Nearly Half of Undergrads Are Considering Dropping Out, MBA Grads Getting Paid Not To Work & Iowa Expanding Health Careers Through A $13.5M Apprenticeship Program (DF#97)

Hannah [00:00:31]:

Welcome back. Welcome back to the podcast. As always, folks, we are stoked to have you with us today.

Ryan [00:00:35]:

And let's just jump right into it. I wanted to talk about this comment that we got on YouTube. So if you didn't know already and you're just listening to this, we post all of our shows on YouTube as well. So if you'd rather watch the shows, you can go there and subscribe and like, please. And then that's the best place to leave comments or if you have any podcast ideas or any episodes that you want to know more about, that's the best place to do it. So just go to YouTube and subscribe to us there Degree Free. You can find us. But this comment was so good that I had to talk about it or I want to talk about it and I'll just read it to you. Great content. However, can you and your husband talk about jobs that you can get when you already have a master's degree? Because a lot of people are stuck with degrees and now have to get certifications.

Hannah [00:01:29]:

When people ask this question, what they are asking implies that they believe that there is a secret list or a separate list of jobs that are accessible to them because they have a master's degree and they can just skip ahead of other people. And I can already imagine the TikTok comments on this video of people going, well, it does get you, except for if it doesn't. Except if it doesn't. If your master's degree is not getting you a job, then saying, what jobs can I get with my master's degree? Unfortunately, the answer for you is the same jobs as Degree free people, the same jobs as everybody else. There's no secret list. There's no, oh, in the back room over here, we have these other jobs that you can get because you paid for a master's degree. Unfortunately, what's going to have to happen and I really do have compassion in my heart for people that are struggling with this because they invested so much time and they sunk so much money into their degrees only to realize, oh, wait, that's not going to help me get work. You have to go get certifications. You have to go learn hard skills. You have to build an online portfolio just like everybody else. The difference is that because of the amount of time that you already spent and the amount of money you already spent, your back is in a corner and you probably now have to look for higher, more difficult certifications to earn off the bat because you have to pay off your debt.

Ryan [00:02:49]:

Yeah, exactly. And if you're asking this question, I have this degree, what can I get with it? You're still stuck in that mindset that your degree is worth more than all those other things that you stated and that's just not true, at least not in my worldview, to be honest. If that's the question that you're asking. I think that there are no jobs that are available to you and not to somebody else. That's degree free. We actually did an episode a while ago on the actual jobs that require college degrees and I'll put that in the show Notes for Everybody degreefree codcast. And you can go and listen to that and basically I'll just sum it up right here. It is very few jobs that actually.

Hannah [00:03:37]:

Actually legally require it for license or certification.

Ryan [00:03:41]:

Exactly. And everything else is just quote, unquote, nice to have.

Hannah [00:03:47]:

If you are trying to get a job with your Master's degree and you are trying to lead with the fact that you have a Master's degree, with all of the compassion and love of my heart, the company does not care about your Master's degree. They care about what you can do. Unless your Master's degree, for whatever reason, at the company you are applying to, is legally required for you to do that job. They do not care. They do not care. And that mentality, you have to let it go. The reason you have to let it go is because every minute, every second that you hold on to, well, I have a Master's degree so I should get or I deserve this. Unfortunately, every second you spend thinking that is going to cost you because you have to drop that mentality right now and you need to start learning hard skills. You need to learn data analytics. You need to go and learn cybersecurity. You need to go and learn how to be a developer. I'm sorry, yes, learn to code because now you are stuck. You probably need a six figure job in order to get yourself out of your debt. And that means that there is a specific set of skills that you are going to have to look at and you're going to have to pick one of those skills if you want to dig yourself out of your debt and design the type of life that you actually want to live. And that is the hard truth that I think people really need to hear. The good news is that's what all we talk about on here, all we talk about on this podcast, is how you can do those things. Please listen to our episodes. Please join our community. Please take advantage of the resources we've created for you because we understand that your college degrees expire and they no longer serve you, but you're stuck with the debt. And you still have to find a good job. So don't get discouraged just because of that. You just have to shift your mindset.

Ryan [00:05:20]:

Yeah, definitely. And I don't want to make this whole segment about dumping on this person or people that have that mindset. So I'll dump on myself. I had this mindset, I had this mentality coming right out of college. And when I got my degree, literally graduation day, right? And I am walking to get my degree, and I realize after I get my degree in my hand and it's not even my degree, it's actually just like the paper holder for the degree, a placeholder I still don't have my degree. I just don't have it. Never picked it up.

Hannah [00:05:57]:

We should ask if you can get a refund.

