Your child's high school is celebrating one number right now. How many seniors got into college. But that number tells you nothing about whether your child will graduate, get a job, or be able to pay back what they borrowed. Here's the thing: the entire system is built to get your child enrolled, not to make sure they end up with a good life. And you are the only person in this picture who actually wants what is best for them. Before you sign anything, you need to see the real numbers.
Want to help your 16-20 year old build the life they want without wasting 5 and half years and going into crippling student debt?
Get your copy of "The Degree Free Way" workbook!
Guide your 16-20 year old to jobs that help them reach their goals. All while saving time and money.
Discover personalized career options and clear direction with this comprehensive workbook set.
Get "The Degree Free Way" Workbook here → http://degreefree.com/book
Enjoy the episode!
Desperate for an alternative to the college debt trap for your teen?
Overwhelmed by all the college alternative options?
Help your 16-20 year old build a the life the want!
Like, subscribe, write us a review, and if you have a question or want some advice email us at contact@degreefree.com
Join the Degree Free! Receive our weekly newsletter and get exclusive tips and tricks to help your child build they life they want, Degree Free!
Listen to the episode on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, or on your favorite podcast platform.
AI is reshaping careers fast. Get your young adult ahead of their peers, starting with the steps we broke down in our last episode. Listen now.
Episode Summary:
The whole K through 12 system is built around one goal: college enrollment. Schools track it, report it, and put it on banners. But enrollment tells you nothing about what happens after your child signs the form. So let me show you what the numbers actually say. About 62% of high school seniors enroll in college.
Only 7% of jobs legally require a degree. That means we are sending eight times more young adults to college than there are degree-required jobs waiting for them. Of every 100 students who start a four-year degree, only 47 finish on time. A third never finish at all. And of those who do graduate, only 27% will work in a field related to their major.
Put it all together and the odds that your child enrolls, graduates on time, and works in their field of study is about one in seven. On top of that, 52% of recent graduates are underemployed one year out. And 45% are still underemployed a decade later. Meanwhile, parent plus loan debt has grown 77% in the last decade, at an interest rate of nearly 9%.
The average borrower takes 17 years to pay off their loans. That debt delays homes, marriages, families, and businesses. At more than one in four American colleges, the typical graduate earns less than a high school graduate 10 years after enrolling. The fix is not to panic. It is to change the question.
Stop asking what college your child should attend. Start asking what they need from their work to live the life they want. Answer four questions first: what income do they need, what schedule fits them, what environment do they want to work in, and where do they want to live. Work backwards from those answers to find the right career.
Then, and only then, ask whether that career legally requires a degree. For most careers, it does not. And the path in without a degree is faster, cheaper, and less risky than the one in seven shot the brochures are selling you.
Connect With Hannah:
Action Steps & Recommendations:
Timestamps:
References, Resources Mentioned & Suggested Reading:
Hannah Maruyama [00:00:00]:
Everything to do with education in the United states, K through 12, is for one singular goal. When schools are measuring this and they're bragging about college admissions, the only piece of information they are actually giving you is how many kids get into student loan debt. They're not telling you if those kids get jobs that actually benefit them long term. They're not telling you if those kids have positive ROI on the degrees that they end up buying. They're not telling you if those kids end up having a successful life in that they get the things that they actually want out of their life. And our whole entire system, and this is true for homeschoolers, charter schoolers, private schoolers and public schoolers. The whole goal from a policy level is getting kids into college. But that doesn't tell us anything about whether or not they're going to have a good life.
Hannah Maruyama [00:00:40]:
And today I'm going to prove to you why that is the absolute worst thing and how it's ruining our country. If you're a parent, by the end of this episode, you're going to understand why college enrollment is the wrong thing to optimize for and what you can do instead to make sure that your child ends up with work that supports the life they want in something that's actually going to lead them to a content and happy life. And so if you're a parent right now, especially if your child's about to graduate high school or just did you know that your child's high school is all focused on one number? And that's how many high school seniors get into college that year. They've probably got it on banners, the principal mentioned it at graduation, all of their friends are talking about it, the counselors track it and then the state rewards them for it and they use it to get more kids enrolled in their school. And this is true for public, private, charter and even homeschool co ops. And here's what nobody's going to say to you. The that number is the worst thing to measure. We've built our Entire K through 12 system around hitting it and it's wrecking American kids today.
