I recently spoke with a cybersecurity apprentice who had already stopped three live intrusions on the job before he turned 24. No degree, just verified, on-the-job competencies earned through his program. A few years ago, a resume like his would have been screened out of most federal job postings before a human ever looked at it. The good news? That’s starting to change, and the federal government deserves credit for leading the way.
Merit Is Making a Comeback in Federal Hiring
Skills-based hiring in the federal government is a concept that is currently benefiting from bipartisan support. Back in 2020 under the first Trump Administration, Executive Order 13932 directed agencies to stop defaulting to degree requirements and instead start hiring based on verified competencies. The last administration built on that momentum in 2024, pushing skills-based reforms specifically for federal IT roles, and Congress followed with legislation codifying the shift.
This spring, OPM rewrote the classification standards for all 604 federal technology occupational series, stripping out degree requirements entirely in favor of formal skills assessments. As OPM Director Scott Kupor put it, fitness for the job will now be judged by “a formal assessment rather than… whether you have a bachelor’s degree.”
This is exactly the kind of leadership the private sector needs to see. Too many employers still default to a four-year degree as a proxy for capability, screening out qualified workers for roles that never needed a diploma in the first place. When the federal government, the nation’s largest employer, replaces that proxy with real skills verification, it sends a signal the private sector should be paying attention to.
Don’t Stop at Tech!
Technology was a good place to start, but plenty of other federal job series carry degree requirements that have little to do with the actual work. Rather than asking every agency to comb through its own job postings one by one, OPM should do what it just did for tech roles: systematically review all General Schedule occupational series, remove degree requirements wherever possible, and let agencies restore them only where they can show a real connection between education and job performance, consistent with EO 13932. Pair that with OPM-issued guides and toolkits that show agencies how to build apprenticeship and other skills-based pathways into hard-to-fill roles, and the federal government could close talent gaps faster than a job-by-job review ever will.
The Other Half of the Equation: Federal Contracts
The federal government also awards hundreds of billions of dollars a year in contracts across construction, IT, healthcare, manufacturing, and more. Those dollars can do far more to grow the domestic talent pipeline than they currently do. Provisions like those detailing prevailing wages in the Davis-Bacon Act have helped grow apprenticeship among federal construction contractors for decades. Let’s build on that.
Apprenticeship is one of the few workforce interventions with a proven return: U.S. DOL’s research on Registered Apprenticeship puts employer ROI at $1.40 to $1.90 for every dollar invested. If federal contracts built apprentice utilization requirements into procurement at scale, it will result in cost savings while helping to hedge against labor shortages already threatening federal project timelines.
Federal agencies should adopt a cross-agency plan requiring large federal contracts to include Registered Apprenticeship wage classifications and a minimum apprentice-to-workforce ratio across a broader range of occupations, with a target of achieving 5% within five years, with procurement preference given to bids that include apprentices from the start. This isn’t uncharted territory. Cities and states across the country already require apprentice utilization on certain contracts. If it works at the local level, there’s no reason the federal government’s contracting footprint can’t do the same, and at a much larger scale.
The Blueprint Is Already Here
The federal government just proved that removing unnecessary degree barriers is possible, and did so by raising the bar, by testing for competencies instead of credentials. Now it’s time to finish the job: apply that same discipline across the rest of the federal workforce – direct hires and contractors alike – and create systems that encourage the use of Registered Apprenticeship to the people who build, secure, and run our country’s infrastructure.
Jennifer Carlson is Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Apprenti.
Jennifer Carlson is Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Apprenti.
