The Future of Education & the Workforce: 12 Predictions for 2025 (DF#182)

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:00]:
I think that AI is not the future of HR people are going to be. It's actually going to be more people centered than ever. And I think that companies right now are in this AI. It's very flashy to have HR and integrate AI and use it to lower all of your HR staff. So you don't have to have as many people. I actually think that's going to backfire within a couple of years. It's going to cost them a lot of money, and it's going to take them years to figure out that actually you're going to have to use people to find good people. That's what I think is going to happen.

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:30]:
Aloha folks. Welcome back to degree free. We are going to be going over 12 predictions for 2025. Let's jump right into it. This is our second prediction episode that we've done. We did one last year and we are following it up again and we are doing it this year. If you want to see how we did last year, we can listen to the last episode where we go and recap and see, basically give ourselves a grade of how we did in 2024. But let's jump into 2025.

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:58]:
As I said in the last episode, I do think that AI is going to continue to roll and to gonna continue to roll on. And this is a little bit of a cop out because I did say this last year. This is part of my prediction to, from 20, 20 4, but I'm still a major believer. And then if you look at it as well, also a cop out because in December of 2024 alone, all the AI companies had major releases and major announcements and OpenAI did their 12 days of OpenAI, basically where every single day for 12 days, they launched a new feature, including Sora and the announcement of their new model. Oh, 3, those types of things. Yes. I think AI is still super early and it's not too late to jump in. And I'm not even talking about creating the large language models.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:51]:
I'm just talking about using it to gain a little bit of experience in whatever it is that your young adult is trying to do, whatever task they have, trying to figure out how they can utilize AI to help them work more efficiently and how it can augment their current work. A good

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:08]:
way to use this too, is doing it in school. When they have projects, when they have things that they have to do and just allowing them to use it because they're going to have to in the workforce.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:15]:
Definitely Schoolwork is a big one. I just heard about it. I didn't read it. So this is like

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:19]:
You're saying?

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:20]:
Yeah. Right. Exactly. Like tertiary source here.

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:22]:
Not wireless.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:23]:
Yeah. Right. Exactly. Basically, it was a student wrote an essay and it was good, but it got flagged for being AI generated. And he is sticking to his guns and saying it wasn't AI generated. Like I wrote it. That's the future that we live in now.

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:37]:
I've actually heard that that's happening again, secondary sources. Have actually heard that that's been happening on college campuses too, where a lot of people are writing papers and then they are being incorrectly flagged because their professors are not reading their papers. They're using AI to read their papers. And then the AI that the professors are using is saying, this is AI generated. And the kids are like, it's not AI generated. And then they're just locked in this battle because nobody can really prove one way or the other.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:01]:
But to get back to how AI is gonna continue to roll on, especially if they are in the 16 to 20 year old range or younger, older, but especially in that going to enter the workforce looking for their first job, possibly if you're on the older side of that 18, 19, 20, they've already been working in fast food. They've already been working in retail, but they're looking for their first, I hate to say career, but they're looking for their 1st transition out of that into something that they think they're gonna be doing long term. Not that there's anything wrong with working in the restaurant or working retail or anything like that, but they're looking for their 1st transition out in all of those roles going forward. Their jobs are gonna be augmented by AI quite a bit. For them now, if they're have a way to deploy AI into their daily habits and into their daily tasks, the more they play with it, the more they'll know what it can do. Hey there. I hope that you're loving this episode of the degree free podcast. We spend a ton of time every week creating this content for you.

Ryan Maruyama [00:04:00]:
So my only ask is you take a quick second to leave a review or a thumbs up on whatever platform you're on. It's one the best and easiest ways that you can support this podcast, and this simple action can help bring more people into the degree free community. At degree free, we wanna help as many people as we can thrive and succeed without needing a college degree. Your review will be a step in that direction. If you could do this small favor right now, pause this and leave a review, it would truly mean the world to us. Thank you, and back to the show. For example, if they're trying to put together, like, a Lego set, you can ask Chatcheapiti, like, what is the most efficient way to put together this Lego set? Or what are the Lego sets that I need to complete my collection? And then see, okay, these are the types of answers that it gives, and this is how it alters the way that I would have approached this work, because I would have just looked at the instructions or I would have just whatever, whatever name, this tactic name, that tactic. That's what I would have done, but this is what it's doing.

Ryan Maruyama [00:04:56]:
And it's already augmenting my work. That is the goal now, but if they learn the basics now and they go and later on the goal changes, but the nature of the work doesn't, which is, Hey, I have a goal that I need to reach. And there's a bunch of steps that I need to do to get from point a where I am now to point B the end of this project, the end of this goal, how can I get there? And then if they can prompt chat GPT, or if they can figure out a more intuitive way, that's not just through chat GPT, if they can build a tool or something like that, that's much more intuitive and that's getting a little far down the weeds. But if they can do that and augment their work, that's huge. By the time they make their 1st transition or their second transition, they are light years ahead of the people that have been doing it for a long time. They can come into it with fresh eyes eyes and also maybe knowing a little bit more about what AI can do. And and they'll be like, hey, this is how we do it. And they might be able to say why.

