When Walmart stopped requiring college degrees for most of its corporate jobs last year, the company confronted three deep truths about work and schooling:
A college diploma is only a proxy for what someone knows, and not always a perfect one. A degree’s high cost sidelines many people. For industries dominated by workers without degrees, cultivating future talent demands a different playbook.
Some of the nation’s largest employers, including Walmart and McDonald’s, are now broaching a new frontier in higher education: convincing colleges to give retail and fast-food workers credit for what they learn on the job, counting toward a degree.
