I just flew with a guy involved in the screening of resumes and applications. He scoffed when I floated the notion of doing away with the college requirement. I think they are likely to reduce the PIC turbine requirement long before college.[/QUOTE]

During the NW Aviation Conference keynote speech Alaska said the degree requirement was being reviewed and most likely dropped by June due to the fact there are people they want to hire but cant touch due to the degree requirement.[/QUOTE]

I think it's important to qualify this statement. They are reviewing it but if anyone is considering not getting a degree, that's not the right answer. Someone involved in hiring told me the idea here is that they are legally required to hire within the minimums. But as an example there was a Captain's son who is an A320 Captain at Virgin and working on a degree but they had to wait for him to finish the degree to call him. Another was a guy who had a 4-year eduction in some sort of trade school but not a degree and they said the general idea was to see if someone could complete something and do it well so excluding him doesn't make sense. I expect to see it changed to an Associate's degree but it's for the rare exception, not an overall lowering of competitive minimums. The Chief Pilots seem to recognize that having a 4-year degree doesn't make you a good pilot or employee necessarily.