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:52]:
This is a more efficient way to do it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:05:54]:
That's a really underrated thing because they are gonna go into the workforce. And usually when you get new generations into the workforce, they bring change anyway. But when they're able to use these really powerful tools in addition to their new view of things, it will push them quite a bit further in their careers than anything else. All right. So I have three points that I wanna talk about. The first one is that I believe that there will just be mainstream adoption of the degree free movement because it's already what people are doing. People are already questioning the status quo. They're questioning the narrative.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:23]:
You can even see a bunch of professors have come out, and I've equated it to rats on a shaking ship. But basically, they're coming out and going on podcast circuits so they can talk about how college is a scam, and it makes you dumber, and it's not worth the money. And that's because they can see the writing on the wall. You can see it in mainstream talk show host talking about this now. It is very common to say that college is not worth it, that it lowers people's critical thinking skills. It's not worth the money. It's just becoming mainstream to criticize. And that's because I believe degree free movement and you and I basically just put a name on something that was already occurring and that it's gonna go mainstream because it's also people's habits.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:58]:
Parents are questioning it. I read something that almost 70% of parents are questioning the value of a college degree at this point. And then over 50% now of Gen Z has decided that one, they don't need it to make the same amount of money, which is true. And then they're just more interested and they believe there's high return in business ownership or just going into the workforce, which again is true. So it's just gonna go mainstream. Now, the second thing I have is that I believe that in compliment with this will be and have specifically actually that federal policies will expand the removal of degree requirements. And I think that when this happens at a federal level too, combined with the cascade of states who are already removing degree requirements, it's just going to sweep the entire country. This is recently many states too have done this, but it all comes down from a federal policy that Donald Trump did in 2020, which was an executive order to remove degree requirements unless they were legally required, unless they were actually necessary for the job to be performed.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:52]:
So usually the criteria for that is a license to do the job, and that is the legal requirement breakdown in the back of the degree freeway. So basically that's the same criteria they're using for removing degree requirements at a federal level. And that's gonna just trickle down to all the states as well.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:06]:
Yeah, exactly. If you look at the states that have removed the degree required jobs from their job listings, you'll see that the criteria that they use is the same that we use in the degree free way, which is more or less. And you don't have to buy the book to do this. I'll give it to you right here. There's 2 questions that you have to ask yourself. The first question, is there a license to get that job? Yes or no? No. Okay. Well then you're fine.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:31]:
Is there a degree required to get that license?

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:34]:
This will sort itself into really easy categories. Usually medicine is one of the ones that it becomes very obvious. You can't be a registered nurse without a degree because you have do that as a prerequisite to get your nursing license. And so that's an example of where that's going to the wayside.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:49]:
And we go over it a little bit in the degree free way. The reason why we go with license is because from our estimate, 92.3% of jobs do not require college degrees. The 7% that do require college degrees are those that are barred behind a license, like legally requiring a license to do so. Like you were saying a doctor, a CPA, while CPA doesn't require a degree. It does require a certain amount of hours from an economical standpoint. It also just makes sense to just go ahead and finish it at that point.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:19]:
Though, I don't wanna interrupt you. I was gonna bring this up and I probably will in a future episode, but I just read that there was a CPA digest. And I just read an article where they're actually proposing the removal of degree requirements for CPAs.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:32]:
All degree requirements are dumb because there is no standard. You can get a Degrees. Exactly. You can get an a bachelor's in economics from University of Phoenix. Or you can get a bachelor's of economics from whatever one word school you want. Are those two things created equal? I'm not sure because there's no standard.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:49]:
And then you just have this nebulous brand value that some people think is good and some people don't. And, actually, I just read it was Chamath. How do you say his last name?

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:57]:
Palihapitiya.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:58]:
Yeah. And he was just saying he will not hire Ivy League graduates. He said he doesn't.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:03]:
But I'm not talking about Ivy League. I'm just talking about, like, there's no standard. It doesn't make sense. There's still college shouldn't be the barrier for anything. The standard in your industry, that is the bar. To be a lawyer, it's literally the bar. And to get into med school, it's the MCAT. Anybody should just be able to take those exams because that is the thing that's really barring you.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:22]:
If you can pass it, then you're a lawyer. If you can pass it, then you're an accountant because that's the way that it is.

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:26]:
Yeah. I can see the argument for specific education for medicine that you're required to take, but requiring a degree to take the MCAT is there's no logic to that. 0. None. I can see oh, yeah. Yeah. I take the MCAT to get into medical school. Alright.

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:38]:
Sure. That seems fair to me. But you should not have to have a degree to take the MCAT as you and I have talked about at length.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:43]:
If your licensing exam I'm not saying in the system that it is now. I'm agreeing with what you're saying. But I'm saying, like, in the future, if the thing that is barring them from seeing patients or from getting their medical licensure is a licensing exam, then that should be at the standard so that anybody can take it. If I take it, I'm going to fail. Why am I going to fail? Because I shouldn't be a doctor. I haven't gone to med school. I haven't learned anything. I haven't self studied for 10 years.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:10]:
I don't know anything about it. It should be hard enough and comprehensive enough so that anybody taking it, if you pass it, you are qualified.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:18]:
One of the things that's funny about that too. And you and I have such a bone to pick with this, but it is. And that's the thing you always say people, oh, well, they shouldn't be able to take it because it's hard. I'm like, good. That's the reason that you should let them take it and then fail. If it's that hard, then good.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:31]:
And it's not necessarily you want to say, okay, well then there's more than just testing, like literal physical paper and pen testing, which I agree. But there's practical exams already that exist in this world. Just going down to what I know, literally what I've been through to become an EMT. You have to perform a bunch of different tasks that you would do in your daily job. That's what you have to do, that you can do it. You just create a test and a licensing exam. That's exactly like that. Where somebody like a Joe Schmo, like me that just came off the street.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:02]:
Anybody should be able to take it and whatever the cost is is while they're expensive. Okay. Well, there's $10,000 to take the exam. Okay. It's $10,000 to take the exam. It is what it is. That's how much it costs to get 5 board certified, whatever people to examine you. Okay.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:14]:
That's what they charge you. Here you go. You charge them that money and then you go and take the exam and then you fail. Then you try again. Take it again. Exactly. You

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:21]:
save up study and take it again.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:23]:
It is what it is.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:23]:
Yeah. But that's the only barrier that should be in front of people. That's it. And you and I feel that way. So anybody that listens to our podcast, that's how we feel about that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:31]:
But the world is heading in that direction largely due to the fact that colleges and the government have been in cahoots for so long about keeping the American people in unforgivable student loan debt and dragging down their life outcomes. Hey, the people are revolting because, wait a minute, we were sold a lie. Wait a minute. We were sold a lie for generations. We were literally sold a lie that this is going to lead to a better life. And maybe at the very beginning, we've talked about at length about this before.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:56]:
Those people did have it. It was never the college's fault, but yeah, they did get it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:12:59]:
It did lead to a better life or maybe it was the college's fault. It doesn't matter. It was highly correlated. So they're like, okay, well then correlation must mean causation. And so then if we give more opportunity to college people to, for people to go to college and for people to get their degree, then they will get better life outcomes as well. So let's just go ahead and open this up. Let's write blank checks because the colleges are nonprofits and they're good. Nonprofit must equal good.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:21]:
Nonprofit definitely doesn't mean big business

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:23]:
because they're nonprofit.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:24]:
Yeah, exactly. And then they just pumped in 1,000,000,000 of dollars into our economy via the college system. And now there's generations of people

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:33]:
in debt. They'll never get out

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:34]:
of that are paying $500, $600 a month when they're paying $1100 to pay for rent. They're paying half in student loan debt than what they do to live in their house. Dollars 1100 with roommates.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:47]:
It's coming. The reason no one's done it, I think. Yeah. It's complexity. It's going to be hard. It's just going to, that's a difficult problem to solve across industries. It's going to be very, very difficult. And because of that, nobody has invested the time to do that or challenged it in policy.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:58]:
There's always the argument too, on the other end, from the consumer perspective, not to cut you off. I apologize. But the argument that I see when these clips go up and when people watch the YouTube and their comment is that, oh, well, let's talk about the bar. For example, even if you pass the bar, nobody will hire you. That is not the argument that we're having. And then at the same time, how do you know?

