier about those unexamined assumptions. I think one of those, which, frankly, I was guilty of before I started working in this space, was simply not recognizing that when we require a degree, especially a generic degree, we're really just blocking access and opportunity for so many workers. The fact of the matter is it's the majority of Black workers, of Hispanic workers, of veterans, and of rural workers, like the earlier caller, Jonathan. I think that implication is something that a lot of folks just don't recognize and don't understand. So much of what we are trying to do in our work is simply bring awareness to the reality that, again, 70 million workers in this country, nearly 4 million workers in New York, do not have a bachelor's degree. That means that we are just blinding ourselves to huge swaths of the skilled workforce.

Brian Lehrer: We'll end for today with this text from a listener who writes, "We promised everyone an education would get them a solid life as an excuse to not build a social safety net. That masquerade has fallen apart. It's no wonder people are bitter and feel like the economy isn't working. With that commentary from a listener, we're going to leave it for today. I want to say that we have so many calls with great stories of STARS, people skilled through alternative routes and others who want to ask questions. This is just the second of 10 segments we're going to be doing in this series in the coming weeks. We'll do another one tomorrow, another one on Friday, this week.

For today, we thank Audrey Mickahail, senior vice president of private sector and membership experience at the Nonprofit Opportunity@Work, which studies and advocates for people in this population, and Aliyah Siddiqi, marketing operations specialist in Philly, who entered the tech field without a college degree and built her career.

Thank you both so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.

Audrey Mickahail: Thank you, Brian.

Aaliyah Siddiqi: Thank you, Brian.

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