• Neil Clifford at Kurt Geiger turned a crisis to his advantage

In this, Clifford is a trendsetter: the “paper ceiling” — the longstanding requirement of recruiters for degrees over practical skills and real-world experience — is being ripped apart.

Research from LinkedIn last year showed there was a 14.2 per cent increase in the share of UK job postings not requiring a degree between 2021 and 2024. Meanwhile, a study by recruiter Hays in 2023 found nearly half of UK employers agreed that “it is no longer important that a job applicant has a degree”.

Increasingly teenagers are being put off university by the cost — in 2025/26 the annual cost of tuition for undergraduates will rise to £9,535. Already students leave university with debts of an average £48,470.

Mabel Evans, 19, from Peckham, was offered a place to study marketing at Nottingham Trent University after A-levels. “At school it was ingrained: everyone has to apply to uni. So I did,” she explained. “But I felt like uni wasn’t the right route for me, so I took a gap year and was working in a pub when I heard about Kurt Geiger’s [policy].”

• Degrees not essential for 40% of employers

After being offered a place on the company’s paid training scheme, called Business by Design, she declined her university place. “Rather than going to lectures and building up debt, I’d prefer to actually learn on the job.”

Evans is now a marketing co-ordinator at the firm. “I’m happy and have a job I enjoy. I feel like I’m now set up.”

Eilish Bailey, 21, from Ealing in west London, heard about Kurt Geiger’s non-graduate academy on TikTok. She is now working as a footwear design assistant. “A lot more people are opening up to employing people who haven’t been to uni, and appreciating the value of apprenticeships and working your way up — the snobbery has gone away,” Bailey said. “My friends who went to uni are now applying for jobs and think my on-the-job experience was more valuable.”

Technology is at the vanguard of this movement: fast-developing AI means recruiters are seeking candidates with key skills and portfolios, rather than qualifications.

“Tech-reliant roles evolve so fast that any previous education can become outdated quickly, so employers are less concerned about this when looking for new hires,” explained Matt Weston, UK senior managing director at the recruitment firm Robert Half.

Only half of technology workers now have a degree, according to the 2024 Global Tech Talent & Salary Report from recruitment firm Harvey Nash.

• Is the tech sector losing its lustre?

Even that proportion could now be shrinking, according to Mike Britton, who worked in cybersecurity for big companies including tech giant IBM and is now chief information officer at specialist firm Abnormal Security.

“Generative AI is moving so fast that a certificate or degree could be outpaced in months,” Britton said. “Firms are more interested in candidates’ soft skills to tackle new technology.”

Does he even consider the “education” line on a CV now? “If I am down to four people for a role, and all else is equal, the one with a degree probably has a leg up. But I no longer start at a degree and then look for skills — it’s the other way round.”

It appears to be a global trend: IBM, Google and the McKinsey and Accenture consultancies are among 50 firms backing a campaign from US group Opportunity@Work to “tear the paper ceiling”. It wants to boost the prospects of workers with real-world experience, military service, community college courses and training schemes — people who face “the invisible barrier that comes at every turn for workers without a bachelor’s degree … no alumni network, biased algorithms, degree screens, stereotypes and misconceptions”.

• A degree is not the only route to becoming a lawyer

In the UK, removing a degree requirement is often billed as a move towards inclusivity. In 2023, when cereal giant Kellogg’s scrapped the need for its British employees to have a university-level education, it said it was “reducing barriers to entry and recognising that obtaining a degree doesn’t always correl[ate] to the contribution someone can make within a role”.

Josh Harris, chief executive of ad and creative agency Neverland, said he now explicitly asks recruiters to exclude degrees from their search criteria for his roles. “Talent, ambition and real-world skills matter more to us than a piece of paper,” he said. “We value what people can do, not what they studied.”

Andy Heyes, managing director at Harvey Nash, said this was an increasingly common request from bosses. “It better reflects the society and communities that businesses are serving and selling to. Inclusive hiring and skills-based hiring processes have come to the fore so that employers can broaden the talent pool.”

Accenture, too, has removed all higher education requirements when it searches for new staff, saying a degree “is not the only way to acquire technical skills”.

It said: “We want to explore a candidate’s natural strengths and potential, rather than reviewing past performance.”

Of course, some jobs — such as medical and chartered financial roles — still demand qualifications. But Weston at Robert Half said that even in accountancy, “where degrees are still important, we’re seeing a greater balance between those with the technical and the softer attributes — it is the latter that is more likely to sway hiring decisions in the future”.

In science, technology, engineering and maths roles — or Stem — the UK’s skills shortage is accelerating the demise of the paper ceiling, according to Sam Price, director at specialist recruiter Morson, whose clients include BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Siemens and EDF Energy.

“We’re encouraging them to remove unnecessary degree requirements and go skills-first,” Price explained. “Historically, Stem employers wanted long years of experience, specific degrees and a shopping list of skills, but the huge shortage of candidates now means nine-month hiring periods. Anchoring on degrees and ‘over-speccing’ hurts diversity, so more firms are now recruiting for potential.”

Morson offers “close to matching” applicants for jobs in client companies, with the recruiter organising skills training to fill in gaps. “FTSE-level infrastructure firms are doing this,” Price said. “They realise that hiring ‘stretch candidates’ — often those without degrees — and providing training fills roles faster and keeps candidates for longer.”

Analysis of 700 FTSE 100 firms’ annual reports over the past decade, by training group Multiverse, shows that references to “re-skilling” have almost tripled, and more than doubled for “up-skilling”.

“On-the-job learning is often as good, or better than, uni,” said Clifford of Kurt Geiger. “I want to help creative, talented people who don’t have a uni degree, or a rich mum or dad, or contacts. Taking away the paper ceiling is helping bright people get great jobs.”