5 Jobs That You Think Require A College Degree But Really Don’t (DF#175)

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:00]:
When people are like, oh, well, these colleges are nonprofits. I'm like, they're not nonprofits. They are hedge funds. It's the same as BlackRock. Difference is they got to burn through their money at a certain rate. They have different methods for stashing at different places.

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:16]:
Aloha folks. And welcome back to degree free. We are super excited to have you here today. We are going to be going over a couple of things. One of the things that we're going to be going over today are 5 jobs that you think require a college degree, but really don't that is going to be similar to the legal requirement breakdown that we have in the degree free way, how to help your 16 to 20 year old build the life they want. But the first thing that I wanted to start with is I wanted to follow-up on something that I promised a couple of weeks ago, which is a story about my nephew that came to visit us. And he is 15 years old. We said it back a few weeks ago.

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:49]:
The reason why I didn't bring it up was because I needed a little bit of time to process everything and I needed to like write my thoughts actually down. I thought maybe I was being a little bit hyperbolic or being just the crazy uncle or whatever. My advice to him was pretty sound. Let me just give you a little bit of the backstory here. He's 15 years old. He's a sophomore in high school. So he's 1 year younger than the people that we help in the degree free launch program. Even though he's a sophomore, he is taking AP United States history.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:18]:
This is just a little pet peeve of mine. He is just constantly calling it APUSH.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:23]:
What's funny about that. Cause I took AP US history in high school also, but I never called it APUSH. I called it AP history.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:29]:
In the school that I went to, I also took AP United States history. We always just called it AP history or AP US history. We never called it a push, but I know that the all girls school across the street all said a push.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:45]:
For context, Ryan went to an all boys high school and that is why he is implying. I'm not implying anything. That this high school is sillier.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:54]:
I'm literally not implying anything. I'm literally just telling you factually of of my Did you

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:58]:
put you out of that?

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:59]:
I know. Just my experience.

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:00]:
Your experience is that girls call it

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:02]:
that. Yeah.

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:05]:
You guys were too serious at the all boys school.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:07]:
Anyway, that was funny. So I asked him, why are you taking AP US history? 1, I want to know why. And then the second reason is because he's like failing And he was having a really hard time keeping up with the workload and doing all of the homeworks and all the projects and all the assignments and everything on top of all the other assignments and homework that he has. I was like, why are you taking this? And he's like, well, I wanna be a personal trainer when I grow up and I need to go to college and get a biology degree or get a kinesiology degree to do that. And I just don't want to spend all that time and money in college. So I just want to take as many AP classes as I can now test out of them, get the college credit so that when I'm finally graduated, I have less to do and to get a degree. 1, if you just take that goal, that's a pretty good goal. And I know that sounds like a good plan because that's very similar to me in high school.

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:01]:
It was hilarious listening to you 2. And I'm just saying, yeah, there's only like a few jobs that really make money, doctor, lawyer, and finance. And I was just like, what, did you guys talk about that? And he just said, no, I'm an Asian, which is true.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:16]:
For all those that don't have the context. If you read the degree free way through with your young adult, you know, that's my life story. I put it in this book. And when I was his age, my goal was to make a lot of money because I wanted to do X, Y, and Z with that money. And I said, okay, but I don't know how to do that. Really, the 3 jobs that I only know how to do that with are doctor, lawyer, and finance banking. Hey there. I hope you're enjoying this episode of the degree free podcast.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:39]:
At degree free, we wanna help everyone thrive and succeed without needing a college degree. And the only way to truly reach everyone is with your help. If you're getting value out of this episode or if this is your second, 3rd, or 4th episode that you're tuning into, if you could just ship this to a friend, just click that one button and share it with someone in your contacts or on your stories. It would mean the world to us. And more importantly, get our message out to more people who need help getting out of their current situation. If you could do that right now, that would mean a whole lot.

Hannah Maruyama [00:04:12]:
Yeah. And then he added engineer also.

Ryan Maruyama [00:04:14]:
It was just funny to hear my nephew parrot back the same thing without ever hearing that story.

Hannah Maruyama [00:04:20]:
In the same order too. That was the thing that I thought you guys, I laughed. I said, oh, did you read the book or did you guys talk about that? And he just looked at me. He just said, no. Like I was the idiot. It was pretty funny.

