Challenging the College Narrative: What Education Should Really Be (DF#177)

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:00]:
Figuring out what they want to do with their life in college is the worst place in the world to figure out what they want to do. It is the real world. It doesn't expose you to different things. It doesn't expose you to different people. It doesn't expose you to the world. Aloha folks, and welcome back to degree free. Today, we are gonna debunk 7 myths about college from this article in the LA Times. Let's jump into it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:25]:
So first of all, the title of this is opinion. Alternatives are fine, but we shouldn't ask you benefits of a college degree. And this is by Jay Matthews. But we are gonna go through and we're gonna read the relevant parts here, and then we are going to go and give our statements about it. We're not going to read this whole article to you because you can just read it at degreefree.c0/podcast. We're going to read the relevant parts, and then we are going to tell you why these are myths and why this is wrong.

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:52]:
So when he starts writing here, he writes that social critics, editorial writers, and authors are pleading these days for an end to America's long emphasis on completing 4 years of college. They have a point.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:03]:
Social critics, editorial writers, and authors are pleading these days for an end to America's long emphasis on completing 4 years of college. They have a point. My father had nothing more than a 2 year junior college degree when he turned writing skills, learning the army into a middle class life that included bachelor's degrees for both of his sons.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:21]:
And then he says, I see a weakness in this trend. Not everyone needs to go to college, but turning away from traditional learning, especially in high school poses a threat to the intellectual depth necessary for whatever paths we choose in life. This is ridiculous for a couple of reasons. College is not traditional learning. Traditional learning is, for millennia, has been being taught in the home and then learning under a master of whatever trade or skill you were trying to learn. So college is not traditional. College was not even widespread in the United States until 1965. So acting like this is really common is kind of silly.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:51]:
And acting like we've been doing this for 100 of years is also silly. Now, intellectual threat is also pretty hilarious. The main reason this is funny is because using a degree as a substitute for intellectual debt, I feel shows a lack of intellectual debt. Because if you just take a paper that was purchased from a business that is functionally a hedge fund, and you just say, well, if someone's bought a college degree, then that means they're intellectually deep. And you evaluate nothing about their skills, about what they've contributed to society, about how they think, about what their actions are. I don't feel that that's a really good way to gauge whether or not somebody is intellectually deep and just taking a bachelor's degree as a substitute for intellect or for intelligence, degree as a substitute for intellect or for intelligence. I feel a lack of that on the part of whoever is doing that. I wanted to jump in here before we move on to the next point.

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:30]:
This isn't really

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:30]:
debunking a myth about it or anything like that, but I have no idea what intellectual depth

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:37]:
is. I don't think he does either.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:39]:
And she would say it's because I didn't go to college. I did go to college. I not only did I go, I finished and I did get a degree. I have no idea what intellectual depth means truly, even if I think about it. Okay. So maybe you are more intelligent because you can think deeper about topics. Maybe. Is that the signal of intelligence that you can think deeply about one thing or is it singular? I literally don't know.

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:02]:
He's saying intellect, which is more granular than intelligence. Even people who believe these kinds of things will say that, oh no, people can be as intelligent as they want, but intellect is specifically a derivative of intelligence. What he's trying to say basically is that having a level of intellect, it's a way of saying that someone's more cultivated, essentially. It's like a practice of being intelligent as opposed to intelligence self. But for him to say that, good thing. You don't have to know what it means because you have a college degree. So you have it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:27]:
So I am flowing with intellectual debt.

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:30]:
With the low, low price of a 104 to a $156,000 in 4 to 6 years, you, your child too can have intellectual debt.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:36]:
I am flowing with intellectual debt. And with my intellectual debt, I will move on to this other point. And I'll just skip the article down a little bit. Not everyone achieves college level skills, but as a nation, we have come closer than ever to that goal with great benefits for our country. The World Bank summarizes all the ways, higher rates and levels of education make a difference, innovation and growth, productivity and wages, civic engagement, and even health. I had

Hannah Maruyama [00:04:00]:
a point, but I'm not deep enough to make it. It's unfortunate. But to say college level skills is also kind of embarrassing for for a couple of reasons because the CLA, which is you guys know we talked about this a lot. The collegiate learning assessment, which is the test that college has invented for themselves to prove that they teach critical thinking to prove they have value. 45% of grads have no increase in critical thinking whatsoever.