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:19]:
Well, they're wrong because people did, because that's how it was before the American bar association was formed. And not only that, but if that's now how people get licensed, they will hire them because that's where the people will be.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:29]:
But not only that, but if you're not gonna get hired, then what does it affect to your life? If they are licensed to be a lawyer and they don't get hired, then you'll never hire them because they can't get hired.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:39]:
And also if they don't need to get a job, they can start their own law practice.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:42]:
So that's still not a good reason for it to not be barred pun intended by a college degree.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:48]:
I agree. And also too, I really just think the way that it's set up to read the law now, it requires you to apprentice at a law firm and then take the bar after you've studied for a certain amount of time. And I'll be really honest. I would far prefer a lawyer who had studied under an actual good lawyer and then studied enough to take the exam over a law student. They don't know very much. If you've ever talked to a law student, they don't know a lot. They don't know a lot about practical law. They just don't.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:12]:
And you want somebody who studied under a personal injury lawyer.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:15]:
You want Danny DeVito?

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:16]:
Yeah. I'm not actually kidding. You want a killer. You want somebody who went in and watched a really good personal injury lawyer or really good trial lawyer, and you want them to have gone in and passed the bar and you'd prefer that person. You would choose that person every time if you actually needed a lawyer.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:28]:
I'm hoping that reference hits for our audience. Do you know who, what I'm talking about?

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:32]:
What's the name of the movie though? It's, it is when Matt Damon and Danny DeVito.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:36]:
Rainmaker.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:37]:
Rainmaker. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause Danny DeVito can't pass the bar. Right. And then he just uses Matt Damon as a front man.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:42]:
Yeah. Matt Damon passed the bar. He doesn't know anything.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:44]:
He knows nothing because he wouldn't lost.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:46]:
And then Danny DeVito still can't pass the bar. He's like, can't pass work.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:50]:
Right. Right.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:51]:
But he like shows him the rope. This is how the work gets done around here. Yeah. And this is how we do it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:55]:
And I'm not picturing that exact things. People like that doesn't happen. This is the crazy thing about change too, is people just go, well, it wouldn't work like that. I'm like, well, it would, if that was now the status quo for how people take their bar. That is how it would work, because that's how it used to work. So we know that it works because it did work that way before. Anywho, the third prediction I have is that there will be an economic boom in 2025 driven by favorable business tax policies and income tax reform, and then Gen Z entrepreneurship. Because so much of gen z is actually interested in running their own business.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:23]:
And we talked about this, but this could even services based businesses where they are the operator. They just wanna have control over their schedule, control over when and who they work for. And I believe that is going to take place because the administration coming in is very much business focused. Everybody that seems to be going into the cabinet for this administration seems to be very focused on how do we grow the economy and how do we allow businesses to grow and to thrive. And so I think that Gen Z with their interest in starting businesses, walking into a reform of business policy in our country, and what I also think will be a reform of tax policy is going to allow them to just become powerhouses for small individual micro businesses, which I think is awesome.

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:02]:
Yeah. I think that might happen over a longer period of time. I'm interested to see if that's going to happen as quickly. If we're going to be able to see that happen as quickly as this year in the next 12 months. And if there's going to be any meaningful data that leads up to that. And like you were saying, and we've talked about it before. Yes. I think business ownership, it just depends on what that means.

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:25]:
I think for most of the people, like you were saying, it's really just having a job that you create and maybe not necessarily creating a bigger and bigger and bigger business.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:35]:
That's why I think so many of gen Z are interested in the trades. It's because that's the only type of business they've been taught they could have is to go learn to be a plumber and then start a plumbing business. And I think that as they get deeper into business ownership, because they're also interested in it, if economic policy favors business ownership, then next year I think it's going to be big. But I think that over the next 4 years specifically, I do think we'll see the tailwind of them coming into being old enough to actually start their own businesses, to having a few years of operation and then seeing them grow. And I do think that's gonna have a massive impact on our economy.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:09]:
Yeah. And what you were saying about the generations not knowing, or rather just being told that they can only do those types of jobs, or rather those are the only businesses they can start. That just goes back to vocational creativity that stems from so many different places, but the 2 largest influences on kids are going to be their household and school. Right? I mean, obviously the friend group and everything that, but that stems from household proximity and school. Yeah. The things that you do in households. So I'm also including the extracurriculars and all that stuff, the things that happen within your household and then school I'm grouping it. So people always say like household school friends, I'm grouping friends within one of those 2 buckets.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:48]:
Cause you have friends that you see at school and then you have neighborhood friends or that you have, whatever they do soccer friends or baseball friends or whatever. And what those people know in your school and in your household, what you know, and what the people at school know really affect what they know and their vocational creativity. It's a lot less now, or at least it can be a lot less now due to this generation being so chronically online. I don't mean that in a bad way. I just mean like,

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:15]:
so they're online a lot.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:16]:
Yeah. They were basically like born into an online world. If you think about it, and this is not going to be shocking for the parents and this isn't shocking for us now, but it was shocking for us when we first started to work with the age range that we work with. Now, if you think about it, 16 to 20 year olds is the age that we work with. Do you ask them where they were? And during 911.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:37]:
And they weren't born yet.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:38]:
And they weren't even born yet.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:40]:
Which is crazy,

