Education Requirements (sample)

Education Requirements by Occupational Series

Top series in the sample, colored by how education enters qualification.

Degree required
Degree is one qualifying path

Methodology

Scope: A stratified random sample of N GS-pay-scale postings from USAJobs, drawn from the 2023–2026 historical archive. Sampling is proportional to (occupational series × posting year), so large series show up more often than small ones. The sample is a pilot — percentages here are noisy and will tighten as we scale.

Data source: Postings still active in the API come from the USAJobs current_jobs feed (structured Education and Qualifications fields). Older postings are scraped from the announcement page and the Education + Qualifications <h3> sections are regex-extracted, matching the 2210 pipeline.

Classification: GPT-5.4-mini with structured output reads the Education + Qualifications text and assigns one of the four categories below, along with a verbatim quote supporting the call. The same prompt is used here as on the 2210 dataset.

OPM tier shown in the table is the baseline classification from opm-educ-req: what OPM's published qualification standard says about the series. Disagreement between OPM tier and per-posting classification is expected — agencies layer their own requirements on top of OPM standards.

Categories

Experience Only: Education is not a qualifying path at any grade level. You must have experience — a degree alone will not get you in.

Degree is One Path: Education is not mandatory, but the posting explicitly offers it as one way to qualify alongside experience.

Degree Required: A bachelor's degree or higher is explicitly required with no experience-only alternative.

All Postings

Tap or hover the Education badge for the verbatim quote that drove the classification.

Education Title Series Agency Department OPM Tier Grade Year Link