The English Oracle

What is a suitable word for a desired/ideal level of education?

--------------------------------------------------
Rise to the top 3% as a developer or hire one of them at Toptal: https://topt.al/25cXVn
--------------------------------------------------

Music by Eric Matyas
https://www.soundimage.org
Track title: Puzzle Game 3 Looping

--

Chapters
00:00 What Is A Suitable Word For A Desired/Ideal Level Of Education?
00:44 Accepted Answer Score 3
00:57 Answer 2 Score 2
01:19 Answer 3 Score 5
02:08 Answer 4 Score 0
02:24 Thank you

--

Full question
https://english.stackexchange.com/questi...

--

Content licensed under CC BY-SA
https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/lice...

--

Tags
#wordchoice

#avk47



ANSWER 1

Score 5


If you have a specific educational standard that all applicants must meet, it's called a "prerequisite."

prerequisite (adj): 1. required beforehand

The prerequisite education for this job is a High School diploma.

A google books search shows that this expression is commonly used in expressing the specific requirements for employees. Such as this passage...

The training process cannot proceed effectively unless learners have the prerequisite education.

Or this...

Mandatory prerequisite education and training would provide consistency of knowledge among vessel operators.

To be clear, a prerequisite is a requirement for a specific educational standard which is not necessarily synonymous with a minimum standard. So, a minimum standard would be a High School education with a prerequisite educational requirement of fluency in Spanish.




ACCEPTED ANSWER

Score 3


How about using:

required

e.g. "For this task the required education level is a college degree."




ANSWER 3

Score 2


Consider using "desired".

Although you meet the minimum level of education, the desired level of education for this job is YYYY.

or maybe "preferred".

Although you meet the minimum level of education, the preferred level of education for this job is YYYY.




ANSWER 4

Score 0


As the others have mentioned, you can use "prerequisite" or "required".

But another way is to use additional words to disambiguate the meaning of the ambiguous words used:

"Yes, you have the minimum education level by law, but I'd say that the minimum education level for this task is X."