This week, Forbes predicted 2026 will finally end the college degree’s dominance as workplace bootcamps become standard and traditional credentials carry less weight in a skills-first market. It’s a seductive prediction. Progressive. Egalitarian. Emotionally satisfying.
It’s also dangerous nonsense that will cost workers who believe it.
Here’s the tell, buried three paragraphs into the same breathless prediction: bachelor’s degree holders earn 68 per cent more per week than those with just high school diplomas.
Skills-first hiring is supposedly ending degree tyranny, yet degree holders earn sixty-eight per cent more. Not declining. Not narrowing. Sixty-eight per cent more, right now, while everyone performs belief that credentials no longer matter.
This isn’t degree premium fading. It’s degree premium thriving under cover of skills-first rhetoric.
What actually happened in 2025
Let’s be honest about what everyone’s calling a “revolution.”
Companies couldn’t fill positions with degree requirements intact during 2023–2024 talent shortages. So they dropped requirements temporarily, hired based on demonstrated skills, called it innovation, and accepted awards for disrupting systems they’d created.
It was pragmatic adaptation, not philosophical transformation. Now that layoffs have created talent oversupply, degree requirements are quietly returning. “Preferred qualifications” become “required qualifications.” “Nice to have” becomes “must have.”
The evidence is everywhere. Indian IT (supposedly a skills-first pioneer for decades) maintains brutal IIT/NIT premiums. At startups and product companies, an IIT graduate and a tier-3 engineering graduate with identical skills doing the same work command dramatically different salaries. Every “skills-first” initiative coexists with credential worship when it matters: promotions, leadership access, compensation enabling property ownership.
This isn’t contradiction. It’s the system working exactly as designed.
Skills may get you hired. Degrees still decide who gets paid, promoted, and trusted
The two-tier trap
What’s actually happening isn’t skills replacing degrees. It’s skills creating a second tier that appears progressive while maintaining existing hierarchies.
Skills-based hiring gets you in the door. Junior roles, contract positions, entry-level opportunities previously requiring degrees now accessible through demonstrated capability. This is genuine progress for workers locked out by credential requirements.
But degrees still get you up. Management roles. Leadership positions. Compensation that matters. The ceiling for non-degreed workers hasn’t disappeared. It’s just moved higher, creating the illusion of progress while preserving structure.
A bootcamp graduate and an engineering degree holder might start at similar salaries doing identical work. Five years later, the degree holder is leading teams earning Rs 40 lakhs while the bootcamp graduate is a senior individual contributor earning Rs 22 lakhs. Both skilled. Both competent. One has a credential that unlocks advancement. The other has skills that plateau.
There are exceptions. Individuals who’ve risen through ranks without degrees. But such cases remain exceptional. They’re celebrated precisely because they’re rare, not because they’re replicable.
India’s IT sector talks skills, but pays for pedigree
The bootcamp myth
Workplace bootcamps sound like corporate investment in workers. Reality is less inspiring: they’re cost-shifting mechanisms.
The traditional model hired degreed candidates at market rates and absorbed training costs. The new model hires non-degreed candidates at below-market rates, expects them to upskill on their own time (often unpaid), and frames this as “opportunity.”
“Learning on the job” sounds like revolution. It means working full-time while training yourself for skills your employer needs but won’t pay to develop. Companies get skilled labour at a discount while avoiding training costs they previously absorbed.
If skills truly mattered more than degrees, bootcamp graduates and degreed candidates would converge in pay after proving capability. They don’t. The wage gap persists because credentials signal something beyond skills. Networks, class, cultural capital. Things employers continue to value.
The future of work isn’t skill vs degree — it’s honesty vs illusion
The India reality check
Indian IT offers the clearest case study of skills-first rhetoric colliding with credential reality.
For 30 years, the industry claimed meritocracy based on technical skill. You can code? You’re hired. Degree doesn’t matter.