Ryan Maruyama [00:04:20]:
Hey there. I hope you're enjoying this episode of the degree free podcast. 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 [00:04:56]:
And the media college grad, according to Pew Research, only reads 7 books a year. It's not difficult to practice the same level of intellect that your average college grad practices from day to day, which is reading 7 books. And since 45% of them couldn't even understand the terms on a credit card brochure because that was the test, as long as you can do that, you should be okay.

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:12]:
And this is just my opinion. I don't really like the 7 books a year thing being a stat because is reading books a level of your intelligence?

Hannah Maruyama [00:05:22]:
So I would say that the amount of books that you read is a level of education indicator because literacy is an education indicator. It's funny because as a country we've moved away from using literacy as a gauge of educational performance because it is quite literally, in my opinion, the only one that matters. But we're moving it out of the picture because it's inconvenient because if we measure actual literacy, a bunch of kids would still be in high school.

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:43]:
Well, I'm just saying that there's more ways to educate yourself or there's more ways to consume information now than ever. The standard of 7 books a year, is that really a standard of education or is that a standard of intelligence or is that a standard of learning when there are so many different ways to learn nowadays? Just because you don't read a book doesn't mean that you're not intellectually curious. So I don't know. I guess I should ask you is, are you equating 7 books a year or reading books to intellectual curiosity and that intellectual curiosity then leading to education?

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:15]:
No, I'm trying to meet them on their home turf. I don't mean intellectual curiosity at all. I mean, educated. Someone who is a practicing educated individual often reads extensively. That's a hallmark of someone who is educated. One of the reasons that I bring this up is because I feel like it's meeting them on their home turf. When someone says, oh, people that are degree free are less intelligent than college grads. I'm like, they read 7 books a year.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:34]:
It's not difficult to be more educated than that because you're not educated. Your college degree purchase does not educate you for the rest of your days. Education is a practice. It is ongoing and continual. And so as long as you read more than 7 books a year, you are gonna be more educated than the median college graduate. But no, it's not the same as intellectual curiosity at all.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:48]:
I'm not fighting you on this because if anything, this would be a good stat for us to have. But for me, it just seems it doesn't hold any water because who cares that they read 7 books a year for me, education and intellectual curiosity are pretty linked together because it is that intellectual curiosity that keeps you in the pursuit of education and that pursuit of education is what then hopefully if you act upon that pursuit of education, which then leads you to be an educated person. And I think that you can be educated in very many realms without ever reading a book.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:20]:
That's definitely fair. I think that I use that because it's one of the most obvious gauges of someone who is educated as somebody who reads. That's just my opinion.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:27]:
I agree with you. What are college level skills? I had zero skills coming out of college. I totally agree with you there. I'm just the 7 books a year thing or just books in general as a measure of education. I just don't see as super valuable. That was my point. Moving on though, trade school or community college counts as significant post secondary learning, but succeeding in some of those programs may require nearly the same academic skills as college. What concerns me is that in cheerleading for non college routes to jobs and careers, we may push high school too far in a new direction.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:59]:
Awarding diplomas for off campus apprenticeships for spending too little time on homework and too much on gaining work and resume experience or for minimal vocational ed. Risking students' foundation in literature, history, writing, math, and languages.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:15]:
Other than his ridiculous claim at the end, what about this could possibly be construed as negative? This is so crazy. Imagine looking at this and thinking that's a bad thing. And also cheerleading for non college routes. Do you mean talking about routes that have been for the majority of employed Americans for all of history? Or do you mean methods of education that have existed for 1000 of years? I'm not really sure what he's talking about