Ryan [00:05:58]:

Yeah, exactly. I don't have my degree. Can I get a refund? Yeah. It was like ten years ago, but I didn't really get the value out of it.

Hannah [00:06:04]:

It expired. Yeah, the shelf life on this thing was just shit.

Ryan [00:06:08]:

And so I realized when I got my degree, I was just as unemployable then as I was 10 seconds ago before I got my degree conferred to me. And it was definitely validated in the months to come where I didn't get hired and I was trying to apply to all of these jobs and I still had this mentality of, oh, well, I just spent four and a half years. Four and a half years for me, I just spent four and a half years of my life getting this degree in economics that you said on this job description that you care about. It literally says that it is required, college degree required. And then it says a bunch of other things that do not say required after it. It says skills in excel. It says problem solving, critical thinking, whatever other skills. And I was applying to any job, any and every job under the sun didn't matter. I was trying to go be a bank financial advisor, trying to work in operations, accounting, sales, marketing, didn't matter. And all of them said college degree required. And then all of the other job description items didn't say required at all. And so my thought was that, well, why are you not hiring me? Because I have the only thing on this whole job listing that says college degree required. Why are you not hiring me? And then it was like, oh, wait, my college degree literally doesn't matter. They care about everything else and not the college degree. Because if they were accurate, I would have gotten hired, because all of the other stuff, it didn't say required next to it. And it just must have been nice to have then. So if you are not matching 100% of the job description, then just apply. Fearlessly apply anyway. And you never know, you might get that job.

Hannah [00:07:58]:

If you are stuck in this mentality of having a master's degree and thinking that that master's degree is going to get you a job alone. If it is already not getting you a job, you have to drop that mentality. You have to look analytically and say, okay, how much money do I want to make? How much money do I need to make? And you need to look at in demand fields. And then from there, you need to break down what skills they're looking for in those fields. And that is how you're going find the certification that's going to make you enough money to pay back your debt and get back on track with how you want to live your life and how much money you want to earn.

Ryan [00:08:26]:

And it's not just master's degree. It's PhDs. It's college degrees. And it doesn't necessarily have to be certifications. That's something that we talk about all the time. If you go back and listen to the episode of how to Find a Job backwards, it doesn't necessarily have to be getting a certification. It could just be learning a skill. Yes, certifications are good because then the people that are evaluating your skills know, or at least in theory, they know that you have skills up to a certain level, which is what the college.

Hannah [00:08:55]:

Degree used to be used for.

Ryan [00:08:56]:

Right. But that is not necessarily necessary. It might not be in the roles that you are looking for. And so don't go and just get a certification because you want to go get a certification. You're doing the same thing that you did before with getting a degree. You might just have to learn a skill. And it could just be coding. You could just learn Python and you don't have to get a certification in it. Just learn it. Build a project and show people that you know how to do it. And so I just wanted to make that clear.

Hannah [00:09:26]:

Perfect. Before we get into our next point. If you want more degree free run, don't walk over to Degreefree Co newsletter and sign up for our free weekly newsletter. It's got tips on how to get hired. Things that Ryan and I think are cool and news that we think you're going to want to know. Like companies that are down credentialing and happenings in degree free news. This leads me into my next point. Do you remember when we were talking about Amazon paying those new grads that they had made contingent offers to to not work for Amazon?

Ryan [00:09:52]:

Yeah, I remember that.

Hannah [00:09:52]:

It's few episodes. Whack we'll link it in the show notes. But essentially what happened is Amazon made contingent offers to new graduates. They could not afford to hire those graduates. So they pushed their start dates to next year or further away, and then they gave them 13 grand whether or not they were going to hire them. When I saw Amazon paying off those grads to not hire them because it was cheaper to pay them off than it was to actually go through and hire them. I knew we were going to start seeing that happening more, especially as the economy downturns, college graduates, as the degree inflation continues, as the value of a college degree is worth less and less all the time. And as students, as grads get more and more disconnected from the actual amount that they can get that they are expected to earn when they graduate, it's going to get too expensive for companies to hire them. They are going to rely more and more on their apprenticeship programs, more and more on the job training, and more and more on just hiring degree free people by changing their hiring policies. So when I saw this, I knew I had to talk about it. But Bain and Mackenzie had hired new MBAs, so they have contingent offers for these new MBAs, but they push their start dates until April of next year or further away. Now, what I think is interesting about this is you and I have talked at length before about how MBAs are really at risk of the degree inflation. Because they just pump those guys out, and because they pump so many MBAs out, and because it's getting more and more frequent that people are pushed into getting advanced degrees like an MBA, they're worth less and less all the time. It means less and less all the time. And people are probably going to get mad when I say this, but it's just true. The more there are, the less valuable they are individually, because there's more of them. You can always get another one. You can always find cheaper ones. And that is going to become a problem for people that think that they are able to command a premium in the market when they realize they're not able to do that. So what happened was Bain told MBAs with offer letters that if they waited until April of next year, that they would pay them 40 grand to work for a nonprofit or learn a new language or participate in an educational program. And then another communication that they received told new hires to become a yoga instructor or go on a safari for 20 grand. What's funny about this, I think, too, is that you too can do any of these things and make just as much as an MBA doing any of these things.