Ryan Maruyama [00:04:33]:
He has this goal of being a personal trainer. And so I want to break this all down, but I just need you to have a little bit of context here. This is his train of thought. To be a personal trainer, he needs a degree in biology or kinesiology, and then to get there quicker, he needs to take AP classes during high school. Let's start at the beginning. The first part is whenever somebody thinks that they want to do, oh, I want to be an X, Y, and Z. Is from the degree freeway. We know that starting at industry or the type of work or having a specific job title is literally the most limiting thing that you could possibly do.

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:07]:
When you go through the needs versus wants section of this book, we have industry and type of work available for you to put things in, but it literally says danger zone. The reason why it's a danger zone is because if you put something in there, let's say I want to be a personal trainer. Now, all of the other things that have to do with any job, like your income, your location, your schedule, all of those other things, your work environment, those things are dictated now by whatever you just put in there. So if he wants to be a personal trainer, it's all dictated by that industry now. For him, I was like, okay, well, let's just put that aside right now. That's not a great idea. We told the story a couple of weeks ago. We actually did go through the process with him a little bit and he ended up saying, what do you want your life to look like? What do you want to have? Who do you want to be around you? That's those types of things.

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:51]:
And the picture that he started painting for us was a pretty expensive picture.

Hannah Maruyama [00:05:58]:
Simply because of where he's from, unfortunately, anywhere else in the country, that's a very attainable goal that he has, but where he wants to live specifically, which is home is very costly.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:08]:
So expensive that majority of personal trainers will never make a fraction of what's necessary to sustain that lifestyle. And you can do it as a personal trainer if you're very good, then you work for the right company. But really the only way to really do it is if you start to be a business owner.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:25]:
And you're able to scale and hire

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:27]:
scale, hire, or you just charge really rich clients, but that is still your business owner. And as far as being a personal trainer, if you're just work at 24 Hour Fitness Planet Fitness or Anytime Fitness, or