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:36]:
here. Yeah. So for me, that is really where my bone is is that non college routes thing, which is where he is mistakenly thinking that when you buy a college degree, there is an entire magical path that is then opened up to you and people are going to you walk in there and the jobs are just gonna start flowing your way. There were all of these jobs. 90% of the jobs in the job market were barred. And this is literally what happened to me. I went to college because I thought that all of the jobs in the world, all of them, I looked. It said college degree required, and that was the only thing that it said required.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:13]:
And I went and I got a degree. I thought that it would magically open up all of these routes to me. And I finished and what happened? Application after application, I got declined. I got declined. I got declined because I had the degree, but I didn't have the experience. I didn't have what they actually cared, which is in the nice to have section. This job is gonna be with Excel and this software and this software, and you have to have experience in this calculation. That's what they really cared about because those are the people that they hire, or at least I think because they didn't hire me.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:42]:
So I don't know. For me, the non college routes, that is where I have a bone to pick with the statement. I mean, yes, on the bottom too, but especially the non college routes because that shows you where his mind goes, which is like millions of Americans now and a lot of people in this person's generation where they're thinking, okay, well, you have to get a degree. Otherwise, you're gonna have to be a plumber or you're gonna have to turn a wrench or you're gonna have to change oil for the rest of your life.

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:05]:
Not that there's anything wrong with those things. Those are degree free routes. This is for our listeners that are in those jobs. This is not us dogging on those jobs whatsoever. All we're saying is that these people have a very close minded view of what is open to people who do not buy college degrees.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:21]:
Exactly. They're thinking with that vocational things. And so this is where this person's mind goes is because now they're thinking that their vocation is going to be, let's just take a plumber. Then our high school education is going to be too much and too far in the direction of them being a plumber and them going and installing toilets and piping a house and doing all of the fixing leaks, those types of things. That is gonna be what their high school education is and not on the other foundations of what a quote traditional education is. But, really, if you this person understood the reality and not even, like, in his ivory tower, I mean, although he really is. But if you just understood the reality that's on the ground of which a college degree does not make you more qualified for any of these positions. And it's not like these are the college routes in front of you that he would know you can get educated of all these things because all of these career fields open to you.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:16]:
All of them. And this is something that one I'd also like to post. I very much doubt that this individual would say this of a child actor, because look at this awarding diplomas for off campus apprenticeships. This is so funny. For spending too little time on homework. Literally, he's worried about how much homework they're gonna do. So there's a bunch of things here. I have 3 points.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:33]:
This guy has such a papered mindset. He thinks that the only options outside of a 4 year degree are trade apprenticeships and community college. He has no idea what is out there. 2, he's worried about these kids not doing enough homework. As we talked about earlier, the literacy rate of high school graduates in our country is not in good shape. And so I'd love to hear why he thinks more homework is going to fix that problem or why he thinks a 4 year degree, which is an extension of high school, is going to fix that problem either. Now the next part is also where this is one off the rails completely.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:02]:
That said, there are indeed good jobs available that don't require 4 years of college. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 3 of the nation's 10 fastest growing job categories, including sustainable energy technicians, call for a high school diploma only. And here are some median salaries for trades that don't require a bachelor's degree. Construction manager, $104,900 a year. Elevator technician, $102,420 a year. This is exactly what I was talking about. I read into it in the first part about the non college route. I literally just guessed that that's what he was talking about.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:36]:
He literally just says it right here. Yeah. He literally says it right here. The only things that this person can think of that is high school only or degree free is trades.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:47]:
That's it. That's all.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:48]:
That's all this person can think of. This guy lacks vocational creativity. He lacks the knowledge of the realities of the job market. Now writing this article literally just shows that he just doesn't understand.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:59]:
So to counteract this, here are good jobs that don't require a 4 year degree. Literally any type of sales, prototype, fabricators, data scientists, digital marketing managers, legal mediators, product managers, copywriters, audio engineers, interior designers, sales engineers, software developers, UX UI designers, CEOs, AI and machine learning engineers, actuaries, and pilots enjoy.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:18]:
And the list goes on and on and on and on. And if you're listening to this, you know that already. But for those that are new to degree free and new to thinking like this and new to thinking, wow, if my child doesn't go to college, then they're going to be a failure. These are just a small subset of the jobs that are out there that are degree free and that anyone can get with learning the right skills, building their portfolio, getting the right experience, getting their foot in the door, networking the right people, and then building their careers from there. And we move on. Nonetheless, the wage gap, a 60% difference by age 55 between those who complete at least 4 years of college and those who don't is real. And many of the occupations on the government's list of fastest growing jobs require not just a bachelor's, but a master's degree.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:02]:
So one, no, they don't. 2, the BLS is embarrassingly out of date, still setting a bachelor's degree requirement for graphic design. You need to know how to use Adobe InDesign or Sketch for graphic design. That's what you have to know how to use. There is no degree requirement whatsoever. And then also spoiler, most of these jobs that he's citing where he's talking about them requiring a master's degree are also the most at risk from AI automation. And that's because you don't actually need a degree to do them because they don't take very much specialized skill and they're easily replicatable by a robot. The things that are really going to be solid careers into the future require human input, human creativity, and human skill, not paper that you spend 4 to 6 years purchasing from a college that does not teach you any of those things or allow you to grow them on your own.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:48]:
And then the last thing is never use government resources for degree requirements. That's such a bad idea.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:52]:
Well, I will say about the graphic design. I'll jump in real quick. Is that I think that just like most industries that are gonna be augmented by AI, the lower rungs of the graphic design world are going to be augmented and automated and deleted and eliminated. That's going to open the market for the higher end of graphic design because of exactly all the things that you just said. All of those human inputs and the human emotion and the things that they when they wanna tell stories through design, not high end work, I don't think is gonna go away. If anything, that's just going to put a premium on that high end work. But what it's going to do is that on the lower end is going to open up so that other people and more people can get into the field. And it's a much lower barrier to entry.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:34]:
Which has already happened. And truthfully, that's why people know if you want to do graphic design, now you need a portfolio. You don't need a paper. People need to be able to see what you have done. And if they can't see what you've done, they're not going to hire you.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:45]:
Yes. Don't use the BLS. If you're looking for your child about different degrees and you're thinking, oh, well, I'll just go to the bureau of labor statistics and see what they recommend. Don't do it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:56]:
This is the criteria. We wrote it down in the back of the degree free way. Does this job legally require a license? Yes or no? If you check yes, go to the next question. Does a license legally require a degree? So if you ran graphic design through this breakdown, it would say, does this job legally require a license? No. Good. The job does not legally require a license. Research job listings you'd apply for and see which jobs show up most often. Learn those skills.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:16]:
That's how it works.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:16]:
That's it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:17]:
Yeah. You do not check the BLS.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:18]:
Now moving on, going to college or university can widen horizons. College is an escape from the familiar, an introduction to different habits, interests, points of view, and especially new friends. Even young people who end up in careers that do not require an academic degree may still find that direction only once they get to college and gain some distance figuratively, if not literally from the routines and expectations they grew up with. Okay.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:42]:
So when he's describing growing up.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:44]:
Yeah. I said this before, if your child doesn't know what they want to do, figuring out what they want to do with their life in college is the worst place in the world to figure out what they want to do.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:56]:
Yeah. It's a fake world where they're spending money. They don't have to be.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:59]:
Exactly. It is the real world. It doesn't expose you to different things. It doesn't expose you to different people. It doesn't expose you to the world.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:07]:
I'm glad you said that because where he says this college will introduce you to different interests, points of view, and new friends, habits, interests. Some of the habits are going to be substance abuse habits and overeating habits. And then also, it doesn't introduce you to people that are different than you at all. Kellogg at Northwestern shows college students have less cross cultural, less cross race, and less cross class interactions than they would in the wild. The reason for that is because colleges self select for kids from families over certain income. That's the reason. And it's also the biggest contributing factor to that higher earnings. It has nothing to do with college.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:36]:
It has everything to do with the fact colleges are screening for kids with a socioeconomic advantage. And then the colleges are saying that that's a result of the purchase that they're made.

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:43]:
I agree with everything that you said there. Not only that. So one, let's talk about the selection bias. That's what you're talking about, which is, oh, wow. Look at all these people.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:52]:
They do so well from the 18 years before getting to you. It's in spite of you.