Ryan [00:12:14]:

Yeah. That's crazy. And so do you think that they're going to have them back?

Hannah [00:12:17]:

I doubt it. I do not think that these people will end up being employed by these firms. I think what they're doing is they're trying to avoid a stink in the media from these MBA saying, oh, well, they revoked our offers, blah, blah, blah, layoffs, layoffs, doom and gloom. I think they're just pushing it until next year because by then, nobody will care. So these companies are also currently still seeking volunteers to commit to a start date that's even further away, which is apparently a new practice. And it's funny because they're only doing it for the MBAs. They're only doing it for the ones that are really, really expensive, right. This labor that's real expensive or comes at a premium, rather. What I thought was fascinating is that some of the volunteers committed to the start date and then the ones that did not commit to a much later start date than April 2024 will receive half pay when they start. Right. That was buried in the article. For those of you that weren't watching, ryan just made a very confused face. If you're watching on YouTube, you saw it. But I thought that was at the bottom of this. They're paying them half as much. What that tells you is that their market value is no longer what it was, because who knows when their pay is going to go back up? There's nothing about when their pay is going to go back up. And what's more interesting about this is I think what they're doing is I think that they're sending these people off on these spirit quests, right? Become a yoga instructor, go on a safari, go work for a nonprofit, go learn a language, go have an educational experience overseas. It's basically a study abroad program. And what I think is so fascinating is I think what they think is going to happen and what probably will, is that they think they'll lose these people during that time. They think they'll find something else to do. They think they'll like doing those things better, which is probably true, but it's going to put these people in a huge bind, because think of the debt from these school. If this is Wharton, if this is Johns Hopkins Business School, right? When you're looking at these giant MBA programs and how expensive you and I both know that they are, how much debt do you think these guys are coming out with? It's got to be crazy. But they're sending them off to make four K a year, and then when they do start, it's half pay. And then if they ever do start, who knows? Who knows when their pay is going to go up? And also what I'd like to see is I'd like to know on the offer letters, I would like to know if they're going to keep the same offer and the same pay for those that start at that much later date, if they ever start, which I don't think they will.

Ryan [00:14:28]:

Yeah, the MBA is very interesting because it is the most utilitarian masters that there is, because it's literally a master's of business administration. So you would think as somebody that is going to be an MBA or an MBA candidate or somebody that's vetting MBA school, that you get it and then you're a master of business, and therefore people are going to pay you more because who wouldn't want to pay a Master of business. You know what I mean? Who wouldn't want to be a Master of Business? And that's why so many people are getting their MBAs, is because you think, okay, well, now that I'm in whatever the business is, and it can be in any department, and that's why so many people are getting them, is because it can be in marketing, it can be in operations, it can be in accounting, it can be in you name it. Any department within a business can benefit from an MBA, quote, unquote. I'm using air quotes for those that are not watching. And that is where a lot of their marketing comes from. And the people that get MBAs, they're really analytical, and we've talked about this before, where you are thinking it's not that they're not thinking before they go and get their MBA. It's just that their assumptions are wrong. They are assuming that if you go and get this Master's of Business Administration, then you are going to come out knowing so much about business. You're going to be able to help people turn around business and do all of these things. And maybe that's true and maybe that's not with your specific personality and with your specific skills, but on a greater level when you're just looking at the macro situation, that's just not true.

Hannah [00:16:10]:

All the MBAs I know had no prior business experience. The ones that did get jobs using their MBA for the most part, were not in a business position, technically, they were in an adjacent position.

Ryan [00:16:24]:

Yeah. And then what's happening is that the MBA for a lot of companies, because it's so saturated the market, what you were talking about with scarcity, it's so saturated, a lot of these companies now are putting MBA requirements on entry level roles.

Hannah [00:16:41]:

Yeah, because they can because they're such a glut of MBA grads that they don't need they're like, yeah, these people will take 50 a year, which goes.