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:38]:
even like a fancy gym.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:40]:
The chances of you making that amount of money that's required to live that what he said. It's not impossible, but it's very rare. So anyway, let's just put that down for a second and let's just say that we did go through that and personal trainer is what he wanted to end up with. The reason why he ended up a personal trainer is that his dad is a personal trainer and his dad owns a gym. Once again, it's like the vocational creativity thing, right? He just doesn't have a lot of it. And he just sees the jobs that are right in front of his eyes. He's like, okay, I'm going to do that because I know somebody that does that. Now let's just take that as gospel now.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:09]:
Let's just say that he wants to do that. We went through the whole thing and personal training actually does cover everything that he wants out of his work. Still the rest of the plan is just really not good.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:20]:
Which is the way in which she's going about it is the way that he thinks he's supposed to, but not the way that makes the most sense.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:26]:
The biggest one right off the bat is personal trainers. They do not need college degrees.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:31]:
Yeah. They don't need kinesiology degrees. They don't need biology degrees. They need training. And it's funny, right after he left, I was on a call with someone who disclosed to me that after having read her book, her daughter went through the process. It was a podcast. And the host said that her daughter having thought through and thought about and use the degree free way and our methods to think about work was getting a personal training certificate. And it only took her a couple months to do that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:57]:
And she's thrilled and she loves it. And she's reciting all of the body parts, which interestingly enough, all the muscle groups. And she literally has all the anatomy. She's memorized every single thing in the human body, like bones, nervous system, muscles, everything. And she said that she'd been walking around the house, just reciting the different muscle groups. And she said that she's loves it, but that's exactly what he was thinking that kinesiology will teach him. And I guess theoretically it will, but he doesn't need to spend what they're going to charge him at the state university to do that. I think that this, individual said it costs $400 to get that certification and 2 months of time.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:33]:
And in the fitness industry, there are a lot of certifications. It's just, which one do you want to get and which one are you going to use? And which one are you going to learn? Let's just say that he gets one of these certifications. The main thing that shows whether or not you can do it or not do it is whether or not you've trained people. That's literally it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:49]:
And there's no nature limit on that. He can start doing that now. Right.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:52]:
All he has to do is train people. And if you just get a before picture and then you get an after picture and then you put those together and then you say, look at what I did for this guy.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:02]:
And he charged $30 a month and you have everybody meet you at the park.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:05]:
And then you continue to keep doing that. One, you'll get a job somewhere for sure, because it would just be like, well, you're already doing it. At that point, they're like, we only hire XYZ certified trainers. So I see that you know how to do this, but maybe if you can go get that certification first and then come back and apply, then we can hire you. Okay. Perfect. Boom. Then you go get that one and then you get certified there and then you go get hired there.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:28]:
Or if you just want to keep doing the freelancing thing, if you want to keep taking your own clients, you just continue to do that. Or if you want to scale it up and create a business, then you do that. But really at the end of the day, if he really wanted to do it, all he has to do is just go and train people and be like, look at this person looks not so good. And then this person looks great. That's the same person after they worked with me.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:50]:
The only difference is 8 weeks of working with me.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:52]:
That's all he had to do.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:53]:
Think about 6 years of training people instead of 6 years of buying a kinesiology degree.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:58]:
And I was talking to him. I was like, if this is really what you wanna do, like, and you're really being serious about this whole personal training thing, which he is, because that's the reason why he's doing all of this hard work is so that he can get a kinesiology degree quicker or get a biology degree so that he can become a personal trainer. This is why he's doing it. I'm not guessing or anything that this is from his mouth, from his efforts. If that's really why you're trying to do it to be a personal trainer later, then you just need to stop doing all of it. If you can go down into the lower class mid year, do that right now because all of this extra time that you're spending doing these projects of which you're failing the class now, all of this time that you're doing, trying to fix all these things, you could literally just be training people. You could be learning and studying for that certification. You could be learning the body parts on your own with all of the time that you've saved because you're not in these AP classes.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:44]:
And so I was talking to him about next summer and I was saying, Hey, I'd really like it if you come visit for the summer. That'd be great. And he's like, oh no, I can't come in this summer. I was like, I have summer school. And I was like, why do you have summer school? He's like, oh, I have to get AP biology because I'm gonna get the AP biology done. And I was just like, what are you doing? If you want to be a personal trainer, the thing that you need to go and do is train people. The summer is the best time to do it because you don't have class and you could just do it all week.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:10]:
Take 3 people a day, have them meet you at the park and train them every single day.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:13]:
Your AP class is not going to get you any closer to your actual goal. In fact, it's going to hinder you from getting from your goal because you're not doing the work that needs to be done. And as I was telling him, it's awesome and amazing that you're doing hard work, that you are learning what it means to do hard work. You're actually literally failing. You're working hard, and it's just not you're failing class. So we gotta see where's that hard work really going, but okay. That's awesome that you're willing to put in the work there, but you're working on the wrong things. If you're working hard, but you're working hard on the wrong things, your hard work literally doesn't matter.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:48]:
If you just work an average amount, but you're working on the right things that is much more effective in getting you to where you want to be. Now, if you learned hard work and you work hard on the right things, Well, now we're cooking with gas.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:02]:
Yeah. It's so important to just figure out I'm realizing too that this is something that bears repeating, but it's just the fact that a lot of people have not thought about what their kids actually need to do what they want. And that's a really big problem. And that's why we wrote the degree free way because even if whatever their child does want to do does legally require them to purchase a college degree. They need to think that through first. They go, oh, this is a necessary step. It is not just the first step that we take as a knee jerk reaction because we believe that this is what we have to do in order to pass go and collect $200. We'll see what happens with him, and we'll be here to help with the plan.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:36]:
And I wanted to just say about the working on the right things. I did an entire episode about this. We'll put it in the show notes, degreefree.coforward/podcast. This concept really changed my life and then it changed all my future efforts, but it also reframed a lot of my life in the past and the decisions that I've made in the past. Really, I definitely suggest that everybody go listen to that episode just quickly. I wanted to make a lot of money. I always had the goal of retiring by the age I was 40. I worked really, really hard for a decade in restaurants.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:10]:
Literally a decade. I worked in restaurants. I worked my butt off. I hardly ever called out sick. I hardly ever messed around. I worked extremely hard, but that was never gonna get me to my goals because I was working on the wrong things. No matter how hard I work working as a bartender, working as a fast food, cook, working as a server, working as a buser, working as a dishwasher, all of the jobs that I've done in that 10 years, it was not going to get me to my goal, no matter how hard I work. But if I just stopped doing that and did anything else and just worked a small amount, but just worked on the right things, then I would move much quicker towards my goal than it took me 10 years to.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:54]:
If you guys want to listen about that, I'll put in the show notes degreefree.coforward/podcast.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:58]:
It's a good episode. I do advise everyone to listen to that people after that were writing in for weeks telling us that was a really awesome episode. So check it out. Okay. I have a YouTube comment from somebody who is a fan and follows us and disagrees with something that I talked about in a video that I posted on YouTube the other day. And I want to do a little bit of breakdown on this. And the reason is because this is so foundational to our method, to our madness. And it's something you and I both feel really, really strongly about.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:24]:
What I want to talk about is I want to talk about 5 jobs that people think require college degrees that actually just require exams. And I want to break this down through the lens of this guy's comment. And I appreciate him following and for him engaging with our content and providing really thoughtful pushback. When people take the time to do this, I actually do appreciate it, especially in the way that he did it, but I don't agree. And I'm going to break down why I don't agree. And then a few jobs that I think really show evidence of this and then a few jobs. And I do illustrate the fact that you have to get a degree in order to get the license to do the job, which is an example of the legal requirement breakdown, I guess, which is the theme of this today's episode. So the video in question, I talked about 19 to 20 year olds who want to break out of college.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:05]:
And I just was speaking to their parents. And I just said, your kids don't need degrees to be engineers. Your kids don't need degrees to get good jobs. And I gave a couple other examples, but the engineering one always gets a lot of attention because people just want to go to really niche fields where there are actually not a lot of people in them for 1. But then 2, there are actually are degree free pathways to getting these jobs and getting these licenses. And this is something you and I have talked about a lot because the testing is so important and I'll get into why this rubs both you and I the wrong way about the testing in a second. But I want to talk about the comment first. So he said, it depends on the engineering.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:40]:
I'm a civil engineer, and I generally agree with your arguments about the disadvantages of college. But it gave me a chill to say you don't need college to become an engineer. Software, of course, but other disciplines of engineering, it is out of discussion to dismiss college. You can talk about reforming college, but it is so unsafe to hire self taught civil engineering. That is just madness. Now, one thing I wanted to point out here before we move along is that it's funny how in the past, I'll say 5 years, people say software engineering, of course. When 5 years ago or even 10 years ago, people would say you can never work in tech without a college degree, which is silly because the entire way through all of the giant tech companies that we look at now, almost all of them have degree founders, literally all of them. It's crazy.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:20]:
These $1,000,000,000 tech companies with degree free founders who had time in the game before when they were young building tech companies, and then clearly didn't need to be in college. For anyone who tries to say that a bachelor's degree is a result of a $1,000,000,000 company, that's just laughable. As opposed to the 18 years prior to the purchase of a degree. I feel pretty strongly about that. But I responded to this comment and I said, I'm talking about software engineers here, but I also mean any licensed engineer. Licensed degree free professional engineers are not in quotes, self taught. They fulfill experience or portfolio requirements to take the same exam you did mechanical, electrical, civil, SERDES, which is circuit engineering for rocket ships, etcetera. They legally cannot be a licensed engineer without passing the same exam as you.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:02]:
You are not a licensed engineer because of your degree. You are a licensed engineer because you passed a test. You couldn't be a PE with a degree and no license. You can be a PE degree free with a license. It is illogical to say that someone who qualifies and passes state mandated exams to get an FE or PE is less qualified or unsafe. If licensed, they have the exact same qualifications as you, illegally obtained PE or FE license through mandated exams.