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:56]:
You've picked people that look like this, whatever the economic breakdown is. Well, let's just say if you're doing a study of whether or not kids are healthy, 18 year olds are healthy. And then you're like, okay. Well, the people that I'm going to choose to do my study with are going to be D one athletes, 18 year old D one athletes. And they're going to be like, wow. And look, the population of America looks really good, but the outcome, these guys are super healthy. Well, you selected wrong. And so that's selection bias.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:21]:
What I wanted to talk about, which is I hear what you're saying about screening for the socioeconomic advantages and then claim responsibility for it. I just want to talk about the selection bias there's and this goes especially for the upper mid tier and the upper tier schools. I'm talking about in price. The more expensive the school, the more selective it will be because not as many people can afford it, which will then mean the only people that can afford it are those in the socioeconomic background or in the economic background that can afford. Let's just say 50 to $80,000 a year expensive. And there are not very many people that will sign on to those loans. And some of those people at those schools don't even need loans. I've said this before, but you know, where you meet people that are different than you and that's at work because you actually do meet people that are different than you, because the only thing that you and this other person have in common is the thing that your company does.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:24]:
Even if you're on a one person department, even if you're this janitor of this law office, the one thing that you all have in common is that you work at this law office. That's it. Then you have people that make 1,000,000 of dollars a year in the building, and then you have you that probably make the least amount of money in the building. And then you have everybody in between.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:40]:
It's so wild. I just saw a clip of Malcolm Gladwell saying he's not sure he's going to send his kids to college. And the reason was because he has a problem with the elitism that we just talked about. And he made an observation that never occurred to me, which is those really exclusive schools only give scholarships for sports that cost a lot of money, like polo or rowing or other sports that just cost a lot of money. Because if you only give sports that costs a lot of money to get into, you'll only get people whose kids can afford to pay to participate in those sports. Really smart. If you're trying to screen and artificially improve the results of people buying degrees from your college.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:17]:
I will say as far as the sports go and a lot of sports to be good enough to get a sports scholarship, especially a full ride in college.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:25]:
Less than 1% of student athletes get full ride?

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:27]:
Yes. But also to be at the level to get a full ride in any sport because 1% get it, usually it costs a lot of money.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:36]:
Yeah. Cause you're, you've turned your child into a professional athlete.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:39]:
Usually to get to them to that point, it costs a lot of money. There are very few families and it's not even just people because they're kids still, but there are very few families that didn't pour in 100 of 1,000 of dollars over the entire span, for sure. But tens of thousands could just be for a year. Nevermind a 100,000 plus over the lifetime of the entire 18 years, or really if they started playing it like the 14 years that they've been playing, some of these people are paying $10,000 plus, and even if they don't have the money to do it and they're making the sacrifices, including the debt in the hopes that they're going to go get a college degree and they're going to get a full ride for the hope of whatever comes on the other side of

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:17]:
it. I talked about this on TikTok a while back. I said your kid can't afford to play college sports. People got really upset about that, but some of the people in the comments disclosed the fact that they were already spending $50,000 a year for their kids to participate in sports. And then one lady in particular said, we're spending about $50,000 a year for my daughter to participate in competitive dance and we're going to buy her a dance degree. And I'm just like, holy crap. That's an unbelievable amount of money. And the reason it was crazy was because the lady was just said they couldn't afford college.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:44]:
I'm like, well then you can't afford to do what you're doing now and also do college then. You should not be doing those things. But anyway, everybody, different structure, different folks.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:53]:
And so now moving on, young people should by all means embrace a no 4 year college future if that's what they want. But I hope the new movement does not deter high schoolers from the challenge of college prep classes or hasten the trend towards devaluing college altogether. Gallup found adults ages 18 to 29, who think college education is very important. Quote dropped from 74% in 2013 to 41%. In 20 19.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:17]:
Americans aren't devaluing colleges. Colleges are devaluing themselves. They made their products on par and they got more greedy. Then they raised tuition faster than inflation. It doubles every 9 years. They devalued it. The American people did not devalue education. Colleges devalued the educational product that they sell and they did it because they're so greedy.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:34]:
They want that blank check so bad that they can't be responsible or ethical in the way that they lend and the way that they sell to children. That is not the fault of the American people. That is the fault of these corrupt institutions that cannot help themselves.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:47]:
Yeah. Once again, I hope that this trend doesn't hasten or move forward, but really it should because it is not important. Exactly. And these numbers, it should be more people that think that it's not important.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:01]:
41 is still too high because education is very important. College is not very important. Those are 2 very separate things. And people always get them mixed up because when they've bought a degree, it does get harder for them to separate the fact that it's possible to be educated without buying a college degree, and that many people are educated without buying a college degree. And then this right here is where I just put he's hoping it doesn't deter high school students from the challenges of college prep classes. We also hope that it does because college prep classes are pre sell tactics. Colleges use them to get your kids to have some AP credits or whatever, or clap out classes. So they go, woah, but if I don't go pay this college, then I'm going to lose out on these free credits.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:36]:
They weren't free credits. Those are the most expensive credits your child ever had if they buy a degree that they don't need because they have them. And that does happen all of the time.