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:40]:
which is wild.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:41]:
Just the generation gap is large.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:43]:
Yeah. It's just wild. You should think they were born when Steve jobs introduced the iPhone, the year that Steve jobs introduced iPhone was the year that you were born.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:52]:
They're the iPhone generation.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:53]:
Basically what I'm saying is that the internet has enabled the household and the school to have less of an effect if they are more online. And so that they have more opportunities to become more vocationally creative depending on their activity online.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:08]:
Yeah. They can see YouTubers.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:10]:
Instagram whatever their YouTube algorithm is, you know, if they're watching mark rober or something like that, build these engineering things, like, oh, well, you know, people could do that. And for watching power lifting stuff, all people can do that too. It really just depends. And I think to bring it back to what you were saying about the trades being the only businesses that is totally dependent on their environment. Because for me personally, I know that was all I could think of. If we ever thought of business ownership, all I could think of was trades and, like, opening up a restaurant because those are the things that I knew because I worked at a restaurant and I knew a bunch of people that worked in construction. I never would have thought about becoming a video game designer or opening a video game company or learning how to code a website, those types of things. I knew that those things existed, but I just never thought somebody like me would be able to do that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:58]:
I just didn't know anybody in that realm. I don't know what that means. And so I don't know what I don't know. So I'm just gonna leave it alone, but I did know people in the construction. I did work in restaurants. I was like, yeah, I see these business models. I understand this. And so I can go ahead and do it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:11]:
But if I was exposed a little bit more than my vocation or creativity would have been higher as well.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:15]:
Yeah. And I think that if our policy, if our economic policy, like I said, is lending itself to that, I think that they will take that and run with it. And I think we're going to see amazing things from it. Truthfully.

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:24]:
And now to get to my second prediction for 2025, 2025 is the year where the schools start to realize that they shouldn't just be college pipelines. I don't know how this manifests exactly, but I think that parents are starting to get wise to the school systems, like, one-sided agenda. And I think that'll bleed over into the teachers and counselors. I think it's starting from consumer habits. I think it's a bottom up instead of a top down type of thing. I think if schools had it their way, they would just keep the status quo because it's very neat to have your success rate tied to.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:01]:
One very simple metric

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:02]:
and that metric be incredibly bumped up to the time when your product is finished. As soon as you're finished serving the customer, if you just make this one handoff and it's right there, like, boom, here you go. And that success, why wouldn't we take that as our metric? And so if the schools had it their way, they would keep it because it's such a neat metric. And what I'm talking about is 99% of the people that go to this school get into college. 98% of the kids that go to this school attend university. Whatever the percentages are, that is what I'm talking about. And it's so neat. They don't do any follow ups.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:32]:
They're like, what are your life outcomes afterwards? Who has more money later? Who actually went and finished? Who's in debt? Who's living in a ditch? Those types of things. I'm totally not faulting them for that. Well, it's super difficult. And then also, so much time has passed in between 18 years old and 24 years old, 26, 40 years old. They're like, so we're just going to say that the people that end up going to this school end up doing those types of things. There's so much that happened that shaped that young adult's life that we're just going to take responsibility for that. So I understand you can take responsibility for them going to college because

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:06]:
you got them into college.

Ryan Maruyama [00:23:07]:
Well, because you were holding their hand, took your hand out, you put on their wrist and you had the college open their hand and you put their hand into it. They closed it and then you walked away. And then there you go. You're directly responsible for that. So I understand

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:19]:
that. I know that you're right because I had a friend reach out to me and connect me to somebody who runs kind of similar to like an offshoot of Ad Astra, which is the Elon Musk school in Austin. And basically it's this online school for young adults and it's very stem focused. This individual said, hey, this is so and so. He runs the school. Currently, a 100% of kids that go to this online school go to college. But I suspect that many of them don't need to. And I think that he needs to meet you because this guy just didn't know that there's another option, but he was clearly looking for 1.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:54]:
And that just confirms exactly what you said. This is not a public school. This is somebody who runs a private, obviously private online school and he's going, I wonder if that's actually the best fit.

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:03]:
That's literally what I'm talking about from the top down. I'll get into what I was talking about for the inverse, which is at the bottom up, but that's exactly what I'm talking about. You're saying that this person reached out and said, okay, currently a 100. Percent is going into a university, but we think that that shouldn't be the case and this person is looking for something else. What you're saying is they're looking for something else to funnel them into to point to their success. They're looking for it because they care about their success metrics because they just wanna make sure that they put their hand, your child's hand, into some other person's hand. And then you say, look at what great work that I did. When the answer could have possibly been to stop holding their hand.

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:39]:
That's what I'm getting at. They don't have to come to us. Let them wander around. Let them figure it out. What you're gonna come spend 1,000 of dollars with us now? Please. Oh, please do. I'm not afraid of money. I love money, but, like, that's a problem.

Ryan Maruyama [00:24:49]:
And that's what I'm saying is that this school, it's like, okay. Look. Look at this prestigious private school. Look at this 100% success rate, but we're starting to think that not everybody should go to college. Then stop sending everybody to college, but you won't do it until you have something else. And they're gonna be like, look. They're in the degree free program now. And then, oh, you're $30,000 a year.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:06]:
You're $100,000 a year. Whatever the parents is paying, you could be like, look. Here you go. There with these people. Look at the great work that I did. When instead, right now, what they're doing by giving a 100% success rate when you think that that is not the best thing that you should do, you should lower that success rate. If Timmy doesn't wanna go to college, then don't force Timmy to go to college. If you don't think that Timmy should be in college by you contacting me and by that person saying, yeah, we need other options.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:29]:
You are admitting that you need other options for these people. And so stop putting them into college. I'm irate right now because I disagree.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:37]:
Oh, I didn't even look at it like that. Yeah, totally. But just mean currently your success rate is not success. Yes. Just don't do nothing. Just be done. They graduated. Good job.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:46]:
Exactly. And then wait till you find a better program or you find different options or whatever, whatever, whatever. But right now the answer is to just stop funneling the kids into something to show that you've done something because their assumption is the presence of action is good. When really what they need to do is the presence of inaction can also be good.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:06]:
No, you're absolutely right. That was very insightful actually, to look at it that way. What that said to me when I looked at it was just, well, he was starting to suspect. I'm sure that it's because of the parents, as you said, right. Your prediction was parents are going to start asking, is this really the best thing to do? And that's just the only option they have right now. He's looking to see some of the parents must be going. I don't think that's the best thing to do. So for them, it is no longer success.

