[MistyTiger]

I was even told of one 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.

Management can find a reason to dislike a person. Perhaps the lack of degree was just an excuse. We do not know the whole story. And it's better not to know. There is a reason why HR is one of the least-liked departments in a company.

Another reason could be that this company considers 58 to be too old. In Sociology, they talk about ageism which is discrimination or bias against older individuals in society. For a company, they think that if a person is near 60, that person might have more medical issues and will probably retire very soon. Companies like to hire younger people who can work there for 10 years or more. Also if the company assumes primary responsible for paying the health insurance premium, if you have more at-risk people, the overall premium will be higher. Most companies do not like high risk.

Where I used to work, at first if a person had a serious health condition, the company would let them go on disability for a few months. But if this keeps happening to that person, the company thinks that person is nonproductive so eventually they fire that individual.

[Politics_Observer]

@MistyTiger @Puffer Fish

Here is the Age-Friendly Institute’s Certified Age Friendly Employer list: https://institute.agefriendly.org/initi ... r-program/ .

[Puffer Fish]

Management can find a reason to dislike a person. Perhaps the lack of degree was just an excuse. We do not know the whole story.

Another reason could be that this company considers 58 to be too old.

You are no doubt correct, and I am sure those may have been additional factors, but that does not diminish the point of what I said. I think the main reason they fired him was just as they said.

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.