Your Teen Doesn't Need College (Here's Proof) (The Hannah Maruyama Show #5)

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:00]:
All through high school your child is being told they need a college degree to work, they can't get a good job without it, and they're going to be flipping burgers. But 22 US states have dropped degree requirements for state jobs. And so when people are telling you that most jobs require a degree, that's just not true. Only 17.8% of US job postings on Indeed even mention a four year degree. On ZipRecruiters now less than 12%. And then let's talk about Apple and Google. Half of Apple's US hires don't have bachelor's degrees. And and then Google Sergey Brin just went viral for saying that they are actively looking for degree free people to hire to work for Google because those people just quote figure it out.

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:34]:
And here's what nobody's saying out loud. Only between about 6% and 9.58% of U.S. jobs legally require a bachelor's degree. But we're sending 62% of U.S. high school graduates directly into four year college. Our system is pushing roughly eight times more young adults into college than our economy has degree required slots for. You might think, well surely they have to go because getting a degree is the only way they're going to get a good job. And all of those jobs that require degrees must be really high paying.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:01]:
Nope. Four out of ten of those degree required jobs are represented by two specific occupations. Nurses, RN specifically and K through 12 teachers. And that's a great indication of Just because a job requires a degree one doesn't mean from a policy level it should because neither of those used to. And then two, it does not mean that it is going to have positive roi. The nurses are much more likely to have it, but The K through 12 teachers are some of the people who are the most affected by the fact that their jobs require a degree but don't pay enough to make it worth it. Now why would you listen to me? My name is Hannah Maruyama and I run a career planning service for 18, 19 and 20 year olds. And my team has helped hundreds of young adults all across the country in all different states find the right career for them and find out how they're going to start it and get into that entry level work within a year instead of doing that after they've gone to College and wasted $100,000.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:47]:
I worked in AI machine learning software for years and I never bought a college degree by the way. Now here's what I'm trying to tell you. The world is dropping degree requirements and AI is just speeding this up. But schools are not. They're still hammering that you have to go. And the gap between what employers actually require and what schools are telling young adults they require, that's the entire game. Let's just talk about the states that have removed degree requirements. And this is one of my favorite things to talk about, because for years we've done a rough calculation at degree free and found that only about 7.7% of all the jobs in our country legally require degrees.

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:17]:
Now that's across all 50 states. And D.C. d.C. Actually has the highest requirement for paper of any area in the country. Now let's go to Pennsylvania. Josh Shapiro was one of the first governors to sign this and he removed degree requirements for 92% of state jobs in Pennsylvania. And that's because he removed degree requirements where they were not legally required. Massachusetts, when Governor Healey did this exact same thing, 90% of state jobs immediately freed up in California, one of the lowest degree required states in the entire country.

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:43]:
Interestingly, 30,000 jobs freed up. North Carolina, 75% of state jobs. They're still clinging to a few different degree requirements for jobs that don't require them. But hey, wow, right? Maryland was actually the first state to do it. And then what happened after that was the most interesting part. So Maryland then saw a 41% increase in degree free hires. And that's because a lot of the reason that degree free people don't get jobs that require degrees is because they don't apply for them because they've been told they cannot, but in reality they, they can. If your child applies to these jobs, they can still get hired.

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:13]:
I say that as somebody who has done that multiple times and then gotten hired multiple times without needing a degree for jobs that say they require advanced computer science degrees. That's one of the more competitive fields to get into. And none of those requirements are actually real. Now let's talk about the federal government. In April of 2026, the current administration has tossed degree requirements for all federal IT managers. This was another thing that was just kind of gated. Even though there was no actual legal degree requirement, you can see that this is just accelerating. And the thing is, they already had removed degree requirements for hundreds of thousand of cybersecurity jobs.

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:43]:
And this is what they're not going to tell parents because they really, really want you to take out a hundred thousand dollars loan for your child to get a degree that they don't need to get any job. Now let's talk about the major companies. Let's talk about Google IBM, Apple, Accenture, Walmart, Dell, Verizon, Delta, gm. Like there is not a single US airline right now that requires a degree for any pilots. And actually I want to tell a personal story about this. I have a friend, a family friend of mine who was a pilot, very experienced pilot, he's got about 40 years of experience now. I actually called him about this. I said, hey, I, I have a few questions about this.

