The College Experience Was Never About College (Degree Free #202)

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:00]:
Today we're going to be talking about what's happening in college towns. It is pretty funny that you brought this up because I think I saw the same article that basically started this entire thing.

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:11]:
Yeah. So something interesting is happening in college towns across the country. And that is that young people are moving to college towns, but they're not going to college. So it's not that they're enrolled in the college, but they are living, working, and building community in college towns because there's a lot of young people. And this article just kind of confirms something that I realize I've seen in real life and actually participated in as somebody who did live very close to a college campus. And that contributed a lot to there being a lot of young people around. But what's kind of fascinating is that a friend of mine sent me a story after I talked to her about this article. And she said, hey, this was such an interesting read for me because I have a really close friend from college who didn't go to college with me at all.

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:53]:
She went to a big state school in California and— This individual, she said he did really well. He went to all the games. He's friends with all of her friends. They have the same exact friend group. And not only did he have all the same connections and community and social events, but he was working the entire way through. He even lived in the same apartment complex as a lot of the other students. And his college experience was the same as those enrolled in the state school. But my friend said that the difference in his experience is that he had professional network.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:23]:
He had—

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:23]:
Connections.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:24]:
professional work experience, and he had significantly more money in the bank, obviously at the end of the college experience, as those who were in the state school. She said, interestingly, he's gotten all of the social benefits that are supposedly attributed to college, but he just got them by being in proximity to young people.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:40]:
Yeah. And so I guess we should tell what that article was about. And it was basically about what you're saying, but that being a trend, which is the young adults are moving to college towns, but they're not going to college. They're not attending The universities, they're not going to class. They're just moving to the college town into the exact same places, onto the exact same blocks, et cetera, that your child is that's going to college or your friend's child is that's going to that same college. And largely their life is the same, at least from the social aspect perspective. They're not going to college. they're working, as you said.

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:21]:
What this article talked about was that they're not just moving to college towns just to move there. They're moving there to be around other young people for the social aspect, but they are actually taking classes. They're taking certifications. They're working towards licenses. They're working strategic entry-level jobs. And so they're actually building professional network. And so in a lot of ways, it seems very intentional that they're doing this. It's not an accident.

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:41]:
It's not, oh, I'm just going to go to the college town too. It's no, no, no. I'm going to move there because I'm just going to be around my friend. And maybe it's to be around their friends who are moving. And they're like, oh, I'm just going to go and hang out and I'm just going to work and I'm just going to learn. XYZ, but because they're a lot more intentional and they're not signing up for the loans, they're coming out of this pretty far ahead of their peers who are in college. For a lot of parents, I think this might be an interesting idea because I don't think it's occurred to a lot of people that if you're worried about the social aspect for your child and you're willing to help them while they are maturing or going through this 18 to 22-year-old age range, you could also just pay for them to live in an apartment in that area while they get a job and work and have some responsibility. That's an entirely acceptable way to launch your child and get them on their own and get them with some actual responsibility in the world.

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:28]:
And the other thing I know that a lot of parents do worry about the social aspect. They worry about sports, they worry about potential spouses, they worry about friends, but your child can participate in all of those things if they just go live in a college town because there are intramural and rec league sports in college towns because there's a lot of young people and not all of them are playing collegiate sports. There's lots of people that just play lots of sports because they're all young and that's what they do. They have time. And so that's another thing that I think could satisfy a lot of the desire for community and sports that people are looking for for their kids. Sports is still a huge reason why people send their kids to college, massive.

Ryan Maruyama [00:04:01]:
Largely because that's going to be the last place that they play sports competitively, at least with any consequence of having a structured league that has real competition that then you go onto some sort of bracketed or at least standardized championship.