Ryan [00:16:48]:

Back to what we were talking about before, which is you have to skill up. You have to get a skill, you have to showcase that skill, you have to be really good at it, and then market those skills, sell those skills to companies. And before we get into our next topic, we always hear, oh, I don't have a network. How do I start getting a network? How do I start building that network? There's good news. You can connect with us on LinkedIn. We will be your first connections. You can go to LinkedIn. I'm Ryan maruyama. She's. Hannah maruyama. I'll put links to everything that we talked about and our LinkedIns at degreefree Codcast.

Hannah [00:17:22]:

So 40% of undergrads are considering dropping out of college. I think that number is actually way higher than reported, but 40% of them are openly admitting that they're considering dropping out of college. Here's why they should. Most of them can't afford it, and most of them are not going to get the type of job that they think they will get and earn the amount of money that they are told in college that they will earn. Here's what they should do instead. We call these the five degree free pathways. Many of you who listen to the podcast are already familiar with them. But number one is get a job. Literally, getting any job is better than going to college for most people. Number two, find apprenticeship or on the job training. The reason this is a good pathway is because it takes all of the risk out of your learning. Imagine if you were in college except for you were getting paid to be there. That's how it should be. That's how it used to be. And I think everything is trending that it's moving back that way. Look for on the job training. Look for apprenticeship, because the person who is sponsoring your apprenticeship, who is paying you to train, is more invested in you finding a job than your college could ever be. Because as soon as you stop going to college, the college loses a customer. Their goal is to keep you on that campus spending money as long as humanly possible. The company that is paying you for apprenticeship or on the job training, their goal is to get you working for them as soon as possible, getting paid, earning money, and they are willing to outlay money to take that risk. Number three earn a license or certification. This could be literally anything from being a pilot or a yacht captain, to becoming a salesforce administrator, to becoming a lifeguard, to becoming a notary public. There are so many things you can do. You can be an insurance adjuster. There are so many jobs that require license or certification. And if you earn a license or certification that allows you to do a specific job, that is something that sets you apart from other people and is a good way for you to find a skill that other people cannot easily access because they also have to get a license or certification. So that's a really good one. Number four not for everybody. And I can already hear the TikTok comments apprenticeship is not for everybody, but build a business. You can also buy a small business if you have the ability to do that in your local area. If you look around on Facebook Marketplace, there are small businesses for sale. But you can also build a business doing any sort of service. You can cut people's grass, you can detail people's cars. You will hear if you look online. There are stories of people that have built huge businesses from detailing cars. It's kind of insane. There's a bunch of car wash millionaires. We'll have to do an episode about that because it's really interesting. But build a business. Number five learn a skill. I just saw a TikTok comment the other day of a lady who said that after seeing our TikToks, her son taught himself how to be a photographer on YouTube watching Peter McKinnon, which we told her to do, and her son now makes six figures a year as a photographer. That's pretty cool. That's learning a skill. So to review, get a job, find on the job training or apprenticeship, earn a license or certification, build a business or learn a skill, all of those things will serve you better than going to college. Dropout.

Ryan [00:20:14]:

So if you are thinking about dropping out, which we don't say here, we call it breaking out of college, because you are breaking out and you're not dropping out. There's no negative connotation there. It's all positive and you're not sure what to do. The five degree free pathways have got you covered. It is literally everything that you can do to get yourself ahead in your career, in your life, in whatever success means to you. As far as professionally. It is available to you if you are 16 years old and you're getting your first job, or if you are about to retire and you want to make that one last career change before you retire. It spans the whole range of being a paper boy all the way to being a doctor and running a company of 500 people. The degree free pathways and learning about them should be free to everybody. And so we made a free course for you. You can go to Degreefree co pathways to go and take that free course. If you want help in the job search. There are a couple of ways to do that. Most of the people that are listening to this podcast, you're going to do pathway number one at some point because you're going to get a job even if you are doing pathway number three, which is earn a license or certification, or you're doing pathway number five, learn a skill. And even if you're doing number two, which is find an apprenticeship or on the job training, you're still going to have to use the tactics in pathway number one, which is get a job. And so if you are trying to get a job and you need help in the job search, you can also, after you take our free course, you can sign up for our Get Hired Challenge. That's a seven day free challenge that will teach you how to get the work that you want. And then after that, if you want more help, we have the Job Change Accelerator, which is a self paced video course that you can do on your own time. And it teaches you everything that you need to know to change jobs and make that change and get that new job, get that new promotion. Whatever your job goal is, the Job Change Accelerator is there for you. And then if you want even more help than that, we have the Career Change Crash Course and you can go to Degreefree co careerchange for the Career Change Crash course, which is a cohort based course that you can take that Hannah and I teach. And then if you want the video course, you can go to degreefree cojobchange for the video course. And the next thing that I want to talk about and this was a few weeks ago already, but I wanted to mention it because it gels perfectly with pathway number two, find an apprenticeship or on the job training. But the headline for this is that Governor Reynolds, which is the governor of Iowa, awards $13.5 million to expand health careers through apprenticeships. And this is from the Iowa Workforce Development. And I'll link to everything at degreefree codcast for everybody here, but this is a perfect example of that pathway number two. And it could be a great entryway into healthcare careers because a lot of the people within healthcare, the majority of people in healthcare do not have degrees or majority of the positions in there do not require degrees or specific licensure.

