Federal hiring shifts from degrees to skills

The Office of Personnel Management is pruning hundreds of arcane job titles and pushing a move toward broad banding and skills‑based hiring, allowing agencies to use tests or assessments rather than college degrees or fixed years of experience. If the rewrite of major series (starting with Information Technology) succeeds, managers will gain discretion to hire and set pay based on demonstrated ability rather than formal credentials. — This reframes debates about public-sector reform, credentialism, and labor power by changing levers of hiring, pay, and classification across the federal government.