Hannah Maruyama [00:01:32]:
I want to walk you through what's actually happening when we use college enrollment as a success metric. Like just the numbers, just what we're aiming kids at and then what they get when they actually hit this target that all of our energy and money and time is focused to. But before we get into that, what do I know about this? I co founded Degree Free with my husband Ryan. I went into tech without ever buying a college degree and then worked in AI and machine learning for years. I wrote the degree Free Way, how to help your 16 to 20 year old build the life they want. And that book has helped 17,000 families plus nationwide help their kids find the right career for them. Our team has helped hundreds of young adults find the right career for them and then start that in our launch program using the exact same frameworks I'm about to talk you through. So I've watched this play out in real time with real families hundreds of times.
Hannah Maruyama [00:02:15]:
And then once you see what I'm about to show you, you're not going to be able to unsee it. And the reason this matters, this is so key, is if you change the goal, you change the outcome, it's going to change your actions leading up to school graduation and then directly following it, because those decisions are so pivotal for the rest of your child's life. So let's start with the number you hear about constantly. And I'm reminded of somebody who ran a school for high performing kids in Florida and he got on the phone with me and so proudly told me that 99% of the young adults in his program were going to college. Instead of being impressed, I was horrified and I told him that's way too high. It is statistically impossible for this many kids to be going to college and for that to be the right decision. Now, about 62% of high school seniors will enroll in college. What's the problem with that? Right? More kids in college, more opportunity, right? No.
Hannah Maruyama [00:03:01]:
About 7% of jobs in the US legally require degrees and not all of those have positive roi. I want to make sure you key in on this. We are sending 62% of American high schoolers to college directly after they graduate high school. Our economy has degree required jobs for 7% of them. So basically, we are sending eight times more kids to college than there are jobs to give those people. Not only that, but not all of the jobs that legally require degrees actually make their money back. And when you see that and you understand it, it's no wonder that our economy looks the way it does. It's no wonder that all your friends are going, oh, my kid graduated with a computer science degree or a biology degree and they can't get a job.
Hannah Maruyama [00:03:38]:
It's because there wasn't a job there to begin with. In every single state in this country, the vast majority of jobs, including high paying jobs, tech jobs, medical jobs, finance jobs, healthcare jobs, do not legally require a college degree. And because they do not, there are other ways in Even in Washington D.C. which is the most paper jurisdiction in America, almost 90% of the jobs do not require a degree. In Nevada, it's almost 95%. That's the lowest state in the country. And how do I know? I went through and I counted, I went state by state and I figured out how many jobs in every single state legally require college degrees. I want this to be very, very clear.
Hannah Maruyama [00:04:12]:
There is not a single state in this country where a degree is required for most jobs, including most good jobs. Because if you want to take a wild guess about which profession requires the most degrees and represents the biggest chunk of that 7.7%, it's teachers. And they are the ones that often get negative ROI for their degrees. And when you realize that, you see that the entire K through 12 system is a self feeding jobs program. So what is the point? There's a roughly 7% target with 62% of kids being shoved at it. And not all of them are going to make their money back. Pushing 62% of kids into buying something that only 7% of them actually need to get work is not success. And that's not something we should be aiming for.
Hannah Maruyama [00:04:53]:
I'm about to show you why this matters so much. Quick pause. If you're a parent trying to figure out whether college is right for your child, subscribe. This show exists to give you real data on what's actually happening to young people in the US So you can help your child make better decisions about their future work. Let's get into the numbers a little bit. So let's say that your child enrolls in college and they're on the college conveyor belt. Now what? And here's what the schools are not going to put on their banners, mostly because they don't know. So out of 100 kids who start a four year degree, only about 47 of them will finish in four years.
Hannah Maruyama [00:05:22]:
Give them six years. Now only 64% of them are going to finish. That means 36 out of every hundred kids who start college will never finish. Not in four years, not in six, not at all. 41.9 million American adults right now have what's called some college. No credential. That's me. 41.9 million.
Hannah Maruyama [00:05:38]:
That's bigger than the entire population of California. And these are people who started college and paid for some of it and ended up leaving with nothing in hand. Now let's talk about who actually uses their degree because it's almost none of them. Only 27% of those who do graduate will end up using their degree. So 73% of young adults who do graduate from college, and it usually takes them five and a half years, not four, will not work in a job that has anything to do at all with their major. There's no logical way to argue that they needed the degree to get their work, especially if it's not legally required. So out of every 100 kids who graduate, only 27 of them are actually going to be working in the field that they just spent four to six years and $100,000. 108,000 to 156K, according to the NCES.