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:32]:
I guess in just simple terms, if you pass test, then qualified. If no past test, no qualified. And that is something that you and I get pushed back a lot. And that's where people tell us to go die and good luck with the surgeon that doesn't have a degree and everything like that. But there are a bunch of these professions that quote require degrees that don't really require degrees. They require licenses and some of those licenses are gated by degrees. What I mean by that is that you need to have X, Y, or Z degree to sit for that license. And then there are other professions that to sit for that license, you do not need a degree.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:08]:
You just have to do this, that, or the other, but there are very few jobs that just require degrees. And that's what you're saying here. And this is literally to any engineer. It is not the degree that makes you an engineer. It is your license. Just the same with doctors. It is not the medical degree that makes you a doctor. It is you passing your licensing exams.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:32]:
It is not the law degree that makes you a lawyer. It is passing the bar. And if

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:38]:
you want proof, if you had the degree, but no license, you cannot practice.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:42]:
Exactly. And so lawyers are a really good one because a lot of lawyers will pass law school, but then they will not pass the bar.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:50]:
So technically they're not lawyers.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:51]:
Yeah, exactly. They're not legally licensed to practice law in whatever state. And there's a lot of them.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:56]:
Yes. Because the fail rate on the bar is high. And this is something that you and I talked about that we went on a rant a while back about this for people to have an issue with people being able to take an exam. If you don't think the test is good enough, fix the test one. If you think the test is so fragile that people who just study for it could pass it and you have a problem with that, then your test is not rigorous enough. But if the test is the standard, then anyone should be able to just study and pass the test.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:20]:
Yeah. It is our belief that for any of these professions that is gated by a license, anybody should be able to sit for it because it's a test for the license that gates you from being qualified to do that position and nothing else.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:34]:
Including the MCAT. And yes, I would be okay with a doctor operating on me who had just studied. And if they were bright enough to pass the MCAT, they're bright enough to go to medical school and learn the material.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:45]:
Well, then all your licensing gonna happen afterwards.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:48]:
Say that it's so ridiculous because it's really just showing the depth of our argument and the shallowness of theirs, which is yes, it literally can't happen. So we're safe. That's how it works. So I want to talk about these 5 jobs really quick that a lot of people think require degrees, but actually just require licensure. And this is so important. Okay. So the first one I'm going to lead with is