Hannah Maruyama [00:04:13]:
And I said, if young adults are looking to become pilots, what is the best way for them to do that? And he said without any hesitation, ATP, which is a flight school, they have a guarantee, by the way, something that a college will never give you because they can't help your kid get a job. They will guarantee placement, get through it as quickly as possible, and then go to the airlines. Because the actual thing that these airlines are looking for is they're looking for somebody with the hours that they need in order to fly. And that's why ATP he views as the most efficient way to get in. Because if you do, then you get the hours and you go to the airlines. Now, I want to be very clear, one in three US companies have already dropped degree requirements for jobs. About half plan to eliminate bachelor's degree requirements this year. About 15 to 20% of IBM's US hires actually now come into their company through the new collar apprenticeship program.

Hannah Maruyama [00:04:56]:
And over 90% of those apprentices convert to full time. And going forward, this is going to become a lot more commonplace. And that's because for companies it makes much more sense to reduce churn. Churn is the most expensive things companies deal with. And that is people leaving and costing the money to hire and then costing the money to leave and then not staying and actually getting up to speed and actually helping the company earn money. A lot of companies who've avoided hiring to train because they think it's too expensive have realized it's actually way more expensive not to do that. And we're going into a future where they're willing to take on that risk because it's a lower risk than trying to hire grads and then trying to train them again then. And the thing is too, people are so negative about this, but it's because they're still trying to force this old model, which is you go pay $100,000, don't learn anything useful, don't get any skills, and then you go try to get the same entry level job that you should get when you're 18.

Hannah Maruyama [00:05:43]:
People should be a lot happier about the fact that now our goal here should be to help our kids find the right entry level work, where a company is taking most of the risk to train them at 18 or 19 or 20 years old. And instead of pushing that forward, paying six figures and then getting a subpar result. And I want to be really clear too, these degree requirement dropping is bipartisan. This is red states, this is blue states, this is federal. This is Fortune 100. Like this is not just to medium sized businesses. This is not just big businesses. Degrees are being uncoupled from work in real time.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:12]:
We're watching this happen. And this is something that I've been saying has been coming for years and it's finally to the point where it's difficult for other people to ignore it. That's why you have Harvard economists and random academics coming out trying to get on board, because they realize if they don't say these things, it's one, gonna look really bad for them. And two, if they do say them, they get a lot of attention and they're hoping that that will save them into the future. And who knows, maybe it will. Probably the funniest thing that happens to Ryan and I frequently is we constantly get pitched by podcast guests that typically tend to be Acade and PhDs who have written books about how college is a giant waste of time. And I always think that's funny. Hopefully they can profit off making the problem.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:45]:
Quick pause. If you're a parent trying to figure out what is actually happening in the world of work, hit subscribe. The show exists to cut through the panic and give you real information so you can help your child make better decisions for their future. All right, so how do we even get here? Where did degree requirements come from? And the answer is one Supreme Court case from 1971, Griggs vs. Duke Power. Here's just the facts of what happened. Duke Power had a high school diploma and an IQ test. These two things as a hiring filter.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:10]:
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that if your hiring test screens out a protected group, you have to prove it relates to the job. Otherwise it's discrimination. The court did not ban these tests. They just said prove your test actually matters. Now here's the problem. Defending an aptitude test in court is very expensive. So employers switched to a pay to play filter, a college degree. And now you can see how doing this has actually caused more and worse discrimination than the Supreme Court was trying to avoid.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:37]:
Because ultimately it doesn't make sense to discriminate against people in that way. And the Supreme Court made what I think was morally the correct ruling however, the result of that has been disastrous. Degrees became the lazy litigation shield, not because the jobs actually needed them, but because they were harder to challenge in court. And this was kind of the perfect storm because in 1965 the Higher Education act was formed and then in 1976 the government had to amend the Higher Education act in order to make student loans bankruptcy exempt. Because in that amount of time it went from 2% to 9%, which doesn't sound like a lot, but that was a 350% default rate in 11 years. And that's crisis level bad. At the same time the Vietnam War was going on. The only way to avoid being drafted and going to fight in Vietnam was, you guessed it, go to college.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:18]:
And then at the same time, this ruling of Griggs vs. Duke power was handed down from the Supreme Court right in the middle of this in 1971. So all at the same time, you had the inflow of government money into the college system. You had way more people going to college than there were jobs to actually support them. And then you had companies adding degree filters to their job even though it wasn't required. So all this was just a perfect storm. You see how it all just kind of got muddled together and it became a good job requires degrees. That's not actually true.