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:28]:
The reason why we know this is because these are the people that come into the launch program. Because Timmy is gonna go to college for a year or go to college for 2 years and went to a good school and then went to a good high school, got good grades. They went to college. They they're like, what am I doing here? And then they came home for the summer. Man, I don't really wanna go back. And then you made them go back for the 2nd semester. And then they're like, mom, like, I don't want to be here. I hate it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:50]:
Now they're back. And you're like, all right, what do we do? And it's those people.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:52]:
Yeah. We need to save 2 years and 60 grand.

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:54]:
I'm not saying to come to us. I'm saying, just don't send them to college.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:57]:
Just don't do that experience. You can choose not to. Yeah. You're absolutely right. That's a very insightful point there about that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:27:03]:
My prediction is that it's going to come from the bottom up and it's going to be these parents and these families that are just like, Hey, this is not right for Timmy. This is not right for our family. This is not right for our economic situation. This is just not right. Period. I don't see the value in it. What else can you offer me? What other assistance do you have other than that? I don't care about your success metrics. Like I don't care that you have a 96

Hannah Maruyama [00:27:27]:
Successful for my kid?

Ryan Maruyama [00:27:28]:
Exactly. I don't care that you have a 96 percent placement rate. And if you're listening to this podcast now, you're not like, oh, okay, well that 96% probably should be much lower. And they would probably get a much better result of life outcomes. And at least in like happiness gauge or fulfillment gauge of the team of the student, because there'd be like at least happy that, Hey, somebody's listening to me. Granted, I'm not saying it's easier. I'm not saying that it's harder. What I'm saying, which is I think that it's not as cookie cutter of a solution as they are wholesale selling this experience to people.

Ryan Maruyama [00:27:58]:
Yeah. Because

Hannah Maruyama [00:27:59]:
when you think about it, you know, a 100% of kids in that school are going to college. 7.7 percent of jobs require degrees. Something is terribly wrong. Yeah. Something is terribly wrong. It's literally opposite from what it should be. You should have 10% of them, maybe 15 at the high end. I never really thought about that, but absolutely true.

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:16]:
And the

Ryan Maruyama [00:28:16]:
fact that he's already thinking about like, Hey, we need something better, but he's not willing to let go of his a 100% until he finds a quote, better replacement. Although he knows that he's sending people

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:26]:
into something that's actually not successful.

Ryan Maruyama [00:28:28]:
He's sending people into the slaughterhouse because it's not successful. He's looking for a better solution. Now the solution dude is to stop sending your kids into the slaughterhouse. That's it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:36]:
You're absolutely right. I did not think about it like that at all. But to, to be fair, it's almost an awakening for people sometimes though. They just don't see it before because they really believe that that's the best thing. And so they have to come to that on their own and slowly. It probably does start with the slow whisper of bottom up. Like you said, it's parents going, this isn't right. Because it is hard for somebody when it's been their whole life doing that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:55]:
And then for them to like come to the realization that that doesn't actually make sense anymore is tough. It's a very tough thing to cope with. All right. So I have a couple more predictions. I have 3. 1. So this is number 4 for me actually. And that's, I have been seeing a lot on LinkedIn about people doing AI recruiters and all this kind of stuff.

Hannah Maruyama [00:29:14]:
I believe that the skills based hiring movement is actually going to kill a lot of the AI replacement HR. The reason is because more organizations and government bodies and more businesses are recognizing that practical skills and experience are more indicative of job performance than credentials. And you and I both know that in lieu of really good standardized metrics for measuring people and saying, yes, they can do this, or yes, they're able to do this job. The only way around that is human evaluation. That's what I believe. Human beings have to talk to them. That's just how it's gonna be. I think that AI is not the future of HR people are going to be.

Hannah Maruyama [00:29:50]:
It's actually going to be more people centered than ever. And I think that companies right now are in this AI. It's very flashy to have HR and integrate AI and use it to lower all of your HR staff. So you don't have to have as many people. I actually think that's going to backfire within a couple of years. It's going to cost them a lot of money, and it's going to take them years to figure out that actually you're going to have to use people to find good people.

Ryan Maruyama [00:30:12]:
That's what I think is going to happen. I agree with the 2025 sentiment of this. In the essence of the show, which is the changes that we're gonna see this year, I agree with you. In the fact that in the short term, the companies that are taking the more human approach or just even a different approach rather than let's set up the ATS. Then the now all these ATSs have large language models behind them. And instead of, like, just filtering out for these keywords or that keywords, it's behind a black box for a lot of these companies or all of these companies that have AI integrated with it. Now they're not even sure what keywords are being filtered through or filtered out. And so I agree that those companies that can figure out how to do a skills based hiring that's better is going to come out on top with better candidates, less churn, better employee satisfaction, better outcomes in general.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:02]:
And it's going to be more manual at first, and it's going to turn away from AI. That is within the caveat of 2020 5, where I disagree with you. That is not the long term outcome of this. I believe that is how it looks until we figure out a repetitive process to make that recruiting process more effective. What AI really does well, especially right now is to take repetitive processes and just put it on autopilot. If you can define the process, if you can define what you need, then you put that into it and then it can do that on repeat. At the start. It's going to be more manual until they figure out the process.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:40]:
And then somebody's going to figure out the process and then it's going to be all automated at the end. We've talked about this a lot and I know, we know personally that all of the major companies or at least a few of them that we have talked to are working on something like this. But we think the future of work is going to be where it is in the background, and you are just going to get offers to come and work. Hey, I see your skillset. We have all your data. We have what you've done. We know how good you are already. Here you go.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:08]:
Here's your offer. And it might not come to the offer, but here's your interview and here's the offer. If you would like to accept this interview, I see that on Monday, January 26 at 5 pm Pacific time, you have a opening in your schedule. Let's go ahead and put a 15 minute interview down so that we can get you in the door for whatever position at $129,000 a year.

Hannah Maruyama [00:32:29]:
I'm talking about the AI interviewers that they're using. There's a couple of companies that have jumped on that train that is not going to go well. People are allergic to that. Human beings do not want to talk to robots on video. That's just not a thing that people are interested in doing. And I don't think that that's going to go well specifically, but I do think that the use of AI to run an engine for scheduling back and forth that and negotiation. Yes. A 100%.

