House passes bill to scrap education requirements from federal contracting jobs
A pullback of educational requirements for federal contracting jobs, including in technology work, moved one step closer to reality Monday.
The Skills-Based Federal Contracting Act (H.R. 5235) sailed through the House and now awaits Senate consideration. The bill from Reps. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., and Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., would ban minimum education requirements for personnel in some contracts.
Introducing the bill on the House floor ahead of Monday’s vote, Rep. William Timmons, R-S.C., said the legislation ensures federal contractors can “hire who they want to hire without additional red tape.”
“We should not prohibit those with the right technical skills from performing federal contract work just because they lack a traditional degree,” Timmons said, “and the companies who employ them, those that offer apprenticeships and engage in skills-based hiring, should be encouraged to compete for government contracts, not be excluded from competition.”
Mace, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation, recounted January 2024 testimony from an IBM executive who said “federal contractors are rarely able to place an individual without a four-year degree on a technology services contract, regardless of their qualifications.”
Mace said the issue goes “beyond technology and service contracts,” affecting work across the federal government. Eliminating four-year degree requirements would do away with “a paper ceiling” that blocks “talented Americans” from pursuing opportunities in the billion-dollar industry that “shapes the entire labor market,” she said.
“When we embed unnecessary degree requirements into federal contracting solicitations, we’re not just making a hiring decision; we’re sending a signal to the entire economy [that] a college diploma is a prerequisite for economic opportunity,” said Mace, noting that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs didn’t finish college.
Under the bill, minimum education requirements for contractors would be barred, though if a contracting officer believes its needs cannot be met without those standards, they could submit a written justification within the solicitation that explains “how the requirement ensures the needs are met.”
The Office of Management and Budget would be required to issue guidance to agencies for the change in policy within 180 days of the law’s enactment. And the Government Accountability Office would be tasked with submitting a report to Congress on the implementation of the amended rules within three years of the law going into effect.
Both Mace and Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., said the bill isn’t intended to diminish the value of a college education, and there will still be instances in which one is required. “For example,” Mace said, “we expect a doctor to have a medical degree, but only a small fraction of federal contract work falls into these types of categories.”
But “too often,” Subramanyam noted, “federal agencies put unnecessary degree requirements on contractor positions, and these unnecessary requirements hurt a lot of people, because more than 77% of Americans over 25 don’t have a bachelor’s degree, but many of those individuals have skills training and knowledge to support our agencies and serve the American people, and we shouldn’t block them from those opportunities.”
Mace has also pushed for the rollback of educational requirements in federal cybersecurity jobs. The South Carolina Republican told FedScoop after the January 2024 House Oversight hearing that four-year degree requirements are “clearly hindering our ability to meet the demands that we have in the tech, cyber and innovation AI space.”