Hannah Maruyama [00:06:20]:
Getting a paper 4, 27 out of 100. And if that's not bad enough for you, don't worry, it gets worse. The Burning Glass Institute and Strada looked at recent bachelor's degree graduates and found that 52% of them are underemployed one year out of school. Underemployed means they're working in a job that doesn't require a degree at all. Now, let's skip ahead a decade. Surely this is fixed, right? No. 45% of them are still underemployed. And almost half of them 10 years into their career are still working jobs that they didn't need the degree they paid for at all.
Hannah Maruyama [00:06:48]:
And there's one more layer that makes this even worse. 73% of those grads who get stuck in an underemployed job in their first year stay underemployed a decade later. And if they don't land a degree required role right out of college, that also has positive roi. Because as we talked about earlier, most people who are buying degrees are buying them to be K through 12 teachers. The odds say that they're probably never going to end up earning higher. Now let's stack all this together because this is a lot of numbers, a lot of stats. So an 18, 19 year old kid enrolls in college today, 2026. Here are the actual odds that this is going to work out.
Hannah Maruyama [00:07:20]:
About half of them won't finish on time. About a third will not graduate at all. And of the ones who do graduate, only 27% of them will work in the field that they studied. Which means that you could even loosely make the argument that they needed to get the degree at all. So combine all of that and the odds that a kid who enrolls today both graduates on time and ends up working in their field of study is about one in seven. One in seven. And just because your child does graduate on time does end up working in their field of study does not mean that they like that job, does not mean that they will make their money back, and it does not mean that that is going to allow them to live the life that they want. Because many young adults choose from a very limited menu of career options that are given them by high schools.
Hannah Maruyama [00:08:01]:
So they're going to college for the limited jobs that they knew about. And then if they manage to beat the odds and they do graduate and they do work in their field of study, that does not necessarily mean that they're going to end up in a life that they actually want. And why is this such a big problem? Because every single high school in America is using this as their measure of success. That's what counselors are pushing kids in their office towards. That's the whole goal from a policy level at the doe. And that's what parents are telling their kids they have to do. And parents are the number one influence on whether or not their kids buy degrees. So for parents who are facing this decision, or just didn't, don't feel super good about it, a one in seven shot at the outcome the brochures are promising you.
Hannah Maruyama [00:08:39]:
And we're calling that a win. And we're saying we should keep doing this every year to 62% of high school seniors, because, I mean, look at how well it's going. And let's talk about the kids that don't go. We make them feel bad, we shame them, even though if they do go, they have a very slim chance that that's going to work out in the way that they think it will. And the thing I want us to take away here is we're failing all of them. And we're failing all of them because we're afraid of what will happen if we push on the status quo, even though it really couldn't get worse than it is now. Because all you have to do to put your child ahead of 50% of the population is not put them in student loan debt. It really is that simple.
Hannah Maruyama [00:09:14]:
Let's talk about what this actually does to a young person's life. Like, functionally speaking, when you start your life out at 17 or 18 years old, buying paper that there is a 1 in 7 chance will even get you a job that's related to the paper you're buying. Americans owe $1.84 trillion on student loans. According to the U.S. department of Education, 42.8 million Americans are carrying federal student debt. The average balance is about $40,000 per person. Now, parents, listen to this part. Very specifically, parent plus loan Debt has grown 77% in the last decade.
Hannah Maruyama [00:09:44]:
It's at $110 billion now. That's parents borrowing in their own names to pay for their kids college at an interest rate of 8.94%. And another group that's taking out these loans that's going to shock people is grandparents. And a lot of that is because parents are already tapped out on student loans. They have their own loans because 20 years ago this still wasn't working. And it hasn't improved, it's just gotten worse. So now we're looking at an 8.94% interest rate. That's a credit card rate on six figures of debt in your name.
Hannah Maruyama [00:10:12]:
It's going to keep you from retiring, it's going to cause you to take out HELOCs on your house to pay it off or delay retirement. Many parents have literally zero idea that they're being asked to take out a subprime loan to fund a 1 in 7 outcome. And again, this does not mean that their child is going to earn high. It does not mean that their child's going to get a good job. It just means that the degree will be loosely related to whatever job they get afterwards. And here's the brutal part, those loans are just not getting paid back. As of late 2025, 25% of borrowers with payments due are delinquent. That's three times what it was before 2025.4 million Americans are already in default.
Hannah Maruyama [00:10:45]:
And the average undergrad borrower takes 17 years to pay off their loans. Not 5, not 10, 17. If your child is lucky, they'll be in their mid-30s to early 40s by the time they pay these loans off. And if you have the barest amount of common sense, you see that carrying a loan balance like that is going to naturally cause people to do several things. Not buy homes, not start businesses, and not get married and have families. It's just the way of it. So a 22 year old grad with a degree that they probably don't use, they start paying off these loans in their 20s, they're still paying them off in their 30s and often into their 40s. And now that pushes everything back.
