Byron Auguste: belief

Transcript context

…As you know, the state of Maryland now no longer requires a bachelor’s degree for a large number of government jobs. It’s early on in this, but how do you think that’s going so far? What is going well? What is not going well? As you may know, Opportunity@Work partnered with the state of Maryland to do this. We actually showed Governor Hogan and his team the data. There are 1.3 million STARs in Maryland, half of whom have the skills for jobs that pay more, and they cut across all races and all regions. It’s particularly powerful for veterans, for people in rural areas in Maryland, disproportionately African Americans, also Latinos. So, it’s very powerful, and the state of Maryland had a lot of jobs it couldn’t fill. What it actually did is a combination of removing degree requirements for some jobs where they clearly didn’t belong, and in other cases, it had to do with jobs that there weren’t really formal degree requirements, but there also wasn’t outreach to STARs. I think a big thing that Maryland and Governor Hogan did — and he and I were there announcing this together, but he really focused on, “We see your talent, we see your skills, we want it. We want your help solving the problems for the state of Maryland.” That’s really important. I get annoyed when I hear people, “Oh, are we going to give someone a job?” A job is not a gift. Work is solving problems, and STARs are problem-solvers. We have a lot of unsolved problems, and when you have people who can help you solve the problems, and you’re keeping them out, that’s ridiculous. Maryland also posted hundreds of these jobs on Stellarworx, which is Opportunity@Work’s STARs talent marketplace. Look, it’s getting the pipeline going because they’ve had lots of applications. We offer some additional ways to screen people in. Again, at the end of the day, it’s those who hire in Maryland — there’s a very formal process. One thing that’s been really gratifying is that many other states have reached out, and many other county governments have reached out, but also lots of employers. Many employers that we worked with already have seen the Maryland examples being very validating for their work. Now, you argued before — and I fully agree — that top schools, indeed non-top schools, should let in many more candidates. Given that they don’t do this — this argument is, at this point, not new — how much should we actually trust these institutions of higher education? Should we respect them? Should we honor them? Should we think they’re well-intentioned but somehow just not understanding the argument? Or should we think they’re actually self-interested and elitist and anti-egalitarian? What’s our proper mental stance here?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.