Hannah [00:23:30]:

We actually talk about this in our episode about how many jobs actually require college degrees, because this is such a tired and repeated comment. If we had a dollar for every time we got this comment of, well, health care requires college degrees. No, it doesn't. Most of the US medical system is run by skilled techs and CNAs. That's who runs our entire medical system. And I'm not going to sit by and let people say that while those people literally run, keep everything running. And those are perfectly good jobs. Those people are hardworking and they are skilled. They literally have specific skill sets and people don't realize there's cardio techs, there's sonographers. There are so many different skills that you have to learn and you have to be taught in order to actually perform those jobs. And I think that that's worth talking about. And I'm especially glad to see that these state governors are starting to be more aggressive about this. Because as we look at shortages in healthcare technology, especially in the technology field, there's a huge problem with cybersecurity right now. There's not nearly enough people in it. And as we look at states starting to solve this by apprenticeship and on the job training, I'm just stoked to see it.

Ryan [00:24:38]:

I wanted to bring this to people's attention because, one, if you're in Iowa, then be aware that this is happening. And if you wanted to have a healthcare career, this might be a great opportunity for you. But then also, for those that are not in Iowa, this is going to keep happening. So if you want to get into a healthcare career without getting an expensive degree, without becoming a doctor, or without having to go to nursing school and become a nurse, but you wanted to do something else, and there's all different types, not only CNAs and other texts, but there's phlebotomists, there's EMTs, paramedics. You don't need a degree for any of those types of things. There's. Substance abuse specialists. All of these different careers don't actually require college degrees. So if you are thinking about going into healthcare and you want to do it in a very low risk way, keep your ear to the ground in your state because they probably will be opening up these similar apprenticeship programs and on the job training in your area. And one of the best things about apprenticeships and on the job training pathway number two that we love is that your economics go literally the opposite way from normal. Normally what happens is that you actually have to pay in money and in time to learn a skill, to learn these marketable hard skills and soft skills in the job. But when you are doing an apprenticeship or on the job training, your economics are literally going the other way and you are getting paid while you learn those skills. Sure, you might have to sign a contract that says that you will stick on for five years, for two years, whatever it is, but okay, that's the price that you pay for getting paid.

Hannah [00:26:27]:

Yes. And that is a small price to pay because if you sign a loan to go to college, you're going to be paying for that time, but actually you're going to be paying for longer. So if you're getting paid for that amount of time, it reduces your risk significantly. Also what this does is it gives you the ability on the job training and apprenticeship gives you the ability to work in the environment that you will end up in. That is huge. People so often, and I will say this, it's often women, we get pushed into these fields that we've never been in, and people buy degrees in them first and then they go and they work in a classroom, they work in a hospital, they work in a social work setting. And they're like, wow, I hate this so much, except for it's too late now. And they feel so boxed in and so trapped and you and I see it all the time and it just makes my heart hurt because it's just because nobody told them their options. Nobody said, hey, why don't you dip your toe in this first before you go full tilt into this field? And it's just something that I really like to see because like I said, it gives people the ability to get into that environment and get paid to do the work to see if they actually want to do it for the rest of their lives. Given careers nowadays are not for the rest of your lives, let's just say reasonably for the next ten years.

Ryan [00:27:39]:

Yeah, and that is a great point because we literally hear it every day, especially with the nurses that, oh, I went to nursing school because my family said I should, or because I didn't know of anything else. And because it's a good career and they make a lot of money and then I got the job. And then I realized like, wow, this is nothing like what I had pictured in my mind. And then you ask them, okay, what did you picture in your mind? And a lot of them are like, I don't really know. I don't know what I was picturing, but I wasn't picturing having to wipe people's asses and then have to lift 300, 400 pound people and get them from the gurney to their bed and things like that. And then just having to be in a high stress environment, especially it depends on what kind of nurse you are. If you're just working at a GP's office, well, your worries are different. So there's going to be the stress of having to deal with patients all the time and then having to deal with your coworkers all the time. And a lot of times they're women and a lot of times it can be a caddy environment.

Hannah [00:28:41]:

This is what we're told exactly. I heard that come out of your mouth.

