Skills-based hiring for contractors advances in the House

The House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Wednesday advanced legislation aimed at passing the federal government’s recent shift toward skills-based hiring along to include federal contractors as well.

The Allowing Contractors to Choose Employees for Select Skills Act, or the ACCESS Act (H.R. 7887), introduced by Reps. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., and Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., would remove degree requirements baselining much of federal contract opportunities. If a federal agency determines that a four-year or advanced degree is required for contract work, it must include a written justification for that need in the solicitation for bids.

In practice, the bill’s sponsors say that the legislation will remove barriers to skilled job applicants who learned their expertise at community college, apprenticeships and other skills training programs.

“I didn’t get a job in computer programming, but my first job came as a computer programmer at Andersen Consulting . . . I learned like six languages—not at school—but on the job,” Mace said. “And it’s not just programming, but there are so many opportunities for contracts with agencies where a four-year degree is just completely unnecessary.”

“Degree-based discrimination deprives qualified Americans of opportunities to compete for jobs,” Krishnamoorthi said. “The federal government should be seeking the best and brightest to serve our country, and the ‘paper ceiling’ of arbitrary degree requirements is holding our nation and our workforce behind. Job candidates should always be evaluated based on their meaningful qualifications.”

The bill tasks the Office of Management and Budget with crafting guidance for implementation, including instructions that agencies must make distinct justifications for each contract solicitation and an encouragement to explore how alternative qualifications, such as industry certifications and “work-based learning programs” could stand in for a four-year degree.

Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said that while he would ultimately vote to advance the bill, he hoped to work to amend the bill before its floor debate to find carve-outs for some types of positions where a college degree still is needed, such as in engineering and other technical fields.

“Committee Democrats are supportive of efforts to eliminate minimum educational experience requirements for jobs that don’t actually require the associated skills for successful performance,” Raskin said. “[However], the ACCESS Act would create a blanket reporting requirement that could be unnecessarily burdensome for federal agencies in the many instances in which minimum educational experience requirements are commonly understood to be necessary.”

The committee voted 43-0 to advance the bill to the floor for consideration by the full House.