The wage data tells a different story. At product companies and startups where bodyshopping isn’t the model, an IIT graduate and a tier-3 engineering graduate with identical skills, output, and performance reviews earn dramatically different salaries. The IIT graduate gets promoted faster, trusted with better projects, paid substantially more. Not because they’re more skilled, but because the credential signals something employers value beyond capability.
Every company claims skills-first hiring. Every company maintains credential premiums when it comes to compensation and advancement. This dissonance is a feature, not a bug.
Why? Because hiring based on skills is cheaper and more flexible. Paying based on skills is expensive and destabilising. Companies optimise for both.
Skills-first hiring changed who gets in. Not who gets ahead
What workers are being told vs. what they need to know
The skills-first narrative tells workers: develop capabilities, demonstrate competence, and rewards will follow. Degrees no longer gate opportunity.
This is half-true in a dangerous way.
Skills do create access. Non-degreed workers can enter roles previously closed to them. This is real progress and shouldn’t be dismissed.
But what’s omitted is crucial: credentials still shape mobility and compensation over time. Entry-level meritocracy coexists with credentialed advancement. Skills get you in; degrees still get you up.
Workers who believe skills alone suffice will spend years demonstrating competence, wondering why less-skilled degreed colleagues move past them. Eventually, many pursue credentials “in tandem.” Nights and weekends, self-funded, because companies won’t.
This isn’t revolution. It’s workers paying for qualifications employers claim not to value while quietly requiring them for advancement.
If skills really mattered more than degrees, the pay gap wouldn’t be growing
The soft skills trap
Another fashionable prediction claims that as AI absorbs technical work, “human-centric skills” will command premiums.
If that were true, the highest-paid roles in 2025 would be empaths and facilitators. They weren’t. They were AI engineers, data scientists, and cloud architects.
“Power skills” (rebranded “soft skills”) get you appreciated. They show up in performance reviews and leadership frameworks. They don’t drive compensation.
Soft skills amplify technical value; they don’t replace it. The engineer who facilitates team dynamics while shipping features earns more than the one who facilitates beautifully while shipping nothing.
Telling workers to prioritise soft skills while technical expertise still determines pay sets them up for appreciation without advancement.
The skills-first revolution isn’t ending the degree — it’s disguising its power
What workers should actually do
If you lack a degree: Skills-first hiring creates entry opportunities, not equal outcomes. Advancement and compensation growth still tend to require credentials. It’s uncomfortable, but honesty helps more than false hope.
If you’re pursuing a bootcamp: Do it for access and skill-building, not as a substitute for credentials. Expect slower progression and harder proof requirements. And possibly formal education later.
If you have a degree: Your credential premium isn’t disappearing. It’s simply less visible at entry and more decisive over time.
If you’re HR: Stop performing belief in skills-first meritocracy while maintaining credential-based pay and promotion. Either commit fully, or admit it’s a tactical hiring lever, not a philosophical shift.
In a skills-first world, IIT premiums still tell the real story
The uncomfortable truth
The skills-first revolution predicted for 2026 won’t happen because it would be expensive for employers and threatening to existing hierarchies.
What will happen: continued expansion of skills-based entry hiring (cheap, flexible) paired with credential-based advancement (preserves structure). Companies will celebrate skills-first hiring in employer branding while maintaining degree requirements in leadership pipelines.
This isn’t cynicism. It’s pattern recognition.
The 68 per cent wage gap between degree holders and high school graduates isn’t shrinking. It’s growing. That isn’t an anomaly. It’s evidence.
Access is not equality — and mistaking one for the other is costly
Looking ahead
2026 will bring more skills-based hiring. More bootcamps. More access for workers without credentials. That progress is real and worth acknowledging.
But framing this as the end of degree premium confuses access with equality.
The workers who thrive in 2026 won’t be those believing skills replace credentials. They’ll be those who understand skills create entry while credentials still shape mobility. And plan accordingly.
That may not be inspiring. It may not be convenient. But it is honest.
And honesty is far more useful than predictions that sound progressive while leading people into dead ends.
1 Comment
Very nice, direct and honest opinion. Waiting for your next detailed article on new labour codes.