Ryan [00:28:43]:

I know. Here we go.

Hannah [00:28:44]:

TikTok is going to hate that. I got to clarify and save you.

Ryan [00:28:46]:

No, but it's true. And then on the flip side of that, if you are an Er nurse or if you're an ICU nurse or something like that, it's high stress environment. So maybe you're not dealing with all of that other BS because it's not slow. So it's always a dynamic environment. But you are doing all of the other things that I talked about. One of the things that I know is really huge is dealing with blood or dealing with dead people. So if you're not sure about making a career in one of these things, apprenticeships or on the job training is a really good way to make sure that you know that you want to do this and say you want to be an EMT or something. There are a lot of counties or cities or not really private companies that will let you go ahead and do a ride along with them for a shift. You just call up your municipality and you ask, hey, can I do a ride along? And okay, maybe in their SOPs or SOGs they say, no, but you can just keep calling and keep calling and keep calling and see if you can. Because I know personally, for a lot of people, I was a firefighter, I was an EMT, I've seen a lot of dead people. And for a lot of people, seeing people die in pretty gruesome ways is pretty tough to deal with. Seeing the amount of blood that you see in emergency work or say that you work at like a trauma center as a tech somewhere, and then you're like, yeah, you're going to see a lot of gnarly stuff. And doing a ride along or finding an apprenticeship around the job training is a really good way to kind of dip your toes in before you spend eight years of your life and 100,000 plus dollars in worth of schooling to figure out whether or not you even like this job.

Hannah [00:30:36]:

Because the thing is, some people, it's going to be awesome for they're going to love the speed, they're going to love the not being bored, they're going to love being outside and driving around and doing stuff and the action. Some people love that. They live for it and it's a great fit for some people. I'm talking about the EMTs and the paramedics here.

Ryan [00:30:50]:

Here.

Hannah [00:30:50]:

But even for the nurses, some people really do like nursing and that's fantastic, right? We need people to be nurses. And I don't like talking about like we need people to do certain jobs because people should do whatever jobs and pursue whatever jobs they want to pursue for whatever reasons they want to pursue it. But yes, it's a good thing to be those things. What I do think people need to think about, though, is that when you are committing to buying one of these degrees, to become one of these things, to go into these specific careers, the ones that we get messages from all the time, the teachers, the nurses, and the social workers, what you really need to do, please do this. Especially if you are just now going into college or you're thinking about going to college for one of these things. Think about how long you are going to have to commit to working in this industry before you are net zero. Think about how long you have to work in this industry to pay off the debt you took to get into it, right? Because some people, they go, like I said, and we get these messages all the time, people will go and they get into it and they hate it. But now they're like, I'm stuck. I'm stuck here for however long because they have to pay off the debt and they can't afford to take a pay cut while they learn a new skill. They can't afford to take a pay cut to take an entry level role in a new industry. They have to stay where they are. At least they feel like they have to. And it becomes much more difficult for them to change industries, especially if they have kids, they have other commitments, they are caring for elderly relatives, so many things. So just think about how long you're going to have to work in the industry before you invest the money to get into it. All that to say. That's what I wanted to say.

Ryan [00:32:16]:

Perfect. And I wanted to get into the last thing that we're going to talk about today, which is education based stigma and discrimination among young adults not in four year college. And this is a study or a survey that was done a while ago by Bmcpsychology and I will link to the full article at Degreefree Codcast and you can look at it there. It talks about a bunch of things, but I wanted to hone in on the discrimination and the stigma that is behind not having a degree. I'll just read the results here really quickly. 79.4% of participants agreed to one of the six statements that not attending four year college is stigmatized, and 71.8% endorsed experiencing at least one form of discrimination. Higher levels of education related stigma and more frequent experiences of education related discrimination was associated with greater past month anxiety and depression symptoms. And so, okay, I don't know about the health stuff, but it makes sense to me, at least. I'm not sure if the correlation that they are seeing here is causation, but it makes sense. If you experience discrimination because you do not have a college degree, then you might be more prone to becoming depressed because you didn't make a purchase decision that other people made because you didn't go and get this piece of paper that other people spent five and a half years of their life and went into debt. For that you have to be discriminated against, and that makes you depressed. Okay, so I want to put the depression aside for a second, and I kind of just wanted to talk about the stigma or the discrimination and go back to the beginning, which is when we were first starting degree free. The impetus of it was a bunch of things, but one of the big ones was when we were talking to people that were degree free before we ever had the words or the vernacular or the nomenclature. Degree free, before we had that word, everyone would be like, yeah, I dropped out of college. And they would hang their head, even though these people were really, really successful. Whatever success means to you, running big companies, making six figures, plus having a good life, can afford whatever they want. Whenever college would come up, they would always say, yeah, I dropped out. And so we saw that and we would always tell people, no, that's great, awesome. Good for you. For me, personally, I would always say, well, that's better than me. I went to college and paid for it and spent four and a half years of my life getting it, and it hasn't served me a single day in my life. So good for you that you didn't do that at all and you didn't spend your money and your time getting it like how I did. And then normally, though, it was always refreshing because normally what people would say to those people is, oh, well, college isn't for everyone, but you're going back, right? Or oh, well, you can always go back later.