Ryan Maruyama [00:23:44]:
Yeah. Absolutely. All the college prep classes, including and you've heard me talk about this all the time on this podcast, AP dual enrollment, but then even talking about SAT prep and doing all of this prep work, thinking, okay, well, this is super important. This is super important and super important. The more that you put an emphasis on how important it is and the more effort that they put into it, the more important it's going to be. And then the more likely they are going to buy. And if they are not 100% sure that they require that degree to do whatever it is that they want to do in their life, then they are heading down the wrong road.

Hannah Maruyama [00:24:17]:
Yeah. And this is something too, that I wanted to address where he's talking about people thinking it's not important, but because it's not workers with graduate and professional degrees are almost 4 times more exposed to AI's workers with a high school degree who are degree free. Well, there's a bachelor's degrees will be exposed by education level more than 5 times as exposed to AI than workers who are degree free. I think a large amount of this too is because all of those jobs can be trained. So the overview analysts who will probably still oversee a lot of AI tools don't have to have college degrees to do that. And a good example of people who are going to get their jobs taken away from them and then have nothing to do with that large student debt would be analysts with liberal arts degrees, communication, business, social jobs that have little to no actual function. So I

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:58]:
want to back up a little bit. When you say exposed to AI, do you mean experience and exposure to AI? No.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:04]:
I mean that they're exposed to AI and automating their job away.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:08]:
Automating or augmenting their job so that their job becomes irrelevant or completely changes in a material fashion that they are not a part of.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:17]:
Yeah. And I linked the article here. It'll be in the show notes. I read about this and the reason that people don't think that a college degree is important anymore is because it's not. Modern college degrees are largely useless. They aren't job training, they're barely education, and they have no cohesive standard. That's the biggest thing. When someone says, oh, they have a college degree.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:31]:
I'm like, that means nothing. Why? Because the colleges again are so greedy. People laugh about bachelor's degrees from the University of Phoenix. How is that materially different from Yale? How is that materially different from UNC? How is that different from University of South Dakota?

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:43]:
This goes back to the conversation that I had with my buddy who went to medical school. He's a doctor now. And I told this story before, I'll just sum it up real quickly. He didn't go to any classes, the medical school that he went to, they didn't have to go to classes. They just had to show up and take the test. And so he went to very, very few classes. He actually went to a name brand school. I don't think I've told you this before, but I told this exact story to somebody in real life.

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:06]:
I'll tell you exactly where I was. I was in a hot tub in, lake Tahoe and I was talking. We were snowboarding. We were done for the day. And I was sitting next to this guy and we were just talking. We're both sore from the day and we get into what we do and stuff. He's a doctor. And so I was talking to him and he's asked me what I do.

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:24]:
I told him what I do. We found each other's work interesting and everything. Then I told him the story of this doctor, a friend of mine who didn't utilize the name brand school that he went to. I told him the story that he didn't utilize any of the name brand things there. He just didn't go to class. He ended up not attending any of the lectures. Not that he didn't study. He did study.

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:43]:
He used what would have equated to like $3,000 worth of student materials, but he just pirated it online. All of his money was going towards the student debt that he's incurring. He is right on the average for doctors quarter of a $1,000,000 worth in debt,

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:58]:
which is going to stack as he goes on.