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:05]:
actually PE. So PE is professional engineers. So it's like what we're talking about here.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:09]:
Yeah. To clarify too, this is not like process engineer or software engineer slash developer. Those are not the same thing, but people refer to them encapsulated now. So I'm just going to dismiss both of those for a second. But these are people that work on hardware that do math, that build bridges, that build things, that engineers like that. Okay. So certain states allow people to become licensed professional engineers, PEs through years of documented work experience and by passing the fundamentals of engineering, FE engineering FE and PE exams rather than requiring an engineering degree. That's just the truth.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:37]:
And so there are people that can take and sit for the FE and the PE without buying a college degree. Also to have the documented years of experience and be able to, I'm guessing, I'm sure, actually be able to use the tools that engineers do use as opposed to a lot of engineering grads. I think it would make people very uncomfortable if they met some of these fresh out of college engineering grads, who they're saying, I wouldn't feel safe in trusting an engineer that doesn't have a degree. Well, I wouldn't feel safe if I had an engineering student who just graduated and doesn't know how to use Excel. So let's just level with the fact that experience here and then sitting for this exam would make somebody a high quality engineer. This person is the exact same as anybody who bought a PhD in engineering and then took the exam. They have the same level of licensure to do that job. His PE looks like her PE looks like his PE.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:22]:
It's the same. Now, a a couple others that I think are really key here. Pilots, one that a lot of people know, you go to flight school and then you take an FAA exam and you are a licensed pilot. That's how that works. You do not have to buy a college degree to do that. There's actually not a single US airline that requires a college degree for any of their pilot jobs now as well. Not a single one in the US. Now another one that we've talked about before, but is really controversial is lawyer.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:45]:
There are several states that allow you to read the law. And before the formation of the ABA, that was how lawyers became lawyers. It's crazy to me the amount of lawyers that don't know that. And also if you look at our legal system and what's happened to it since then, I would argue that maybe we should go back to that standard and we have better lawyers. Another one that's really common. This one I get all the time is architecture. The NCARB has 2 degree free pathways to licensure, the 2 XP, and I forget the name of the other one, but basically what you do is you just submit a portfolio of work and then you take and sit for the exam. You have to sit through the board and then they give you an exam.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:17]:
A good example of this too, is Frank Lloyd Wright is probably one of the most famous top of mind architects for many Americans in the last 100 years. He was degree free and he was a licensed architect. People can build things. They can learn to build things. That's just how it works. And if they take an exam that licenses to do so, it's the same as any other architect. The last one I'll say, well, actually I have 2, 1 interior designer. And I'm going to say it because every single time we talk about the fact that interior design, yes, building codes, blueprints, safety codes does not require a college degree.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:45]:
They all lose their minds. So I'm going to say it anyway, because that always irritates me because there's only one state that requires you to have a license to be an interior designer, not decorator designer. The last one is actuary. These are not easy exams. And actually, if you pass these exams, this is the standard for you being an actuary and you can be an apprentice, but you have to pass a series of exams from either the Society of Actuaries, SOA, or the Casualty Actuarial Society, the CAS. And they are extremely complex mathematics, statistics, and economics.

Ryan Maruyama [00:23:12]:
So the 5 there, and then you gave a bonus one with the 5 was PE, professional engineer, pilot, lawyer, architect, actuary, and then interior designer. And, yeah, for all of these jobs, you don't need a degree. And for interior designer, especially there's not even a license required except for in one state. All of these jobs require licenses that you can sit for with X amount of experience or with jumping through a certain amount of hoops before that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:39]:
And then to show that there are some that do require a degree. This is really key would be the MCAT. You have to have a college degree in order to get into medical school. That is a legal requirement. They're not going to let you in without it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:23:55]:
But like we said, it doesn't make sense that they would need that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:58]:
Because anyone should be able to test into that and go directly to medical school.

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:00]:
Yeah. If the MCAT is the thing that's holding you back, then the MCAT should be thing that bars you from going to medical school.

