The short answer
Proof of skill that an employer can check: real work, done under real conditions, watched by people who do the job and recorded so anyone can look it up afterward. Taking the degree off a job posting isn't enough, because the employer is left with nothing to put in its place.
Think about the fields that can't afford to guess. A pilot flies a check ride with an examiner beside them. A surgeon logs hundreds of operations under supervision. An electrician works for years beside licensed electricians. Whatever road you take, in the end somebody who knows the work watches you do the work. That's the pattern a replacement for the degree needs to copy.
Why not just delete the requirement? Companies tried. A Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School study found that about 45 percent of companies changed their postings and nothing else, and fewer than one hire in seven hundred went to someone who got in because a requirement was dropped. When a hiring manager loses the degree and gains nothing, they reach for other crude signals.
The manager's problem is a pile. One posting can bring hundreds of applicants, and a real technical interview takes an hour of a senior person's time. So something has to answer "which ten?" before anyone can ask "which of these ten?" The degree has been doing that job. It's a poor judge of skill, but it's fast.
A used-car market faced the same trouble. Buyers couldn't tell a good car from a lemon, so good cars couldn't earn a fair price. History reports, inspections and warranties fixed it. Hiring can work the same way, with proof anyone can check in seconds.
That's the second door. Nobody has to tear the old gate down. Build a second way in beside it, and let people walk through.
If you hire, ask for a work sample on a real task, have someone who does the job score it, and keep the recording. If you're looking for work, offer that before anyone asks.
No replacement has proven itself at scale yet. The second door is a design, not a result. Maxwell Rich Certification, the independent skills certification body behind this site, is one attempt at it, and it's new and has no track record yet. The 300-applicants-at-an-hour-each figure that sometimes gets used to explain the pile is an illustration, not a statistic.
Nobody has to tear the old gate down. Build a second way in beside it, based on proof of skill, and let people walk through.
Good proof of skill is real work, done under real conditions, watched and recorded, judged by people who do the job, and checkable by anyone afterward.
A good interview answers "which of these ten?" Something still has to answer "which ten?", and that is the job the degree has been doing.
When employers can't see skill, they pay for paper, and capable people without the paper get passed over. The fix is proof anyone can check.