Elon Musk said a college degree isn't required for a job at Tesla — and Apple, Google, and Netflix don't require employees to have 4-year degrees either

• Elon Musk said having a college degree doesn't mean you have "exceptional ability" during a fireside chat on Monday at the Satellite 2020 conference. He added that it's "not for learning" and "basically for fun."
• Many of the nation's most popular companies to work for don't require a college degree, and certain jobs are more likely to be filled with non-college graduates than others, LinkedIn has found.
• Top business executives have begun questioning whether college degrees really prepare workers for careers, while some are starting to hire more and more non-college graduates.
• This article is part of Business Insider's ongoing series on Better Capitalism.
• Visit BusinessInsider.com for more stories.

Students assume getting a 4-year degree — and taking on the thousands of dollars of student-loan debt that comes along with it — is the only way to get your foot in the door at top companies such as Tesla, Apple, and Netflix. 

But that isn't always true. Even the CEO of Tesla doesn't think you need it.

According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, colleges "are not for learning," but rather a place to have fun, speaking on Monday at the Satellite 2020 conference. Musk said you can learn anything online for free, and noted that billionaire moguls like Bill Gates and Oracle's Larry Ellison dropped out of college. Ideally, he added, you would have dropped out of school "and did something."

Musk's comments joined the prominent business leaders who have already questioned the need for 4-year degrees, such as Apple CEO Tim Cook and Siemens USA CEO Barbara Humpton. Cook said in 2019 that about half of Apple's US employment last year included people without 4-year degrees. Cook reasoned that many colleges do not teach the skills business leaders need most in their workforce, such as coding. 

Humpton also dismissed the idea that a 4-year degree guarantees career-readiness: "All too often, job requisitions will say they require a 4-year degree, when in fact there's nothing about the job that truly requires a 4-year degree — it merely helped our hiring managers sort of weed through the crowd and get a smaller qualified candidate group," Humpton said at the White House in 2019, during the first American Workforce Policy Advisory Board meeting.

You don't need an Ivy League diploma to get a job at Apple or Tesla — but you would get paid more on average if you had one.

Now, prominent companies such as Google and Apple are hiring employees who have the skills required to get jobs done, with or without a degree. LinkedIn found many of today's hottest companies to work for do not require that employees have a college degree. After further analysis of the data, LinkedIn identified specific positions more likely to be filled by non-college graduates, including electronic technicians, mechanical designers, and marketing representatives.

That being said, college degrees seem to pay off. Workers that hold at least a bachelor's degree earned more than the $932 median weekly earnings for all workers in 2018, according to a recent report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. High school grads also have nearly double the unemployment rate as college graduates, the BLS found in September 2019.

But because degrees often require taking on student debt, many Americans cannot afford college degrees. Only 42% of high-school sophomores go on to earn a 2-year or 4-year degree, according to the US Department of Education. Even among students who graduate from college, a significant number of new graduates are underemployed, meaning they work jobs that don't require a college degree.

As many expect automation to displace a quarter of the workforce, experts and researchers are already tossing around alternatives to help prepare young employees for work. Apprenticeship programs, which mix school and on-the-job training, could better prepare the workforce of the future, Business Insider reporter Rich Feloni reported.

"I don't consider going to college evidence of exceptional ability," Musk said at the Satellite conference. "Did Shakespeare even go to college? Probably not."

SEE ALSO: Apple CEO Tim Cook explains why you don't need a college degree to be successful

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