Hannah Maruyama [00:32:50]:
But not for the actual screening human interview process.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:53]:
But I'm telling you, it's the screening. It just pops up on your phone. Like you've been screened.

Hannah Maruyama [00:32:57]:
That I agree with.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:57]:
No, no, no. The AI screens you. I'm disagreeing with you. I'm saying that AI is going to replace the screening. Yes. We're just in the first innings of this. And so that's what I'm saying is I agree short term that the companies that take a more human focused perspective to recruiting, not HR, but to recruiting, those people are going to see the outsized demand. I mean, not, not, they're going to see outsized return on that investment.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:20]:
I think they're going to get a higher quality candidates coming to them. I think they're going to get higher quality output, those types of things. But like I said, they have to figure out a way to repeat the process over and over because there is a formula to finding talent. There is, they just have to figure out what it is and it's the companies and the teams that are able to find a repeatable pattern that goes from point a to hired and all of the decision trees within that. When they can do that and then feed it to the AI and they're able to capture your data as well, and that, like, that's going to be something else that happens. So in the future, all of the work that you do is going to be living somewhere and the companies are just going to have, like, this was the outcome that Ryan had on this project. He really knows how to move things in this, this, and this. And so let's hire him for this project.

Ryan Maruyama [00:34:07]:
Send him a notification. Boom. Done.

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:09]:
I don't know if I agree wholeheartedly, but we'll see time is going to tell. We'll review at the end of the year.

Ryan Maruyama [00:34:14]:
No, I'm not saying in 20 25. I'm saying long term.

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:16]:
Meet me in 20 28. My next point is the impact of AI on colleges. I think that AI this year specifically in combination with the degree for movement in general is going to demolish colleges. They can't keep up with current tech now. They can't even pretend like they're keeping up with current tech now. And then with less regulation, and I think more money going into the educational market in general for better options, and it's not hard to be better than a college at this point, federal and state bodies dropping degree requirements and more companies following suit. I think that enrollment is just going to continue to just drop through the floor. And then the rapid advancements in AI are going to challenge traditional education models.

Hannah Maruyama [00:34:52]:
I've already seen this in K through 12 where it's happening a lot. They're just replacing things in school in general is too long as it is. That's a huge problem with our public school system is that the kids are in school for far too long. It's basically just supervision while their parents are working. So the time is not well utilized. And so there's a lot of room for disruption and that's also true with college as well. And I think that's really going to come home to roost because the college is charged so much for such a poor curriculum. They're not gonna adapt their curriculum to meet current business standards because they're hedge funds.

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:20]:
Then they're not run by business savvy people really, and they don't wanna change their business model at all as indicated by the fact that they just keep raising tuition and they're uninterested in changing and adding value for students. And I think that they risk, like I said, extreme enrollment decline as students just go, this is not a good investment for me. I don't wanna spend all this time when I can do this in 6 months, which most of the jobs that they would be going to college for, they can learn in 6 months to a year as it is. And they're gonna get more relevant up to date training if they just don't spend that time and money at college.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:49]:
How are we gonna see this play out in 2025? Like what's the metric?

Hannah Maruyama [00:35:53]:
Declining enrollment is gonna fall again. I think it's gonna be pretty dramatic this year, actually.

Ryan Maruyama [00:35:57]:
Yeah. But how would we know about the impact of AI?

Hannah Maruyama [00:36:01]:
I think that the way that we would assess that is we just see what sort of training is going to come up to teach specific skills that are valuable in the business world that are not attached to colleges. So I think that's just gonna be more AI enabled businesses that teach a specific subject. So you're gonna have, let's say the CPAs drop the accounting requirement. Somebody will come in and create or build some sort of CPA course or CPA CPA certification program. That's just enabled by AI to give them like dynamic business situations where they learn the skills and they don't have to go to college for that. It costs $2,000 and it takes them 6 months. That's what I think we're looking at versus a college. And I don't think a college can compete with that at all.

Ryan Maruyama [00:36:38]:
Anything that's going to happen in 2025? Yeah. So I'm going to move on to prediction number 8, the emergence of career sampling programs. And I don't really know what I mean by this, but let me just try to get some words out, which is the decline of college enrollment is going to keep up kind of what you were just saying. It is happening as we speak. The high schools, kind of like my point before, they are realizing they shouldn't be college pipelines. And so this is a follow on to, so what should they be? And I think one of the things that they're going to try here and what I think other people are going to try even outside of school is more sampling of different careers. And I've thought about 2 different ways that this would happen. This would happen either in like work shadow programs that are available through school.

Ryan Maruyama [00:37:22]:
So think about like home ec or like wood shop, but like on steroids. So you think about it. It's kind of like internship or externship.

Hannah Maruyama [00:37:29]:
Yeah. Cause I don't get paid.

Ryan Maruyama [00:37:30]:
Heard it both ways. Yeah. And so I think that this is going to be something that is going to be more and more available through high schools. And that's what I meant by career sampling structured by schools, but kind of a sub point a or a sub point to this is that the recruitment out of high school is going to ramp up. It's already ramping up. That's a little bit of a cop out because I know that this is happening from all the conversations that I've had, but I also think that it can't be an internship because after high school, there's no institution of which they would say, hey, this is their intern from this institution. But instead it's, Hey, this is an on the job training program that lasts 8 weeks. And after that you may or may not get a job, but you'll get certified in this and that or the other.

Ryan Maruyama [00:38:16]:
And then the people that certify you, whether that's a auto shop, whether that's a tech company, whatever, whatever they will take the risk on to certify whatever the certification is, a group of 50 people or a group of a hundred people, they'll take the risk on and they'll take the expense on to hire those people essentially, and give them paid training for the chance to then take the cream of the crop.

Hannah Maruyama [00:38:40]:
Take 10 of them.

Ryan Maruyama [00:38:41]:
Yes, exactly. At the end of this program, you guys are all going to be certified in X, Y, and Z. Everybody there's 10 spots

Hannah Maruyama [00:38:48]:
that will produce extremely good results. I imagine

Ryan Maruyama [00:38:50]:
there's 10 spots for a full time job here. If you're one of the 90, 9 out of 10, you still come out with a cert

Hannah Maruyama [00:38:55]:
and look for a job.