Hannah Maruyama [00:24:07]:
Yes. And that's relatively new and it's just because the colleges are greedy and they knew that they could require all these medical students to pay for a bachelor's degree before they went to medical school.

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:15]:
And then arguably what I would say about that is if that were the case, we would have people going at a much earlier age. The argument that I hear from people is about brain development. That's the number one argument that I hear. People that are going and graduating, they're 21 years old, doing God knows what. They're just as immature as this 18 year old who can then pass the MCAT. I don't think that's a very good argument. I think it's a very person by person basis. And so it's like, how can you control for that? Will I get you control for that with a college degree? I think that's silly.

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:43]:
I believe if you can pass the MCAT, then you can go into medical school. No problem. What it would do is it would help to lower the burden that these doctors are coming out of school with. It is astonishing the amount of debt these doctors are coming to school with, and then they are struggling for the next 9 years trying to just stay above water. And then if they are in a lucrative field, then they start making some money eventually, the specialized surgeons and the more pricey doctors out there. But if you're just in internal medicine or something like that, it's very difficult to make a living. Are you gonna go to Kaiser and get paid $120,000 or something like that, depending where you live? Well, you are in debt a quarter of a $1,000,000. You're never going to pay that back.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:32]:
It's going to be very difficult for you to pay that amount of debt back. I think that we would get a lot of better life outcomes.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:40]:
For doctors, which we should be worried about.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:42]:
Which I hope would then lend to better care outcomes and therefore better health outcomes at the end of it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:49]:
I have a hot take about this too. I bet if the MCAT was the barrier to getting into medical school, instead of buying a bachelor's degree first, you would also have a lot more female physicians. And not only would you have more female physicians, but their fertility would not be such an issue because they wouldn't have all that stress at a time that's really crucial for them to decide to have families or not. I was talking to a young female doctor about this recently, and she talked about how that was really tough on her going through that process and how that's a concern that she really has. It's something that she talks about a lot to raise awareness on her own podcast. Something that with young medical students, she really talks to them about just being aware of. And that's causing a lot of downstream bad effects and closed off doors.

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:26]:
I don't know about the stress, but what does make sense is the physiology. And just in the prime years of their life, we could get rid of 4 years of literally things that are unnecessary. There's no logical reason that I've heard of. And you guys are more than welcome, please, in the YouTube comments. Please tell me a logical reason. If this is the gate to get into medical school, the MCAT, tell me a logical reason of why it should be gated by a college degree. If you are qualified, if you pass this test, then why can you not just take this test? No matter how old you are, I don't understand. The only argument that I could say is you would have to be 18 because then you can be legally responsible for yourself and therefore you can be legally responsible for the care of others.

Ryan Maruyama [00:27:04]:
That would be the only argument that I could see that would make sense. So please, YouTube comments, please let me know. If we can get rid of those 5 and a half years for these young ladies that gives them 5 and a half years of their life back and that whole thing. And let's just say that the whole workload stays the exact same as it is now, except for having to go to college and to having to graduate college. Let's just say that all of it stays the same, except for the amount of money that they are paying because they had to pay for a college degree. And then the amount of time that they had to pay to get a college degree at the same time, moving that five and a half years. Well, now instead of being out of residency and everything, when they're 33 or whatever, they're out of residency in their late twenties, which is huge.

Hannah Maruyama [00:27:47]:
Yes. For current with all the stuff that's currently going on with fertility in general. Yeah. And it was such an interesting thing for her to say that she was just saying she was talking to young medical students to be aware of that. The other thing too, is that it's also just the time. And you and I talk about that a lot, but it's the decision to have to spend that time doing a bachelor's degree program instead of doing something else. There's just so much here on that one specifically, because I think we're doing a grave disservice to our physicians, male and female, by burning their years, making them do this. But anyway, a couple of the other ones are the United States medical licensing exam.

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:20]:
So after you graduate medical school, you have to pass an exam. That was what I was going to say about the MCAT was how many kids do you think go through college and fail the MCAT?

Ryan Maruyama [00:28:30]:
A lot.

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:31]:
Right. What if we just move that to the front, they fail the MCAT, even if they're going to go to college, at least they're not going to go to college for something that they're not gonna be able to use. That would be a huge gift to move that forward.

Ryan Maruyama [00:28:41]:
Yeah. But then the pre med market would crumble.

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:44]:
Oh my gosh. Good. It's so predatory.

Ryan Maruyama [00:28:47]:
The biology and kinesiology departments around the country were uncomfortable. I was looking at stats earlier about this. Interesting that we're talking about doctors. Don't quote me on this guys. It was something in the realm of for acceptance to the med school. I think it's 43% of biology and kinesiology majors that try to get into med school. Get in. So 57% of kinesiology and biology majors don't get in.