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:45]:
It's about a company not wanting to defend its hiring practices in a lawsuit. If you take nothing else away from the show, please take this. This brings me to the most important thing in this whole conversation. Degree required almost never means legally required. And if it's not legally required, there's another way into the job. And it's almost always faster and less expensive and a higher quality career training than college. When I got my first tech job, the posting said advanced computer science degree required. I didn't have one.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:11]:
I don't have any degree. I'm degree free. I got the job anyway. Required on a job posting is what the company has to put because otherwise they have to defend the way they're hiring in court. A lot of what keeps degree free people out of degree required jobs is application people self eliminate at an extremely high rate. And many people still believe that if a job says bachelor's degree required and there's no legal requirement that it is illegal for them to apply for that job. A ton of people think that it's not true. A required degree that does not have a legal requirement behind it is a degree request.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:41]:
Now let me show you the difference. Most BA required job postings will fall into this category. Examples Here would be software engineers, marketing managers, sales engineers, HR coordinators, project managers. A legally required job that's legitimate would be a physician, a lawyer, a CPA with accounting credits. Like they have an actual hourly requirement for this. It's a legal requirement. I mean, as an aside, CPAs are backing away from that. They're going to remove that soon, it seems, and probably within a few years, CPAs will remove the accounting degree requirement too, because it's not necessary to take the exact same test.

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:12]:
But therapists and K through 12 public school teachers. Now, the thing I want you to take away is that most BA required jobs are not legally required at all. Your kids should apply for them without fear and with the right skills. The actual legally required degree list is very short. And a lot of people say, well, engineers for sure. Did you know that less than 20% of employed engineers in our country have PEs professional engineering licenses? Those are the ones that require degrees. Like you have to have a degree in order to take that test, aside from certain exceptions in some states where you may submit experience or a certain amount of hours in order to take the test. So even that's not technically true, but I'm just going to give it to people and round up.