Hannah Maruyama [00:04:20]:
So if you're listening to this and you're going, oh, I've never really thought about that before. Maybe I could just send my child to a college town instead of actually enrolling them in college. If I'm worried about the social aspect or the sports or them meeting a spouse or what have you, and you just want to get them around young people who are their age, you still have to do the Degree Free Four, which is figure out what their income schedule, work environment, and location are. Because if your child's going to move to a college town, they need to have strategic entry-level work because that is what's going to help them to build a professional network and help them to build their resume and help them to earn and learn while they are doing this. This is not an aimless thing at all, and it never should be. Once you figure those things out, you figure out what career is working for them, what they need to do, and then how they're going to do it. Then you help them figure out what they're going to be learning while they're living in this town. What are our goals, like trackable goals that you're going to be doing? Where are you going to work? What sports are you going to play? What community events are you going to go to? Where are you going to volunteer? XYZ.

Hannah Maruyama [00:05:09]:
And then help them figure out where they're going to live. That's definitely the gray part of this is helping them figure out where's a good place to live. And then obviously making sure that it's safe. I talked to a dad who had his daughter in our Launch program and he worked in student housing. And he told me something that I thought was groundbreakingly interesting, which was that young adults who are not in college can live in off-campus student housing. They are perfectly able to sign leases for those, what they call kiddie condos, which is a bathroom and a a big room in a house with other kids. They're perfectly able to do that. And I think for a lot of parents, that would satisfy that desire to launch their kids and have them somewhere where there's not no oversight, but they're not being watched either.

Hannah Maruyama [00:05:50]:
But there's somebody there. There's staff that takes care of the building. So they're not completely on their own. And I think that that for a lot of parents would be an awesome first step if their child does not want to go to college or if the parents are not sure that they should go to college, but They still want the child to have that level of independence and then still be working towards something.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:09]:
Yeah. And I know when you had that conversation with that Launch Program parent, one of the things that he was concerned about was the declining enrollment numbers. And with that enrollment declining, that industry is declining as well without people knowing that, hey, your child, even though they don't go to college, even though they're not enrolled, they can still live in these houses. Then they, and exactly what you said, basically like, kind of want to say a halfway house, but it's like not a halfway house.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:35]:
Yeah. It's like— It's not a halfway house.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:37]:
It's a launchpad. Yeah, sure.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:40]:
That's what they should— I told him, I said, hey, I actually had this discussion with him and I said, hey, I don't think a lot of parents know that their kids can live in off-campus student housing if they're not students. I said, I don't think most parents know that. I think that'd be shocking information for most of them. And I think if they knew it was an option, a lot of them would be really excited about it because they do want them to have that experience, but in a more controlled environment. And a lot of them do, a lot of parents do want that and they would gladly pay for it. And it would be way less than college tuition. And he just said, oh, really? And I said, yeah. I said, do you think you should, I think you should do a little bit of a rebrand.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:11]:
I said, I think you should change your marketing because I think a lot of these parents don't know that that's an option for them. I said, Launchpad's a great name. And he's like, yeah, maybe there's something we can do. So we talked about it because I said, that's something that absolutely sounds like it would fit a need in the market for sure. As people look for alternatives for how do we help our kids start being independent, but not necessarily having a full-fledged apartment by themselves and not necessarily being alone, but having some level of oversight. I think there's some hope for that because people are still moving to college towns. So in 2025, there was 34 college towns where more people moved in than moved out, not necessarily students though. And then unemployment is below the national average in those towns, which is kind of fascinating.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:53]:
The top one is West Hartford, Connecticut. It brought in about 3 people for every 1 that left. And then Oxford, Mississippi, which is obviously a college town also, And they have a 1.7% unemployment rate, which is pretty good. I mean, that's pretty great. The overall national trend is that fewer young adults are enrolling in college. So they are calling it the enrollment cliff. There's a formal name for it. And so no matter what the colleges are saying, they're not telling the truth.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:16]:
More people are not enrolling in college. That's not what's going on at all. And then, and also you can just look at public opinion of college right now. And you know that people are not shelling out $38,000 a year for something that they feel that way about.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:27]:
Well, to be fair, it could be accurate for their institution. It could be accurate for— might not be accurate even for the entire university, but it might be accurate for whichever cherry-picked college within the university of which they're speaking about. You know what I mean? The College of Economics or the College of Psychology or whatever. And then, but the overall university enrollment might be down, but in this one specific program, it might be up. I don't know.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:52]:
Mm-hmm.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:53]:
And so I'm not saying that the that is what they're doing. It could just be that at their entire university, like, they're one of their, their university, that is the truth. But the overall trend throughout the nation is that enrollment is down.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:07]:
Yeah, not even down a cliff is what they're, what they're calling it. But overall, so it is interesting to see that. So way less kids are enrolling in college, but more people are still moving to college towns. And that means that young people are still choosing to live around other young people, which Makes complete sense. And it also really goes to show what you and I have talked about a couple episodes ago, which is that your child can have the college experience by being 18 to 22 years old. And then you can change and curate the proximity that they have to other young people during that age range. And if you do that, they will have the college experience because it's actually just the experience of being young.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:40]:
Yeah. I mean, I guess curate to a certain extent.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:43]:
Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:44]:
So maybe you can't curate all of their friends, and all of their activities to a certain extent, but you can curate the fact that they might not live in the ghetto because that's all they can afford. And you go to these student housing instead, or they just live around a college town in general.