Hannah Maruyama [00:11:23]:
Can't buy a house, I gotta pay my loans. We can't get married yet. The wedding's gonna be expensive and I have to pay my student loans. We can't have kids yet. We don't have enough money to provide for the kids because inflation has caused things to go up. And we are still paying these loans. Man, I'D love to start a business, but I can't because I have to keep this W2 job that's really low earning because I have to pay off my loans. I can't put anything into retirement because I have to pay off my loans.
Hannah Maruyama [00:11:47]:
They can't qualify for a mortgage with 40 grand of debt sitting on their credit report. And one of the things that we hear a lot because of what we do is we get mortgage loan officers who will tell us that student loan debt is wrecking people's ability to buy homes. And the other thing is you can't get a small business loan when you owe Sallie Mae and you're behind on it. And the worst part of this is 50% of Gen Z is entrepreneurial. They want to start businesses, but they're not going to be able to when they have no capital and they have negative interest working against them. Every dollar that should be compounding in an index fund for the next 40 years is going to a loan servicer instead. This is not theory. This is the real experience of an entire generation of Americans.
Hannah Maruyama [00:12:22]:
And I hope that this explains why when you look around the college premium that supposedly is so guaranteed and so sure, it's just not materializing. It's why you hear your friends going, wow, my kids can't get a job even though they have a four year degree. Wow, my daughter's going to get a master's degree, but it's because she can't get a job. While my son's going to try to get into a graduate program because, I mean, he just can't get a job. That's why. That's why. Because they're not telling you the truth about what's going on. And here's the kicker, that almost nobody is talking about 26% of U.S.
Hannah Maruyama [00:12:52]:
colleges. So 1 in 4, the typical grad is going to earn less than a high school grad 10 years after they enroll. So again, at more than one in four American colleges, the kid who went and graduated is earning less than the kid who skipped the whole thing entirely and just got a job literally anywhere 10 years later with debt, with four to six years of lost wages and nothing to show for any of it. When you think about how we're measuring success, it makes a lot more sense as to why nothing seems to be working out. And it's why so many parents have this sneaking suspicion college is not what it used to be. It's because it's not. So how do we get here? Wait, honestly? Because somewhere along the way, everyone Started measuring the wrong thing. Maybe even you.
Hannah Maruyama [00:13:28]:
High schools track college acceptance rates. They report them to the state, they put them in their marketing, and the principal gets graded on it, the counselors get graded on it. But nobody is tracking what happens after your kid signs the enrollment form. Whether they got a job, whether the degree was worth anything to them at all. And while this is impossible to measure, I want to know if that degree actively kept them from getting the life that they want. Because that's what I see happening a lot of times with college degrees. The school's job is done the minute your kid commits to a college. After that, it's somebody else's problem.
Hannah Maruyama [00:13:58]:
That's why your kid's school cares more about how many seniors get into college than how many graduates have a real career five years later, or are not in debt, or have successfully started businesses or even like the job that they're in. They're not measured on any other number. So they only measure college acceptance. And the push doesn't stop with the school. By the way, colleges have an obvious interest in your child enrolling. The federal government has an interest in subsidizing the loans. The College Board has an interest in keeping the SAT relevant. There's a multi trillion dollar industry built around getting your kid in the door.
Hannah Maruyama [00:14:28]:
And what gets measured gets done. We're measuring enrollment. We're getting enrollment. We're not getting careers or marriages or homes or wealth or even happy successful citizens out of it. And we're surprised by that. We probably shouldn't be. Quick word from our sponsor. Just kidding.
Hannah Maruyama [00:14:45]:
There's no sponsor. It's just me. If you've got an 18 to 20 year old and you don't want them to be a statistic, that's exactly why Degree Free exists. Our team helps parents and their young adult find a real career that fits what they need, that fits their interest. And then does the research on the ground over weeks to find out exactly what skills they need to get into that industry. And then we help them figure out the right way to learn it for them in the way that they need to. And then our strategists build a 12 month custom plan with your child, walking them through exactly what they need to do over the next 12 months to learn. And then get in to their right entry level role with no debt.
Hannah Maruyama [00:15:18]:
A real plan that they can accomplish and use in the next 12 months to find and start the right career for them. Apply for the program below. It's an intense one on one custom service that will help your child Go from I don't know what to do to I know exactly what career I'm going into that fits my needs that I'm interested in and exactly how I'm going to get it over the next 12 months. If that sounds like what your child needs, apply for the program below. Now back to the show. Now here's what no one's going to tell you at that college and career day or kids high school. You're the only person in this picture who can stop the conveyor belt. The school can't, the counselor won't, and the colleges definitely don't want to do that.