Ryan Maruyama [00:38:56]:
Exactly. And you still have this program on your resume. You just didn't get the job.

Hannah Maruyama [00:38:59]:
That's what should exist. That would be amazing. I I like that prediction a lot. I hope that's true. I actually too. I've heard whispers of that too, though, that the people are trying to get things like that together to give some options.

Ryan Maruyama [00:39:08]:
I know that those types of things are not new. They've happened in the past. They're not new. Where I am going different is that I think majority of those programs were unpaid. It's just basically you're volunteering your time. You're volunteering your services to get the certification. But what I'm saying is I think that right now they're so hard up for talent and they see that the pipeline for these jobs are so horrible because they're old picking grounds for it. Colleges, the results are so terrible that they're willing to pay more money and basically certify 9 out of 10 of these people to do this thing and then only give 10 jobs there.

Ryan Maruyama [00:39:45]:
And we'll just chop that up as a recruiting cost. But especially for big tech companies, it makes sense anyway because what you need behind your software is you need people within the eco system to then maintain your software, and you need people to work on your software. So, like, Salesforce is a good example. You need Salesforce talent. It's such a large software company now that you need Salesforce talent to keep coming into the industry. And that way, you can sell, like, Salesforce Salesmen that go into Fortune 500 or Russell 2 1000 companies. And they say, like, hey. Why don't you switch off of x, y, and z? And then you come to Sales Force and here's the stats on how many people we've trained just in our own in house program.

Ryan Maruyama [00:40:26]:
We've put 2,000 high school students or, you know, high school graduates through our program. You can go and hire any one of these people. And they're saying like, this is how the talent pool looks for Salesforce administrators, so on and so forth. So it's a win win for the tech companies, especially, which is why I think they're gonna be doing it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:40:42]:
When you flush it out a little bit more too, that's pretty interesting. I think you're right though because the incentives are there. So I actually miscounted. I have 3 more points. So I had a total of 8 points. Apologize. I believe in 2025, there will be an educational renaissance in specifically technical and creative fields. And I think that's because a lot of that has to do with all of these amazing AI tools that are coming out.

Hannah Maruyama [00:41:02]:
And because gen Z are tech natives. And so they pick this stuff up really, really quickly. And, specifically to, I think, and we've talked about this before, but human skills are going to get creativity and in human skills are going to get really, really valuable in a world where everything we can make everything through AI. And so I think that these young adults, as they practice their creativity and they get better, I want to say like hardware, like hardware skills, not trades per se, but a good example of this like data center techs or internet of things, automation specialists. I think that as they start to experiment and learn technology, that's closer to them, that's more accessible to them and as they practice like digital creativity as well. So this is like the things that are applicable in advertising and graphic design and video. I think that there's just gonna be a lot of people with really, really amazing skill sets that they build themselves just through exploration and curiosity. And that one's kind of vague, but I just think we're gonna see, like, young people just doing really cool things.

Hannah Maruyama [00:42:00]:
And it was really amazing. It's building really amazing projects, but making beautiful things. And I think that that's going to be pretty cool. The next prediction I have is that there is going to be a reduced debt among gen Z because they're not going to have student loans. They're going to, I believe have increased home ownership and business ownership because they're not spending their time and money in college. I think that also as a downstream effect of this, I think that there will be more gen Z will get married than millennials. They're going to have more kids sooner. I think that because these big milestones, I was just reading this article about 30 year olds, just kind of floundering and just feeling stuck and lost because they never had like a transition into adulthood.

Hannah Maruyama [00:42:37]:
That is directly the result of being in college for a 1000000 years and coming out with $80,000 of student debt and then having to move back into their homes and having no like predictable real milestones that show that they're moving forward in life. And I think gen Z, because they're not going to do that because they don't want to do that because they saw their siblings or their friends or their, or like parents, friends, kids do that. They're not going to do it and they're going to make different choices. They're going to work. They're going to go right into the workforce. They're not going to have the debt. They're going to buy homes, starter homes sooner. They're going to get married sooner.

Hannah Maruyama [00:43:04]:
They're going to have more kids sooner and they're going to start more businesses.

Ryan Maruyama [00:43:07]:
To defend millennials for a second. And I'm talking about like the majority of millennials, because I think millennials, you know me, I'm so horrible. And for those new listeners, I'm horrible with the generations. I think the millennials, I'm talking about everybody older than like in their mid thirties or so. I agree with everything you said, but if you look at the backdrop of the economy of the world at that time, we were just talking about how the young adults that we work with, they where were you in 911? Right? Like, where were you?

Hannah Maruyama [00:43:33]:
They weren't there.

Ryan Maruyama [00:43:34]:
They weren't

Hannah Maruyama [00:43:34]:
there. In 2008, there were 4.

Ryan Maruyama [00:43:36]:
Yeah, exactly. In 2008, where were you? Like, I was in kindergarten. And where the rest of the people, like the older millennials, their mid thirties to late 30 millennials, they were getting out of college or graduating high school, right at the lowest point.

Hannah Maruyama [00:43:50]:
So they paid a lot in the economy they came out into was horrible. They were dealt a crap hand for sure.

Ryan Maruyama [00:43:55]:
Exactly. And this goes back to Julia Pollock, the chief economist at ZipRecruiter, came on the podcast and she was just talking about her own experience with it. I think she graduated Harvard at 2,009 smack dab in the middle of it. Thought she was gonna make, you know, $90,000 or a 100 something $1,000 or whatever. And she probably paid, like, 30 or something like that. It was just basically it was just congruent with my life story as well. And I didn't go to Harvard.

Hannah Maruyama [00:44:14]:
And she had an economics degree too. That's such a good example, though, of how economics degree from Harvard, economics degree

Ryan Maruyama [00:44:19]:
from because I'm an idiot.

Hannah Maruyama [00:44:20]:
But It's not really what I meant, but yeah. That's not what I meant at all. Tell me.

Ryan Maruyama [00:44:26]:
She's brilliant. I'm an idiot.

Hannah Maruyama [00:44:27]:
Tell me the difference between those two things. Yeah. Tell me the difference. What, you know, what's the difference between what they taught you and your bachelor's degree and what they taught you in hers. They're both bachelor's degrees in economics is the same piece of paper.