Ryan Maruyama [00:27:00]:
And it's still not paying it down enough. He's in a very, very good residency program. I said the name, you know, where he worked and the cost of living around that place is really, really high. And he doesn't get paid a lot of money, but then when he has his days off, he wants to spend a little money. And so he doesn't have a lot of money. And so he's, so his debt is still going up now, which

Hannah Maruyama [00:27:17]:
is what happens to them.

Ryan Maruyama [00:27:18]:
Exactly. He's going to eventually make quote a lot of money. And I think if he goes into certain parts of it, if he goes into the private sector, I think he'll eventually, maybe in 10 years or so, hopefully he might make, oh, maybe $1,000,000 a year or so. I'm hoping because he's going to need it. I'm not being a or anything like that. I hope that's what it ends up to be. But even if he goes into the lower end, he'll make a few $100,000 a year, 600 something like that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:27:41]:
It is really tough for the doctors to get out of that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:27:43]:
Anyway, while he was in college, he pirated these educational resources and he just studied those things because the things that he was getting from the school wasn't good enough and it wasn't direct enough for at least for his mind and things like that. He used that. He took the test and he passed. And obviously, he's in this place that you would know, and he'd be like, wow, that's impressive. So the guy's not an idiot. And that's exactly what I told this story to that guy, to that doctor who I was in the hot tub with. And he was just like, oh, what medical school did he go to? Thinking that it was going to be some nowhere university of Phoenix med school. And I say the name and he's like, oh, And so I asked this doctor who is for $3,000 he could have gotten his education, but he's $250 in debt now.

Ryan Maruyama [00:28:27]:
And now when I had this conversation with him first time, it was like 2 years ago, a year and a half ago. So he's probably $300,000 in debt now. So he has a really vested interest in making this stop. And so I said, what is the answer to all this debt and everything? But what is the answer to the college? Because behind closed doors, he agreed with me. He agrees with our stance and he agrees. You don't need a college degree for everything. He said micro credentialing to tie it back to what you're saying, which is there's no cohesive standard amongst degrees. My economics degree is not the same as an economics degree from whatever university is lower than than the university that I went to.

Ryan Maruyama [00:29:04]:
And it's not the same as the university that is higher than what I went to. It's because there's no cohesive standard. It just doesn't make any sense. And so what this doctor was saying, it was that he thinks the future is going to be micro credentialing of some sort, which is every industry is going to have some sort of governing body that comes up with certain industry standards and then test similar to the bar kind of similar to your medical licensure. So you take whatever it is and it doesn't even have to be a Tesla. It's just electric vehicle exam. And then you can go work in you're certified to this level in the electrical vehicle market. That is what he thought the future was going to be.

Ryan Maruyama [00:29:40]:
I agree with that. The one thing I cringe about that is that I think if that happens, there's going to be tyranny then just like how there's tyranny now in the credentialing market. Is it a better solution than what it is now? Probably, But eventually there's going to be corruption and it's going to be the same problem. And then they're going to not have the relevant skills in there. And so what I find interesting, and this is not to be some corporate cuck or anything like that, but what I find interesting is that where are these cohesive standards that we see now? And the cohesive standards are in the company certifications. If you look at the tech certifications nowadays, the tech certifications, they do have cohesive standards to then certify people to help. It's self serving in many cases. So you think of Google certifications, you think of Salesforce certifications, you think of HubSpot certifications, ServiceNow certifications, all of these massive companies.

Ryan Maruyama [00:30:32]:
You think of SaaS certification, SAS, of which I had Matt Chicatana on the podcast. And I'll put the link in the show notes to Matt Chicatana's episode. You guys can all go back if you guys are thinking about certifications for your young adult. You can all go back and listen to that episode. It's Matt's job to come up with the standards for the certifications that SAS provide us. He works at SAS and he develops the test and the certification standards to then certify all of the people to then help maintain the SaaS ecosystems. The companies that you buy into the SaaS product, they need to hire talent, and Matt helps to certify and make sure that all of the talent that passes the admin one and the level 2 admin and the level, whatever admin, they all are at the same level. And that is where you are seeing the cohesive standard come into play.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:26]:
And it is in the private sector and is with these big corporations that are doing it with their own software and with their own standards.