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:00]:
Those are all good options. I think a lot of parents would go, oh, I never really thought that that was an option. It never really occurred to me that they could just live there and not be enrolled at the college, but it's definitely something they can do. I will say that a lot of young adults, I don't think really know how to look for specific activities and things like that. So if parents parents before their kids go do make a clear plan of what they're going to be doing, what they're going to be learning, how, why, where it's going to lead them, and how it's going to serve their larger career goals or education goals. But I think also helping them to build like, oh, there's this meetup, there's this sports thing, there's this group of people doing XYZ. Get the child to say, oh, these are the things I'm going to do. I'm committing to do these things.

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:39]:
I will do them for the year that I'm there. And then if you complete these tasks, the next year we'll re-up your lease and But it's conditional upon you doing these things that you guys have agreed to and plan to.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:50]:
Exactly what you said.

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:50]:
While you're supporting their life.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:51]:
And you said it already before earlier in the episode, but I did want to just hit it one more time. This isn't still like, hey, I don't know what I'm doing, so therefore I'm going to move to a college town.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:01]:
And party.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:02]:
Yeah. And just hang out. It has to serve the larger goals and exactly what you were talking about before, the Degree Free Four, money, schedule, work environment, location. It has to serve all of those things and be working towards some sort of greater goal. But if they can work towards that greater goal in a college town around people their age, why not?

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:23]:
Yeah. And that's what I think these young adults that are moving to the college towns have uncovered. That's what the article in the Wall Street Journal was talking about because so many of them have gone, I can just be here. I could just go to the tailgates. I can just go to the parties. I can do whatever. I can do the same things you're doing. I just don't have to pay this tuition.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:38]:
Yeah. And I think a lot of it is what you just said, which is, Why would you want them to be around it? And it's just so that they have similar interests and similar activities.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:47]:
I think it's just similar ages because there's a higher likelihood.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:51]:
But then downstream from similar ages is similar activities, right? Because more similar sports, similar interests. Exactly. Like you're not moving into the suburbs where there's 35-year-old parents, there's 40-year-old parents or whatever, and like doing what?

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:07]:
Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:07]:
You have nothing in common with these people. You're trying to see what's happening on a Tuesday night and they're like, I don't know.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:14]:
I'm sitting in the driveway.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:15]:
I'm going to bed. My kids have school tomorrow. I don't know. Go away.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:21]:
Right. But if they're around other people who are young, then they're able to do more stuff. So you just increase the proximity to people of that age when they move to a college town.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:31]:
Yeah. Which makes it a little bit easier to find the activities to fill their time basically, rather than when you go to a town that you don't know, it's a lot more difficult. There's probably only one place that you're really going to meet people, and that's probably at work if you're not meeting them online. You can do the meetups or whatever. That in and of itself is pretty daunting.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:55]:
As enrollment continues to drop, you'll probably see these towns continue to just be a place that young adults go. Even if the college shrinks very small or closes or goes bankrupt, I think that you'll even still see that these towns sometimes retain young people just moving to them because they're fairly inexpensive. They have the setup and the availability for young people to be there. And because of that, I think they might still survive. It might almost just be a place where people send their kids just because they're young and like, oh, you can go live over here. The apartments aren't that expensive. You can live around other people. You can do XYZ.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:26]:
So I think that that's even a possibility as enrollment continues to decline over the next That's interesting.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:32]:
I'm not sure if that's going to happen. I feel like the pull to be in a college town is the college itself. And therefore, why would anybody go there if not for that?