Hannah [00:35:23]:

Which is true.

Ryan [00:35:25]:

Is true.

Hannah [00:35:25]:

They'll always take your money, guys.

Ryan [00:35:26]:

They will always take your money. You can always go back to college later. But it was always negative. It was always, oh, well, you should have gotten your degree, or there was always this sort of stigma.

Hannah [00:35:38]:

Yeah, there's always this, oh, well, that's okay. You can always go into the trades. You can always this, you can always that. It's always very subtly or not subtly condescending.

Ryan [00:35:50]:

So the whole reason why we have this podcast and the whole reason why we do anything that we do is to get rid of this discrimination and get rid of this stigma that degree free people aren't as hireable or aren't as smart and for some reason aren't.

Hannah [00:36:08]:

Educated, aren't intelligent, and aren't employable.

Ryan [00:36:10]:

Yeah, exactly. The educated one really grinds my gears because education does not equal college. And for those longtime listeners, you guys know that.

Hannah [00:36:19]:

Yeah, it's so funny. This is an argument, too. We laugh about this because if you've been on our TikTok, you know we fight this battle every single day. The amount of times I type into TikTok every day. College is not education. College is a business that sells access to education. Do not confuse the two. That is how we got into this $1.7 trillion mess. That's it. That's it right there. Colleges have convinced people that buying their paper is education, that education is not a value. Education is a value. It is not for sale. Nobody can keep it from other people. If you don't sign for a loan, that's not how it works. And taking it back is how we're going to begin to write the ship.

Ryan [00:37:01]:

So while we are working to combat this discrimination and stigma, you just have to know, if you're degree free, that you are fighting an uphill battle as wrong as that is. And so use the resources in this podcast. Go to Degreefree co pathways and take the Pathways course. Take our seven day Get Hired challenge and learn how to create stories around your experience. Learn how to identify the skills that you need to learn to get the work that you want, and then learn those skills and then sell those to employers. It isn't easy, but it is simple. The last thing that I did want to bring up, though, about this, and I said this in the very first episode, I went back a few weeks ago and listened to it, and I thought about whether or not this statement that I'm about to make is true or not. And I still think that it is, which is I'm a hypocrite. And there are a bunch of people in this degree free space and basically non college credentialed space that are also hypocrites, too. What I mean by that is we are all people that went to college and got a degree, some of them multiple times. And I'm not picking on anybody here. I'm just stating something that I believe is true. And now that we've got our degrees and we have multiple degrees, we're looking and saying, oh, well, that wasn't worth it for me, therefore you shouldn't do it either. It's easy for us to say that once we have the degree because we do not experience that same sort of discrimination or stigma when we're applying to jobs. And I just wanted to bring that up and shine a little bit of light on that because I don't think it makes sense for you to die on a hill and not put your college degree on there. If you've got a degree, yeah, it's a tool. Use it exactly. And you paid for it, you might as well use it. So if you are putting your college degree on there, if you've gotten one, which you should be, then you cannot know what it's like to be discriminated against. I know what that's like more than most people because I literally interact with degree free people every single day, and you are degree free. And so I know the trials and tribulations that degree free people go through, but personally, I cannot know what that discrimination is like.

Hannah [00:39:29]:

I'm glad you brought this up, but I do want to make another point, and that is that while you are correct that there is discrimination against us, I actually think that people and I've talked about this on TikTok people that are college graduates need to be pretty concerned about this. They need to start looking for hard skills. Because what's going to happen and what is already happening is degree free people are the bell of the hiring ball. That is who people are looking for right now. They're offering apprenticeship programs. They're offering on the job training. They're actually just removing requirements, and they're hiring us anyway because they've been doing it the entire time. And now the social stigma is quickly evaporating. I think if you took the temperature of the country right now, most people actually I think you probably get a 50 50 response that college is no longer valuable. And I just read something about this the other day. I'm probably going to talk about it in an upcoming episode, but this is the reality of it, and college graduates need to be very worried. You cannot just rest on your laurels like, oh, I got my degree. I'm fine. I'm going to have access to these jobs that other people no, these people, degree free people are going to run you over. They are going to self teach. They're going to have certs. They are going to have portfolios. They're going to have well written resumes. They are going to be using chat GPT while your college is telling you not to use it, and they are going to demolish you in the hiring game. You need to drop whatever you're doing. Nobody cares about your degree. You need to find a valuable skill, work backwards. And I'm saying this because I want everybody to get good jobs. I don't want people to be ousted from these things because they didn't know this. If you think your college degree is going to save you, if you think your college degree is going to get you a job and that they are going to pick you over a degree free person who is qualified for the job in that they taught themselves, marketed their skills the correct way. You are wrong.