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:35]:
And you and I've talked about this before for years actually have guessed that this is the way this is going to go. I saw the CEO of Palantir. It was on X and it's a video of him interviewing these kids. And the quote at the top of the video is the best degree is a Palantir degree. Literally. That's what I saw today. And that is the future. They're just going to cut the colleges out completely.

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:58]:
They're going to die off. That's what's going to happen. The few that remain will be forced to go back to what they were originally supposed to be, which is institutions where people go to actually learn and think more deeply about things because they are no longer that. Actually the death of the colleges is the only thing that can save the colleges. And it's the only thing that can put them back to their pure form and actually put them back to the ethics that govern them at the beginning and make them an actual force for good and actual force for real education in the world. And so I'm hoping that more of these colleges just collapse and the only ones that survive are the ones that are doing a good job.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:30]:
And so moving on, I realized that getting into college and graduating isn't easy and neither is paying for the privilege. Where k to 12 education is lacking, it can and must be improved. Student loans and financial aid must be accessible and generous, and colleges and universities themselves are far from perfect at their job. One sign, more students than not require more than 4 years to earn a 4 year degree.

Hannah Maruyama [00:32:51]:
Student loans and financial aid must be accessible and generous. Student loans are given to anyone with the pulse. So there's that. Not only are they given to anyone with the pulse, but as long as you're still piling yourself deeper into debt, you can always take on more student loans. So there is nothing about ROI. There's nothing about what you're going to do with that. So if you are 17 or 18, and you sign a student loan, after you get a bachelor's degree loan, then you can get a master's degree loan, and then you can get a PhD loan, and then you can get another one. Student loans are about as accessible as humanly possible, which is part of the problem.

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:19]:
And then he said more students than not require more than 4 years to earn a 4 year degree. Yeah. And that's because colleges want to keep them there because the longer these kids are on campus, the more money the colleges can take from them and keep in their accounts so that they can grow tax free wealth in their endowments because they're functionally hedge funds.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:36]:
I will say that that was in criticism to the colleges because he does say, and colleges and universities themselves are far from perfect at their job.

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:43]:
Yeah. He just thinks it's a bug, not a feature. Like, it's on purpose. Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:46]:
Yeah. That's exactly right.

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:47]:
He thinks it's an accident. I'm like, no. No.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:48]:
No. That's the purpose. That's the perfect way to say that. He's just saying, well, they could be better at their job. And then everybody in the admin department, everybody in the marketing and sales department are just laughing because they're just like, he thinks we do it on accident. He thinks we're bad at our job because they take 5 and a half years.

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:05]:
To graduate. Yeah. Oh, like that's not in completely on purpose.

Ryan Maruyama [00:34:09]:
Yeah.

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:09]:
And also just to put this out here, 7.7 percent of all jobs legally require college degrees. That's it. The rest of those jobs are open to your child. They don't have to go through any of this. And the last thing he says is that these challenges shouldn't persuade us to ignore or downplay the advantages of going to college. Alternatives have a place. You mean the current pathway for most people has a place, but emphasis on getting a 4 year degree and extending that possibility to as many students as possible should remain. Note it shouldn't.

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:33]:
And we're going to tell you how to help your child avoid the propaganda that this individual is writing. So a few different things, help them be objective about what they need from their future. And then after you do that, help them figure out what jobs will get them, what they need. Remember to use the legal requirement breakdown really heavily here. So don't have them eliminate jobs just because they think those jobs require a college degree while they're thinking about this and then figure out what educational products they actually need to purchase to get those jobs. This is so key. Licenses, certifications, hardware, or software skills. Then pick based on their educational budget, yours as a family, and then how they want to learn.

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:08]:
It is 2024. Ignore degree requirements and people like this at all times so that you can help your child live the way they want and learn the way that they want to.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:16]:
Exactly. And if you need help walking through that entire process, the degree free way, how to help your 16 to 20 year old build the life they want, we walk you through that entire process in there. You can pick that up at degreefree.coforward/book. And that was this week's episode. I hope you guys liked it. We tried something a little bit different, which is just do one thing and we just go deep on one subject. Although I went a little deep on telling my hot tub story.

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:41]:
And so It's like a time machine.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:43]:
Yeah. I told actually guys, aloha.