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:44]:
It would be interesting to see where there's college towns where the college has closed down and see if there's still an overrepresentation of young people that move there. Because I can see an argument both ways where if that's gone, then people don't move there anymore. But also, like I said, if there are young people there, and they've gone there because they're the— again, things are inexpensive. It's set up for young people to drive around, to walk places. I don't know. I think you still might see people that, that go there and live there when they're young. So I don't know.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:13]:
Possibly. I'm just trying to think of like true blue college towns that are out of the way.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:18]:
Sure.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:18]:
Like completely out of nowhere. Yeah, completely out of the way of anything. The only reason why those places are destinations is due to the college infrastructure and all of the like the student body that brings that, that enables that college infrastructure. Sure. The amount of money that flows in due to the student body going there, and then therefore all of the economic benefits of the, of the town around it. But for me, I'm just thinking, well, if—

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:47]:
What would be the draw?

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:48]:
Yeah. If nothing is there, if nothing's pulling me in, nothing's pulling the money in, and therefore nothing pulls in other people. And just the downstream effects of all of that. The only reason why these college towns that are huge are huge is due to the influx of people coming in there every single year and paying a ton of money.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:06]:
Well, I wonder though, if it'll kind of be— I think you're right ultimately, but I think that it'll probably be transitional because eventually college towns won't be a thing. We know we've only got a couple decades old of college towns. That's not really a thing. It's relatively recent to history. And so they will evaporate again gradually. You're right. I think you're right. Maybe those towns will dry up, which is interesting because I wonder what's going to happen.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:28]:
I wonder what will happen to all of the grounds. But I think it'll kind of be transitional where there might still be people, young people that go there because there's just other young people that are there, residuals from the college for a while before that eventually happens. I don't think it's going to be a quick process. It's going to take a decade maybe.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:45]:
Yeah. I don't think it's going to be a quick process unless the college shutting down is an abrupt process. It's like there was no writing on the wall. It's a private institution. They don't have to state their numbers or anything like that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:57]:
And they're just done.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:58]:
Yeah. It's not a state-run school or anything like— so they're not propped up by anything. And then all of a sudden they just kept it under lock and key. And then all of a sudden one day they said, oh, we got no money. Hey, yeah, we're shut down. The last thing is if anybody knows about it, about a college town that might have shut down and how quickly that happened, Tell us in the YouTube comments. You can go there, tell us, or actually in the Spotify comments as well. Let us know if you live in a place like that or if you're aware of a place like that so that we know, so that we can— I'm sure it would look something similar.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:36]:
Yeah. What happened? How long did it take? And did anything take its place? That's what I would want to know.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:40]:
Yeah. Because did anything take its place is a huge one. I don't know what would take its place other than another college though. I'm just talking about all the— I'm just talking about all the campus infrastructure. Think about Texas A&M or something like that shutting down.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:54]:
Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:54]:
Oregon State University shutting down. Sure. Right. Like College Station, Corvallis. Like those are huge college towns.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:00]:
Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:01]:
Like there's structures all over the place in those towns and it's like, what moves into those places?

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:05]:
I can only imagine a business, but I just don't know what kind of business.

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:08]:
Yeah. But it has to be a huge business, right? It has to be a campus type business. It has to be HP.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:13]:
Amazon.

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:15]:
Yeah, exactly. Oracle. Or, or, you know, something, something huge.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:19]:
Accenture, you're like something with a lot of need for a big plant or something where they have a lot of, they have a lot of corporate buildings and manufacturing and stuff they can repurpose. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Uh, but yeah, if you, if you know about that, we'd love to know. Actually, I'd be very curious about that. And then did young people keep moving to the town? That's what I want to know.

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:37]:
Yeah. That's pretty much it for this episode. Until next time, along.