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:47]:
Less than 20% of working engineers in America actually hold a professional engineering license, which is the only credential that legally gates engineering work. The other 80% of engineering jobs, hardware, software, chemical, manufacturing, sales, H vac, process, none of those legally require a degree. And people that are employed in them don't necessarily have them. And that's why it's so key. When I hear people talking about their young adults being interested in engineering, I always say, figure out objectively what careers fit their needs. And if engineering of some kind rises to the top, look for strategic entry level work. That is the correct place for a young adult who's interested in engineering. Many of these entry level engineering positions are going to be technical roles.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:25]:
And to quote Alex Karp from Palantir, regardless of what you think about Palantir, they do a lot of engineering, which is why I'm talking about this. Our technicians in the United States are skilled technicians which are trained, are the equivalent of Japanese engineers. And typically what happens in your career progression is you come in entry level, you are trained in whatever that is. That includes aerospace, that includes automotive, that includes semiconductors, that includes so many things going into these fields where there's demand, where there are actual hard skills, where there's actual logic, actual problem solving, you get trained. And then if the company needs you to become an actual pe. They will pay for your child's college degree and then your child will actually know too that they want to go further into that job and that if they do get a degree, it will give them a raise and it will help them make more money or help them accomplish more in their career that they wanted to accomplish. That is the correct way to go about doing that. So now the challenge becomes how do you find that strategic, interlocable work? I know how this works because that's what we do.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:14]:
We help them figure out exactly what careers fit their needs, what they need to learn down to zip code specificity, what the options are to learn it, and then what strategic entry level work they're going to be looking for. And then again, every time I debunk the fact that most jobs in our country do not require degrees anymore, and increasingly more so, people say, oh, but they just won't get hired. That's not true. And the only way that your child can get around that is by applying for those jobs. And this is one of the things that I challenge people to do. If your child thinks that they can't get hired in the job that they're going to try to get hired in after they go to college the summer before they go, all they should be doing is applying for the same entry level roles that they're going to be trying to get after they go. And if they get one, then college is probably not the right move because they were able to get that same entry level job at 18 years old. Now again, if required is not an actual legal requirement, then your kid's entire job is just to bypass this.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:57]:
So ignoring completely degree requirements, if they think they could do the job, think they could get an interview for it at all, they should apply anyway fearlessly to any entry level job that they think they can learn or do. They should be walking in. Apply. Look these people in the eyes. Call on the phone. The worst case is they don't respond to your child, which is going to happen to them in four to six years after they go into a ton of student debt. Just a little tip, the best time to apply is actually on Sunday nights. That way it's top of the queue on Monday morning.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:22]:
And then they should be calling in Monday morning to ask about their application. Calling moves your child's resume from the algorithm to a human being. And a human can make the decision that an algorithm can't. The kids who are able to beat the filter and get strategic entry level work are showing up the way that just nobody else does. I do want to cover an actual legitimate case of a degree requirement, but I want parents to understand how nuanced this is and how it really just proves what I'm saying. Some jobs do legally require degrees. Physicians, lawyers, CPAs. As I talked about, public school teachers.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:49]:
Now, total U.S. jobs that legally require a degree is about 14.8 million. And again, 38% of those are specifically three roles. RNs, elementary school teachers and high school teachers. One in four legally gated jobs in this country is a teaching job. And here's the kicker. K through 12 teachers earn about $63,000 in a year on average. And that's about 7% less than the U.S.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:08]:
median. So you can see how requiring teachers to go buy bachelor's degrees before they get into this or when there's such a high attrition rate on teachers is really skewing what's going on. So again, teachers are 25.6% of every legally gated job in America. And the bachelor's degree gate on teaching doesn't even produce above average pay or above average results. Historically, teachers were also certified by exam, not degree, until we started doing this between the 1930s and 60s. Florida now licenses military veterans as teachers without a bachelor's degree at all. And again, in states or areas where there's a shortage, what we do, we give people emergency teaching licenses. So even the legally required jobs are actually not all they're cracked up to be.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:44]:
So now what if the job your child actually wants does need a credential? Well, I want to tell you about Quinn. Quinn McLaren came on the Degree Free podcast. He's episode 1 56. He broke out of college in his second year. He became a real estate financial analyst at a Fortune 50 company. And then his employer offered to pay for him to become a cpa. He was in the role first, performing, doing well and getting paid. And also applied for this job without a bachelor's degree.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:08]:
And then the company was going to fund his actual degree that was required for his license as part of his career growth because he was doing a good job, he wasn't paying for the actual college and he wasn't paying for the CPA license either. So even when a degree is legally required, your child does not have to be the one paying for it. Get hired first, strategic entry level work. And then the company will fund the credential if it's actually required and it's going to make you more money or help you advance in your career. Now, the meta mistake that parents are Making and that high schools are pushing is they ask what should you major in? And that's completely the wrong question. The right question is what life do you want? And then back into the work. So you start at what do you want? What income do you need? Or what environment must you be in? Or what schedule must you have? Or what location must you live in? Now remember that if you have all four of these needs, it's tough. You're looking for it to help your child pick one thing that they're trying to meet.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:59]:
If that thing is not present in work environment or location or income or schedule, they can't take that job. That's how you identify if it's a need. The rest of it is just nice to haves. And we actually talk about this in the needs versus wants chapter of the Degree Free Way, how to help your 1620 year old build the life they want. If you add too many needs at the beginning, it's those act as filters and they will shrink drastically the amount of career options that could fit your child's needs by optimizing for their wants first. So once you figure out what they need from their work, you identify careers that fit those answers and then you find the right entry level role for each career and then you find what's actually required legally versus preferred and then you build the most efficient path to those skills. This sounds really simple. It's going to take you a long time.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:38]:
For our team, we have trained strategists who do this. They work one on one with young adults. It's very intense. It takes four weeks. This is not an easy thing to do. And you have to do it where you are using the Internet to figure out what options are available for your child. Down to zip code specificity. This is not some like random software personality test.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:57]:
This is actual research for every single individual. And it's going to take time. And because you don't do it all the time, it's going to take you weeks to months. But it's so worth it to make sure that your child understands what they're doing and why they're doing it and that they understand that what they're going to learn is going to have some application to what they want in their life. Because most kids on that college conveyor belt are going to skip the first four steps like they're going to land at the bottom with $100,000 of debt and a major that they're going to change jobs out of inside of three years and no actual plan. Reverse engineering this Puts the life question first, which is where it belongs. So while the world is dropping degree requirements, what are colleges doing? Well, the federal government is removing degree requirements, 22 governors have removed them from state jobs, and half of the Fortune 500 has already dropped them or plans to drop them. Meanwhile, your high school is measuring success by how many young adults it can get to take on student loan debt.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:44]:
SpaceX has a live job posting right now. Avionics harness technician, $77,000 a year, high school diploma and one year of shop experience. That's it. SpaceX software engineer postings two years of professional experience. Again, about half of Apple's US hires have no degree at all. 90% of IBM's new collar apprentices convert to full time roles inside that company. So nothing is gated from your child. Not engineering, not tech jobs, not even corporate white collar jobs.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:11]:
And this is why I always say this, because it's so important for people to understand that when your child's not going to college, it doesn't mean that they have to go into a trade. They could go into any of the other 90% of jobs in our country that do not require degrees. So right now your child, the customer of colleges, is being sold a four year hundred thousand dollars product that the buyer supposedly which is employers, is actively walking away from. And then parents are wondering why their kids can't get jobs. Now I want to talk about good jobs. Georgetown recognizes good jobs as jobs that pay about $55,000 a year. And they say that these good jobs do not require a bachelor's degree. And again, these are just jobs that people can go out and get.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:44]:
And that's what people are not understanding is they believe that if their kids don't go to college that they're just going to get a job that pays them 40 a year and that they'll, they're never going to move up from that. But that's just not true. That's where they're going to start. They're going to get more skills, they're going to get more experience, and then they get raises. That's how it works. Going into debt at the beginning of their career is not going to help your kids get ahead. It's actually going to keep them behind. And the thing is too, when Georgetown's looking at these jobs, these good jobs that they're talking about that don't require a degree, they're not even using the right metric, they're still using requires a degree, not legally requires a degree.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:14]:
And so there's far more jobs in our country that are good jobs, that pay even more than that, that don't require a degree. So parents who are wanting to equip their kids going to this market are going to need to help their child find strategic entry level work so they're not in debt and so they have a real skillset and real experience and that's really what's going to help their kids get ahead in life. I do want to talk about AI just a little bit because so many parents are saying, well, yeah, but what about AI? We went from typewriters to computers and the workforce. Expanded ATMs were supposed to wipe out all the bank tellers and the number of tellers. Expanded phone cameras were supposed to wipe out all photographers. Now there's more working photographers earning more than there have ever been. And the same thing is going to happen with degrees. As the credential filter is weakening.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:51]:
Work is not going to disappear. It's going to get distributed differently. And the kids who are able to reverse engineer what they need from work and then find the right strategic entry level job are going to capture a lot more of this distribution. And a quick word from our sponsor. Just kidding. There's no sponsor, it's just me. If your child needs help reverse engineering their career and finding out what they need from work so they can start finding what entry level roles would work for them, we wrote the book on it. It's called the degree free way, how to help your child build the life they want.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:16]:
And there's a parent and a young adult copy and you work through these together. You could do it in as quickly as a weekend or you could work through it in a couple weeks. But it helps you to figure out what jobs your child knows about, helps you go through budgeting, what they're going to need from their work, how to think differently about work and different options that are there, and then how to narrow them down based on what fits your child's needs and wants. And then how to check whether or not those jobs actually require degrees so you can make an informed decision about what your child's actually looking for as far as careers go. We actually did just sell out of these on Amazon, but you can buy them from our site, degreefree.com book parents. The job market is telling you something. It is very important that you listen. States are dropping requirements.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:52]:
The federal government is dropping requirements. The biggest companies in America are dropping degree requirements. Kids who are going to win the next decade are those who apply anyway follow up and reverse engineer what they need from their work and then go get entry level work. Your child can buy a degree at any point. Colleges are businesses and they will take your money or your child's money and any day of the week. And it's important to remember the actual numbers here. 73% of Bachelor's degree holders don't work in a job that's related to their major at all, which means they didn't need it to get work. 28% of bachelor degree programs currently have negative ROI.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:22]:
Confidence in higher education, which I wouldn't even call college at this point, is sitting at about 36% as of 2024, and it's lower now. We'll see the numbers come out later this year. So that feeling that you have that college is not the right option for your child, you're not alone in it. All the other parents in the country are feeling it too. Don't let your child be the last one that's paying full price for this paper that the entire economy is walking away from. Their path is wide open. They just have to find the right fit for them. And the beautiful thing is there is a fit for every young adult in the whole country based on what they need.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:50]:
If this helped, you subscribe and share it with another parent who's still being told that their kid needs a degree while the entire economy is changing around them.