Hannah Maruyama [00:15:49]:
Every one of them has a financial reason to keep your kid moving forward into a degree that they probably don't need, may not finish and likely will not use. You're the only one with no incentive in this, the only one who actually wants what's best for your child. So here's what to do instead. So stop asking, what college should my kid go to? That's the wrong question. It assumes that college is the default and the burden's on you to opt out. Start asking, what does my kid need from their work to live the life that they want? There are four key questions. Sit down with your young adult and answer these honestly. What kind of income do they need to live the life they want? Different paths for different targets.
Hannah Maruyama [00:16:25]:
What schedule fits them? 9 to 5? Shift work, self directed travel, heavy remote. The schedule shapes every other option. What environment are they going to work in? Outdoors, in an office, client facing or alone? If your child needs a certain environment to work in, it's going to rule out tons of options. And then where do they want to live and build their life? Are they staying local? Are they trying to move? Do they want to live in a rural place, in a city or near family? Geography will constrain everything else. Now once you've got these answers, you work back from the life that they want. Find the careers that deliver it. And it's going to be so much simpler when you know what you're actually looking for. Then and only then do you ask whether college is the right path to to that career.
Hannah Maruyama [00:17:07]:
Please check to see if it legally requires a degree because if it doesn't, there is another way in. And I say that because that is what we do in degree free in the launch program. And you would not believe all of the other options that your child can do and will learn better, more efficiently and in a better way for them than college. And almost all of them are faster, higher quality. So for some Careers like physicians or CPAs, college is going to be required. Run that path once you know what they need, and run that same exact measured play to figure out what the right option is for your family, where they they are. But for most careers, it's absolutely unnecessary and the data is telling you it's one of the highest risk things you could do right out of the gate. And for many kids, like software engineers or salespeople or electricians, college is actively the wrong path.
Hannah Maruyama [00:17:50]:
You don't have to take my word for any of this. Apple, IBM, Google, Tesla, bank of America, Walmart, Delta and Accenture have all publicly removed degree requirements for huge swaths of their roles. SpaceX is hiring avionics technicians right now with a high school diploma and one year of hand tool experience for $77,000 a year, which by the way is more than a median master's degree holder is going to make in the middle of their career. Fourteen state governors have signed executive orders dropping degree requirements for state government jobs. Eight more states have done it through legislation and probably more this year. The job market has moved way past paper, but your kids high school is just not going to tell them that I want to leave you with this. Your child is not a number on a banner. They're not a stat that's going to help the principal hit a certain quota.
Hannah Maruyama [00:18:30]:
And they're not a tuition check that's going to keep a college solvent while they are bleeding applicants. Your child is a very young adult who is about to make the biggest financial decision of their life with very little information before they realize they are even making it. And the system around them is going to blatantly lie to them about the odds and the necessity of being there. Your job, the only job that matters in the season is to slow them down. Pull them off the conveyor belt long enough to figure out the answer to those four questions. Start career first, not college first, and then decide the path based on your child's needs and your family's budget and goals and location. There is more opportunity in the US labor market right now for smart, hardworking, motivated young adults than there has ever been. Apprenticeships are up 114% in the last decade.
Hannah Maruyama [00:19:18]:
And I'm not just talking about the trades paying six figures at the top of the wage scale. Tech companies are hiring on portfolio. Regional and small to medium sized businesses, which make up 80% of hiring in our country, are starving for new talent and willing to pay to train them. Your kid can have a real life with income purpose, a home, a family and zero student debt starting at 18, 19, 20, not at 32 or 40 after they finally finish paying off loans for a degree they didn't even use. But not if you let the school shove them off this cliff if they don't need to jump a 1 in 7 shot at earning a piece of paper that will even loosely connect to the job that they are going to get. And that paper costing 108 to $156,000 and taking four to six years to get is not success. It is the most risky thing they could do at this age. It's a coin flip with bankruptcy exempt debt attached to it and you are the only thing standing in the way of it.
Hannah Maruyama [00:20:09]:
You can put your child on the right path by helping them figure out what they need and then working backwards to find the career that fits it and then helping them find the right entry level role to start. And doing this today will change their decisions and change the trajectory of their entire life. If this helped you see the system more clearly, please subscribe and share this with another parent before they sign that FAFSA or sign a loan that they feel in their gut is not going to work out. College enrollment is no longer the success metric. Your child getting what they want out of their life is.
