Source: Fortune
Summary
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 29,000 jobs added in September, below expectations, with 27.1% of unemployed Americans out of work for six months or longer. LinkedIn is launching the Academy of Economic Opportunity, a 14-week training program for employees, focusing on entrepreneurship and business skills. Hari Srinivasan, LinkedIn’s chief product officer, said the program aims to help workers gain economic independence. A third of Americans plan to start a business or side hustle this year, up from 17% in 2025. LinkedIn plans to scale the program internationally and make it affordable.
Our Reading
The numbers tell one story.
Job growth lags, unemployment lingers, and LinkedIn pivots to training. The Academy targets entrepreneurship, not just employment. Srinivasan frames it as a response to uncertainty. AI reshapes hiring, but degrees still matter. LinkedIn bets on practical skills over credentials.
Original observation: A company built on resumes now bets on resumes being irrelevant.
Author: Evan Null
A business school without degrees
LinkedIn isn’t alone in piloting a different approach to help people start businesses outside of traditional credentialing. Harvard Business School launched a $699 startup boot camp that lets entrepreneurs practice investor pitches, sales calls, and board meetings with AI versions of Harvard professors, without earning degrees there. Venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz invested $42 million into an alternative to college, the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, which will offer 50 students courses in things like AI inference engineering and guest speaker sessions with leaders like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang in San Francisco next year—also without awarding degrees.
AI reshapes hiring
These programs differ in scope, but they share an emphasis on practical experience over traditional credentials. For LinkedIn, the approach is also a bet on how AI will change hiring. The company’s 2026 labor market report showed that U.S. job postings requiring AI literacy skills rose 70% year over year. Srinivasan wrote that AI is also making it easier for employers to evaluate candidates’ actual work—like portfolios, code, and products they’ve built—rather than relying on college degrees as “shorthand for talent.”
But employers haven’t necessarily abandoned traditional credentials
We’ve designed our program so students leave with real evidence of what they can do, not a degree. But employers haven’t necessarily abandoned traditional credentials. A 2024 study by Harvard Business School and the Burning Glass Institute found that removing degree requirements increased the share of workers hired without bachelor’s degrees by about 3.5 percentage points in the 11,300 roles analyzed. But because so few roles dropped those requirements, the researchers estimated the change created opportunities for only about 97,000 workers annually, out of 77 million yearly hires.
Skills-Based Hiring has borne out in not even 1 in 700 hires
“For all its fanfare, the increased opportunity promised by Skills-Based Hiring has borne out in not even 1 in 700 hires,” the authors wrote. LinkedIn’s Academy reflects a broader trend: companies are experimenting with alternative training, but the shift from degrees to skills is slow. The program is free for employees, but the public version remains unclear. Srinivasan says the goal is to serve people at any career stage, but the real test is whether employers will accept the new model.
LinkedIn’s bet on entrepreneurship
Srinivasan hopes to scale the Academy internationally and at an affordable price to workers outside of LinkedIn and wrote “figuring this out is integral” to the company’s mission. The company has not announced when enrollment will open to the public or what it will charge. “There is not a current prerequisite for who can participate in this program,” he told Fortune. “We’re building an Academy that can serve people at any stage in their career and across industries and careers.”
