I was told of a story, that may have happened around 2004 to 2008, about a company that fired an accounting manager that had worked there over 15 years and told him they were firing him because he did not have a college degree. But told him if he went back to school and got the degree they would consider rehiring him. He was an older middle aged man, maybe 58, and he wasn't able to find a similar job somewhere else, at that time. Apparently that company felt like they were in a position to picky. Some might read this story and argue this could have been just an excuse; maybe managers did not really like that specific person, or his age could have been a factor. Those may have been additional factors, but that does not diminish the point of this story. I still think the main reason they fired him was just as they told him. There were probably two main factors there. First there was an economic downturn and the company was (I think we can assume) not anxious to have more workers. The company could have kept him, or gotten rid of him and had one less employee, and on the balance of things it did not matter so much to the company. Second, the company knew with the current balance in the labor market they could easily hire a replacement if they wanted to. There was an excess of people trying to get those jobs, many with college degrees who would be willing to work for less. So with those background conditions, the company probably felt they could be picky. Some higher level manager probably got the idea that he wanted all his employees to have college degrees, and whether that was actually a good idea or not, the company had very little to lose from applying such a policy. Maybe they did want to reduce the number of employees a little bit and this was just an arbitrary filter to help decide who they would fire.