Ryan Maruyama [00:29:13]:
But that's pretty congruent. I think with just the med school acceptance rate is probably half or something like that. It's probably 50%. Your margin is like 7%. But all the other ones that I was looking at, like math or everything, I think they were actually higher, the acceptance rate. It was, like, 49 and, like, 48. So it was much closer to the coin toss that is the 50.50 acceptance rate. Once again, don't quote me.

Ryan Maruyama [00:29:35]:
I wasn't prepared for this. I was just not doing my work as usual. I gotta get a podcast note together. Let me just scroll the Internet and not do my work for an hour.

Hannah Maruyama [00:29:45]:
Sorry. We've belabored this point so much, but this is just so important. So what you're telling me is the result of moving the MCAT back to the front to screen people would save 40 7% of biology and kinesiology majors from 5 and a half years and a 100 something $1,000 worth of debt before they fail a test. No one can convince me that it's a good idea to have it there.

Ryan Maruyama [00:30:01]:
Obviously, for all of them, they wanted to go to med school. Otherwise, why would they try to go to med school? School? The medical licensing exams is something that I thought about as well, because I had a conversation with a radiation oncologist and he is very good at his job. He's very well known in the community and everything like that for his specialty. One of the things that he was talking him and him and I were talking about, he knows what I do for a living and we were talking about it and I was telling him all of this stuff about not requiring college for the MCAT. I was even saying like apprenticeships and just having just pass your medical licensing with enough apprenticeship behind you. Right? Like do it like the old days where you just get a job at a doctor's

Hannah Maruyama [00:30:36]:
office and

Ryan Maruyama [00:30:38]:
then you learn on the job. And then his reply was, yeah, I totally agree with you there. You give me 3 years. I can train my son to do my job just as well as I do. And this was really relevant for him because at the time his son was 17 years old and this was a few years ago. He's dealing with all of the post high school decisions, the same decisions that you listening to this are thinking about for your child. And he was just like, but the bummer part about it is that I can't teach him what I know because he has to go to college and he has to go to med school and then he has to go to residency. And that's just the way that it's been done.

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:10]:
So there's 12 years ahead of him when he could be trained to be top of this field by someone top in this field in like 3 or 4 years.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:15]:
Exactly. I thought it was interesting. Cause then I asked him, I said, okay, well then how do we fix it? Or what do we do about it? And he's just like, well, you kind of got to go through it. It's kind of like a rite of passage. I mean, everybody did it. I did it. And I was just like, that's such a silly thing to say.

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:28]:
That's going to have to change. And I'm sure people brighter than us are working on that. Hopefully. I hope they are. But anyway, we have 2 more, a national council licensure exam for nursing to become a registered nurse. That one, you do have to have a bachelor's degree in order to take that exam, in order to sit for it. It's a requirement legally. Can't get around it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:45]:
CPA, you You have to meet specific educational requirement to pass the CPA exam to sit for it. It's not actually a full bachelor's degree, but you do have to have a certain amount of hours of accounting classes, which amount to you essentially graduating with a bachelor's degree. At that point, people just finish because it's basically the same thing. And then the last one, which is kind of niche is real estate appraisers in specifically California are required to have an associate's degree in order to become a licensed real estate appraiser. No other states that I know of that, but they do have a legal requirement for an associate degree, which is kinda silly.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:15]:
Yeah. And so that's why in the legal requirement breakdown in the degree for your way, it's literally just 2 questions and I will flash it quickly on the screen here. We've done this before. And hopefully, you can see this is, does this job legally require a license? Yes or no? If you check yes, continue to the next question. If you check no, well, then just go get that job, basically. There's a lot of words here, but basically, if it doesn't legally require a license, then you're good. So the second question is, does the license legally require a degree? Yes or no. And if you check the yes, well then you are legally required to have a license to get the job that you want.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:49]:
And one of the requirements to get the license is a degree. You have to buy a degree to get that job. And then, so you have to think carefully about the cost interest, opportunity costs and amount of time you will spend to buy the degree you need and whether or not it helps you get to your goals. And if you check, no, then you don't need a degree to get the license. You can check your state and county laws to make sure you know, the license requirements, the hours, exams, certifications, trainings, etcetera. These can vary widely depending on the states and counties. A good example is that California real estate appraiser. If you want to be a real estate appraiser in California and you don't have anything and you're completely degree free and you're just coming out of high school, you've got to go get an associate's degree.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:25]:
But if you were to say, oh, I'm just going to go to Arizona or I'm moving to Nevada or whatever to do that instead, you just go there and you check what their things are. Oh, I don't need to do that. I'm going to do that here. Research and compare other options to learn the skills and get the experience you need to get the license that is required for the job you want. And so you'll always want to search for paid on the job training, like a company that will sponsor you or an apprenticeship first. Then you want to compare the paid options to learn, to get that license. It's really that simple. And I do think that the world is starting to trend this way.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:58]:
I think there's a lot that's wrong with the world today, but I think one of the things that is going really right is the degree freedom movement is really picking up steam. It's really just because the college has

