Debate: technology companies should stop requiring degrees
A hiring conference. You are arguing that degree requirements should be dropped for technical roles; your opponent screens a hundred thousand applications a year.
An intermediate-level session of about 8 minutes. 3 rebuttal rounds against an opponent. Each round runs up to 60 seconds.
Every version of this argument ends up in the same place: a pile of applications and somebody deciding which ones to read. A story about unfairness will not survive that room on its own. Remove the degree from the filter and something has to stand in its place, and you are the one who has to describe it. Work samples, structured tasks, apprenticeship routes — whatever you propose, expect to be asked what it costs per candidate and who does the work. Keep your own experience out of the argument except as one deliberately placed illustration, because an argument that sounds personal invites a reply about your case instead of about the motion.
Angles worth taking
- Say early what replaces the degree in the filter, since the whole argument stands or falls on that answer.
- Put a rough cost and a time on your screening proposal, or assess skills instead stays a slogan without a process.
- Argue from hiring outcomes rather than from how unfair the requirement feels to candidates who clear every other bar.
- Separate roles where a degree is a genuine requirement from roles where it is a convenient sorting shortcut.
- Keep your own story to one sentence, used as evidence of a pattern and not as the reason to agree.
Who is in the room
You play
A student defending the motion
You speak with
A head of talent acquisition at a large employer who agrees in principle and says it does not survive contact with volume
Ready to speak?
Free to start. You need a TalkDrill account to speak — reading this page does not.
Browse all roleplay scenariosThe format
The motion you defend
Technology companies should drop degree requirements and hire on demonstrated skill.
Rebuttal rounds
3
Time per round
60 seconds
Modes
Learn (guided) · Mock (exam-real)
How a roleplay session works
Read your brief
Your role, the situation, and what a good outcome looks like. The counterpart has their own brief, and you do not get to read it.
Open the conversation
You speak first in most scenarios. How you open sets what you can ask for later, which is most of the exercise.
Handle the turn
Somewhere in the middle it stops going your way — a refusal, a counter-offer, a rebuttal you did not prepare for. That moment is the scenario.
Read the report
Outcome, the phrases you used and the ones you missed, fluency and clarity, and the specific line worth rewriting.
What you're scored on
Across every roleplay, the report looks at the same four things — because they are what makes a real conversation work or fail.
Argue the case on evidence, not on grievance — and have an answer for how a company would actually screen at scale.
Task outcome
Whether you got what the brief asked for: the refund, the extension, the concession, the point conceded.
Appropriacy
Whether the register fits. A complaint that is too soft gets nothing; the same complaint too hard gets a manager and no refund.
Recovery
What you do with the unexpected turn — repair, rephrase, push back, or stall. This is where most of the marks move.
Delivery
Fluency, pronunciation and pace, judged in conversation rather than in a prepared monologue.
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