Ryan Maruyama [00:44:36]:
So I will give that to millennials. Like, yes, all of those things by going to college and everything like that. It is colored by the generation that you live in. Right. I mean, you look at all the people that live through the depression and a lot of them are hoarders or a lot of them literally have money buried in their backyard or literally have money in their mattress. Under their mattress, they slice a hole in their mattress and they put money into their mattress because they just didn't trust the banks. A lot of their behaviors and a lot of their life outcomes are colored by their experience and yeah, exactly. Through the economy and through what they were going through at the time.

Ryan Maruyama [00:45:09]:
Kind of related to that. What I wanted to say about the gen Z stuff and especially about the home ownership business ownership as well, but home ownership for sure. And I think that we're going to be able to see it quickly is. Yes, definitely with less debt, they will then be able to buy a home because then they don't have to service the debt payments for their student loans. That's definitely true. And then on top of it as well, they will, instead of for 4 years going to college, not making any money, they are going to be able to they were saving this whole time. They were actually making money and the economics, their financial situation was going the exact opposite. Where for me, the homeownership, if we do see an increase this year in home ownership of gen Z in could be that interest rates as well.

Ryan Maruyama [00:45:55]:
We have to look at what happens with the fed. We have to look at what happens when Trump gets into office and I don't mean to get political at all.

Hannah Maruyama [00:46:01]:
No, but when a new administration gets in, it's in their interest to lower interest rates because it will make the economy look better than it is. So it's likely that they will do that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:46:09]:
I'm not an economist. Culturally.

Hannah Maruyama [00:46:11]:
Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:46:13]:
And so I think that we might be able to see this a lot is depending on what happens with the fed a lot is depending on what happens with interest rates. Do interest rates go up? Do interest rates stay the same? Do interest rates go down?

Hannah Maruyama [00:46:30]:
There is one more factor here that I kind of didn't discuss. And that is, this is just a theory that I have. Please ask me about my theories. But because a lot of millennials, when they got out of college, they're also considerably older than this generation will be when they buy their first house. They had an increased expectation of the type of house they'd be able to afford. So when you hear a lot of times millennials complain about not being able to buy their 1st house, the house that they want to buy is not a starter house. It's not a reasonably priced house. They want a huge house.

Hannah Maruyama [00:46:57]:
They want all these things. And previously past generations, when they buy their 1st house, it's a small house. It's like 3 bedroom, 2 baths. It's like small. There might not even be a backyard, tiny, tiny house, you know, like 1,000 square feet. Whereas now millennials, like by the time they get out, they feel like they've earned like a new bill. They want like a nice house. It's like $300, $400,000 There's a lot of money.

Hannah Maruyama [00:47:14]:
I think that the other reason that gen Z is going to buy more houses is I think they have a more reasonable expectation. We know we work with this age range and they do have a much more realistic expectation of what they would want to buy versus people that I know I graduated high school with.

Ryan Maruyama [00:47:26]:
I agree with you. Part of that is just due to millennials have student loan debt, regardless of whether or not you finished college or didn't finish college, like whether or not you actually went and you bought the piece of paper fully or whether or not you just tried to buy the piece of paper. So why does that affect it? Because they have that debt, those debt payments to service. So that affects debt to income ratio, basically, like the effects, how much house they can afford. And then the second thing is, yes, I agree with what you're saying, but that's just congruent with where they are chronologically in life. The millennials are older. They are trying to find houses that would fit where they are in life right now. And the, Hey, I don't want to raise a family in a 3 bedroom, 1 bath, no master bedroom.

Ryan Maruyama [00:48:09]:
Like I don't want to raise a family in that. So I want a master bedroom. I want, an extra bedroom for my parents if they come over for friends or whatever. And it's okay, well, do you have money for that? And so, yeah, I agree with you.

Hannah Maruyama [00:48:21]:
I think that's insightful too. That's absolutely true. It's just where they are in life. It's different. So their expectations are different as well. And my last prediction is not really a prediction. I just think 2025 is actually going to be a good year. I have an optimistic view of what's going to happen.

Hannah Maruyama [00:48:34]:
I think a lot of good things are going to change. And I think that a lot of trends that you and I have been watching over the past few years are kind of going to come to a head all at the same time. The skills based hiring movement, full swing for sure right now. The degree free movement, full swing right now. Parents, young adults, everybody's just questioning the system. And I think that with the change in administration, I do think that economic policy is gonna improve for a lot of Americans. Again, this episode is not political. It's just when you tend to do things like lower taxes and and try to, like, loosen up business regulation, typically, the economy tends to get better.

Hannah Maruyama [00:49:00]:
And so I believe that the economy will be better. Americans will have more spending power, and that all of these things combined with Gen z really coming into their own, finally starting businesses and starting to work. I think that, actually the future is gonna be very bright. And I think that it looks good. I think 2025 looks good.

Ryan Maruyama [00:49:15]:
Yeah. I would agree with that wholeheartedly. I think that 2025 is going to be a great, great year, I mean, for everything degree degree free, I guess. If you love the college industrial complex and you love the younger generation being in student loan debt and having worse life outcomes, then, like, you're probably, like, super bummed out and you probably, like, turned off this podcast already. If you're listening to this podcast and you agree with us, or at least with majority of what we're saying, I think that you're going to agree that this 2025 is looking up. And I think it's going to be a crazy. I think there's going to be a lot of developments in this grief free space. I think that we're going to see a lot of opportunities open up for young people and for the young adults.

Ryan Maruyama [00:49:55]:
And then also not just young adults, but then also for the workforce at large for the American people, for those degree free, for the 2 thirds of the American people that don't have college degrees that have been told their whole lives are like, Hey, you need a degree and people that are mid career. I think that a lot of opportunities are going to open up and I think it's going to be amazing.

Hannah Maruyama [00:50:14]:
I agree. I have one bonus prediction and I'm going to start saying this every year until it's true. My last prediction is that SpaceX is going to train their own astronauts and that some of them will be degree free. I'm going to keep saying it until it's true because I believe it in my bones. We're going to see degree for astronauts in our lifetime.

Ryan Maruyama [00:50:29]:
That would be cool. I think that's pretty much it. Everybody have a great 2025 until next week.