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:10]:
done this to themselves.

Ryan Maruyama [00:34:11]:
Good for them. They literally had multiple generations where they were able to just Hoover up money. I would do the same thing if I were them. If the government wrote me a blank check, would you cash that check? I

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:21]:
think most people would.

Ryan Maruyama [00:34:22]:
Of course you would, especially if you're a business, which they are. I'm a big business every single day of the week. I'm going to cash that check. I'm going to keep pushing to make it easier for the American people to give me that money.

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:32]:
I was just talking about that to somebody. They were just saying, well, it's not really business. It's a nonprofit. And I was like a nonprofit is a business. And they just said, no, they're not. And I said, yeah, they are. They do business. They do products.

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:42]:
They do services. They deal in one of those 2 things, depending on what it is, their service may be their mission. They may be mission driven, but lots of companies are mission driven too. It's just the way that they take money. And then the way they have to spend money is different. So when people are like, Oh, well, these colleges are nonprofits. I'm like, they're not nonprofits. They are hedge funds.

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:59]:
It's the same as BlackRock. The difference is they got to burn through their money at a certain rate. They have different methods for stashing at different places. That's the only difference. Nonprofits do the same thing. It's all incentives. It's all how the money flows to them and then where it gets stuck and where it stays. And once you realize that, and you realize that the incentives of a nonprofit college are the same as an incentives of a business that's trying to make money.

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:20]:
The way that they are speaking to your child, speaking to you and trying to sell you becomes a lot more clear and you understand, oh, they're incentivized to do this. That makes sense.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:29]:
Yeah. When you go to the college fair and you go to one of these convention centers with all these colleges and have all these booths set up, you walk to that booth and ask them where they're from. Oh, do you live here locally? And they're like, no, no, no, no. I actually live by the campus or the schools in Massachusetts, but I actually live in Texas. I'm all the way here in toy. You're not here for free.

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:47]:
That's a 10,000, $15,000 business trip.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:50]:
How is it that your company is paying for you to be here for this one day event?

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:55]:
That's commission.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:57]:
No, I don't get commission. It's only when we get more admissions than we did last year. So last year we enrolled 1400 this year, we're shooting to enroll 1600. If I hit that mark, then I make more money, but that's not a commission. I wouldn't even call that a bonus. That's just hard work.

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:12]:
They don't even understand the salespeople based on a real conversation.

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:16]:
Very real conversation that we had with one of these salespeople that didn't know she was a salesperson. She was selling a dream and the dream that she was selling was super freaking expensive. It

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:24]:
was an art school, Super freaking expensive.

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:26]:
We've told this story on the podcast before, but I think that you and I have a very large reason. I think particularly me because of the way that I said it. I think I had a large reason to do why she's not in that profession anymore when I made her realize that she was in sales, I was like, oh, so what do you do? And she's like, oh, I'm here for the college fair. And while I'm here, when I'm not doing it, I came a little bit early because I'm just going around to the different high schools. I'm doing a little presentation for x amount of students at each class or whatever or on an assembly that they arranged. What do you talk about? Oh, we talk about this, that, that. And this is the presentation that we go over. Oh, cool.

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:58]:
So like you're in sales then. Sales is great. And she's like, no, I'm not in sales.

Hannah Maruyama [00:37:02]:
And then it started to click.

Ryan Maruyama [00:37:03]:
Well, no, you're selling the most expensive product that these people are probably gonna make in the next 10 years, and they won't be able to make the next purchase because they made this purchase. You're a salesperson.

Hannah Maruyama [00:37:12]:
In closing, if you want your child to get a really high paying sales with job, just send them to a college enrollment office, admissions officer.

Ryan Maruyama [00:37:18]:
Yeah. And that's pretty much it for this week. Show notes degreefree.coforward/podcast. And once again, we are doing a Q and a episode very soon, ask.degreefree.co. You can ask us your question there until next time guys.