Brian Laird on WNYC.

You know, right now more than half of working Americans don't have a four-year college degree,

but many of them have something else.

Skills, skills they picked up

through community college, military service, boot camps, quote-unquote, certifications,

apprenticeships, or just learning on the job. These workers are sometimes called stars,

skilled through alternative routes, stars.

And yet research shows these workers are often shut out of well-paying jobs, not because they can't do them,

but because a degree is used as a shortcut to determine who's qualified.

So now we'll continue a series of conversations that we've begun here on the Breyingler Show, looking at economic mobility

for stars, how the job market treats them, how policy might better support them, and what real

people navigating this space want to share. This is actually the second of 10 total segments we'll

be doing on the show with a Gates Foundation grant focused on these

issues. Joining us today, Audrey McAhell, Senior Vice President of Private Sector and

membership experience at the nonprofit opportunity at work, which is pushing for fairer

hiring practices that opened doors for stars, and Alia Siddiqui, a marketing

operations specialist in Philadelphia, who entered the tech field without a college degree

and built her career by tapping into alternative pathways to learning.

Audrey, Alia, welcome to WNYC.

Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you, Brian. WNYC. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you, Brian.

Thanks for having us.

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