The task
The two articles below take opposite positions on one question:
Should the City of Harbor Falls remove the four-year college degree requirement from most of its civil-service jobs and hire on skills and experience instead?
Read both. Then analyze both positions to determine which one is better supported by evidence. Use specific evidence from both articles in your answer.
You are not being asked which side you agree with, and you will not be scored on which one you choose. You are being asked to judge the arguing — and either article can be argued for. Allow about 45 minutes.
Article 1
Hire for What People Can Do
1Harbor Falls requires a bachelor’s degree for 212 of its 540 job titles. Some of those jobs need one. Many do not. A degree is required to become a building inspector, a payroll supervisor, or a computer support technician, even though some of our best inspectors learned the work in the building trades and were hired before the rule existed.
2The rule shuts out most of the people who live here. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about six in ten adults age 25 and older in this country do not have a bachelor’s degree. Our requirement tells every one of them that they cannot apply, however much they know.
3Other governments have already changed course. In March 2022, Maryland became the first state to drop the four-year degree requirement for many state jobs; at the time, the state estimated that more than half of its 38,000 positions could accept experience in place of a degree. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least sixteen states have since removed degree requirements for most state jobs.
4The cost of our rule shows up in empty desks. Last year, 61 city positions stayed open for more than six months. In 38 of those cases, the hiring panel reported turning away at least one applicant who had the experience the job needed but no degree. Meanwhile, residents waited longer for permits and inspections.
5We already know how to hire on skills. Harbor Falls hires its firefighters and police officers through written and physical examinations, not diplomas. The same idea can work for an inspector or a technician: test what the job requires, and hire the people who can do it.
Article 2
A Promise on Paper
1I agree with Ms. Alvarado that a degree should not be a wall. But the question is not whether we wish more residents could get city jobs. It is whether removing a line from a job posting would make that happen. The best evidence says it mostly would not.
2In February 2024, researchers at Harvard Business School and the Burning Glass Institute published the largest study yet of employers who dropped degree requirements. They examined 11,300 jobs at large companies between 2014 and 2023. They estimated that in 2023, fewer than one new hire in 700 actually benefited from a dropped requirement. Nearly half of the companies that announced the change made no real difference in whom they hired. Hiring panels kept choosing people with degrees.
3A degree also still pays. In 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, a typical worker with a bachelor’s degree earned $1,578 a week, against $966 for a worker with only a high school diploma. If the city tells young people that degrees no longer matter for good jobs, some of them will skip the one credential that still pays most reliably.
4The change would not be free, either. Our Civil Service Commission estimates that writing and testing fair skills examinations for 212 job titles would cost $1.2 million and take about two years. And what do we say to the 140 city employees who, over the last five years, used the city’s tuition program to earn degrees so that they could qualify for promotion?
5There is a better path. Expand the city’s tuition program, and build apprenticeships that let residents earn a degree while they work for the city. That opens the door without pretending the door was never there.
Your 45 minutes
Stop here if you have not written yet. What follows names the evidence in both articles and shows where each one is weak. Read it before you write and you will not be practicing the thing the test measures — which is finding all of this yourself, in forty-five minutes, with nobody helping.
After the clock — what was actually on the table
What each article put in front of you
Hire for What People Can Do
- A local count. 212 of the city’s 540 job titles require a bachelor’s degree.
- A national figure. From the Census Bureau: about six in ten adults 25 and older do not have a bachelor’s degree.
- Examples from other governments. Maryland in 2022, with more than half of 38,000 positions affected, and at least sixteen states since then, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
- A local measurement of the problem. 61 positions open more than six months; in 38 of them, a qualified applicant without a degree was turned away.
- A working model. The city already hires firefighters and police officers by examination.
A Promise on Paper
- A large, recent, published study. Harvard Business School and the Burning Glass Institute, 2024: 11,300 jobs, and fewer than one new hire in 700 helped by a dropped requirement.
- National earnings figures. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics: $1,578 a week with a bachelor’s degree, $966 with a high school diploma.
- A cost estimate. The Civil Service Commission: $1.2 million and about two years to build skills examinations.
- A fairness question, with a number. 140 employees who earned degrees through the city’s tuition program in order to be promoted.
Where each one is thin
Neither article is the right answer. Each has evidence a careful reader can question. Naming those weak points, in specific words, about a specific sentence, is most of what the first scoring trait rewards.
Hire for What People Can Do
- Maryland and the sixteen states show that the policy is popular, not that it worked. Ms. Alvarado reports that other governments made the change. She never says what happened to hiring afterward. Article 2 brings evidence on exactly that question.
- The 38 cases come from her own office’s hiring panels. The panels reported turning applicants away. Nobody outside the office checked whether those applicants could have done the job.
- The “best inspectors” are an example, not a count. How many inspectors without degrees are there, and how do their records compare? She does not say.
- She does not mention cost. Building skills examinations is work. Article 2 puts a price on it, and Article 1 is silent.
A Promise on Paper
- The Harvard study looked at large private companies, not city governments. A city hires through civil-service rules, written exams, and public postings. A careful reader can ask whether results from private companies apply to Harbor Falls.
- The study shows the change did little, not that it did harm. If dropping the requirement helps only a few people, that is an argument that the policy is weak. It is not, by itself, an argument against trying it.
- The earnings figures compare two groups of people. People who earn bachelor’s degrees differ from people who do not in other ways, too. The gap does not prove that a payroll supervisor needs a degree to do the job.
- “Some of them will skip” the degree is a prediction with no evidence behind it. He gives no study showing that young people choose less schooling when governments drop requirements.
- His alternative has no numbers. He does not say what expanding the tuition program would cost, or how many residents apprenticeships would reach.
Two essays, either of which could score well
If both of those look like real essays to you, the set is working as intended. On the test you will have two articles built the same way, and no time to find a perfect answer, because there is not one. Choose the side you can support in forty-five minutes, and support it.
Check your own
The Extended Response is scored on three traits. Read your draft against them, one at a time — and then read How the essay is scored, which has the full rubric and two responses to the same task, one earning a 6 and one earning about a 2.
- Analysis of argument and evidence. Did you say which article is better supported, in a sentence, near the beginning? Did you quote or name specific evidence from both articles — not just the one you chose? Did you say what is wrong with the evidence on at least one side, rather than only what is right?
- Development and organization. Does each paragraph do one job? Does a reader who has not seen the articles know what they said? Did you get to the end, or did you run out of clock in the middle of a paragraph?
- Clarity and command of English. Read it aloud. Sentences that you stumble over reading are sentences a scorer stumbles over too. Check that every sentence has a subject and a verb and ends where it should.
One more, which is not on the rubric and costs you the most: did you argue about which side is right instead of which side is better supported? That essay can be beautifully written and still score low, because it answers a question nobody asked.