Ryan [00:41:15]:

Yeah. And I want to jump in here and say that you can be degree free and have a college degree. So it's not just people that literally have no degree. It's all the people that listen to this podcast and that use the tools and tactics that we've talked about for almost two years now, almost 100 episodes every week. We've talked about how to be degree free and how to do things in a degree free way. So just because you have a college degree, just because you have an MBA, just because you have a PhD, and you're listening to this, don't be intimidated by all the other people. Right? Like all the other degree free people. No, that's you too, if you're listening to this, you are degree free, too. You can learn these tactics and these skills to get hired, to get out of the situation that you're in, and to create a better life, really, because of the work that you are going to be doing. And I did want to say one last thing about being a hypocrite, is I do not know what it's like to be declined because I do not have a degree. And any of those people that have degrees, a lot of them don't know that feeling either. You might have been declined because you don't have a master's degree, which, okay, you might know what that's all like a little bit, or you don't have a PhD. Okay, that's very similar. But if you have a degree, a bachelor's degree, and those jobs say bachelor's degree required, you are not getting declined because you don't have a degree, quote unquote. And so I will say that I listen to a lot of people. I've heard those stories time and time again. But personally, I don't have any experience in that. I've been declined for a lot.

Hannah [00:42:55]:

You guys just got to listen to some of the episodes Ryan's told. Ryan's been very open about his worst interviews ever. They're hilarious.

Ryan [00:43:02]:

I have been declined for a lot of other reasons, namely, that I'm an.

Hannah [00:43:07]:

Idiot you and we are idiots together. That's okay.

Ryan [00:43:11]:

Mainly that nobody wanted to hire me because I didn't know what the heck I was doing, but I never are.

Hannah [00:43:17]:

You sure that's a good idea?

Ryan [00:43:18]:

I'll link a couple of episodes there. I talked about my worst interviews. Yeah, exactly. So I've been declined a lot for other things, mainly having to do with who I am as a person. My personality.

Hannah [00:43:40]:

It's okay. I like your personality. I'll keep you.

Ryan [00:43:44]:

My lack of any type of skill that's useful.

Hannah [00:43:48]:

Oh, my gosh.

Ryan [00:43:49]:

But I've never been declined because I didn't have it a college degree. And I just wanted to state that for the record.

Hannah [00:43:54]:

Yeah, no, it's a good point to bring up, and I like that you did reiterate. Yes. When I'm talking about degree free people, I'm also talking about people whose degrees have expired. And I know that when we post this, people are going to go, oh, that's me. Yeah, it probably is, because people's degrees expire if there's a shelf life on those jokers and they are not responsible for all of those things that you self teach. When you get jobs in industries that have nothing to do with your degree, they're honestly not even responsible for the jobs you get in your actual industry that you majored in. Anyway, that's something for another episode. But I did want to say that because, yes, if your college degree expired, it did not serve you. It did not help you achieve the goal that you got to set out with your college degrees expired, you're degree free.

Ryan [00:44:39]:

Yeah, absolutely. And that's pretty much it for today's episode. Once again, you can find links to everything that we've talked about at Degreefree Codcast. And then if you want to get access to that free degreefree pathways course, go to Degreefree co pathways and sign up for that free course, telling you all five of the options that you can take on your career path. And once again, those are from 16 years old and getting your first job. So if your child if your kid is thinking about going out there into the workforce right now, this is a great course for them to take. And if you do not know what you want to do with your career and you want to make a career change, you are stuck in your job right now, or you feel stuck and you want to get out of it, the Pathways is a really, really good place to start degreefree co pathways. And then you can connect with us on LinkedIn. I'm Ryan mariama on LinkedIn. She's. Hannah maruyama.

Hannah [00:45:40]:

And one more time, if you want to get more degree free, go over to Degreefree co newsletter to sign up for our free weekly newsletter that's going to help you get hired and tell you cool degree free news.

Ryan [00:45:50]:

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Until next time, guys. Aloha.