Should You Finish Your Degree? - Ep. 13

Ryan: Aloha guys, and welcome back to degree free. We are your hosts, Ryan and Hannah Maruyama. On this podcast, we share our fundamentals we've discovered and the mistakes we've made. While self-educating. getting work, building businesses and making money. We'll tell you how to make it happen. No degree needed.

Hannah: Hey folks, welcome back please like and subscribe to the podcast. If you haven't already, that way you don't miss a single thing. And then if you've heard something in a past episode that really just spiked your interest and you think you want to—you want to be able to take action on some of the things that you've heard, then please do check out our guide.

It's on our website. It's How to Get a Great Job Without a College Degree, and it's a 40 page PDF of pretty much everything you need to know about how to go about negotiating, finding different jobs and how to retool your skillset. So please do check that out and we're also happy having you. So thanks again for listening.

Ryan: Absolutely. So let's get into today's topic. Today we're going to be talking about, I guess we're going to be answering one of the frequently asked questions of like, so this question is for people that are currently in college that are kind of going through the system right now that they're wondering if this is for them, they're already doing it.

They already have some skin in the game already have maybe 1, 2, 3 years in. And they're wondering like, should I finish this thing?

Hannah: Yeah, this episode's for people who are for lack of a better term, like waist deep, like they're halfway through or more, and they decided, or they've realized that one, they don't want to do this work or this job anymore, and their goal has changed, and now they're sort of paralyzed because they're not sure where to go from here. And the thing is what happens is when people express this sort of doubt, what people say is, oh, go ahead and finish your degree. But they say it like, it's just a matter of course, you know, like oh, you know, of course just finish it.

But to finish your degree may cost you 50 grand more. That's a ridiculous thing to do if you've decided that you no longer need that degree for your job that you want to pursue. So it's it's something that's called a sunk cost fallacy, where people are looking at it as in you've you're already halfway through, you might as well just complete it.

But the thing is, you're going to continue to spend. And so that doesn't make a lot of sense if you're not going to use the thing you're about to complete first thing.

Yeah.

Ryan: Well, it's not only about the spending, although that's a huge part of it.

Hannah: It's the time too.

Ryan: It's opportunity costs, right? So even for those people that have college paid for, right?

There's the opportunity costs of just the time and the energy of putting into it, and so for a lot of people that actually do have to pay for it, which is most people their finances could be going the other way. They could be just getting a job instead of spending the money. So, instead of spending money and going more into debt, you can actually make money.

Hannah: You can sort of flip the script in that why would you continue to spend money on something that you have decided no longer serve your goals when you could instead be getting work experience and possibly getting paid? So in two years instead of graduating with the degree that you don't want to use. You could instead be two years deep into job and work experience to get you where you do want to go.

And so, and I think people, people often use the, oh, well you're young, but like that's a very flippant way to look at people's time because two years is a very long time. It is, and it's not, but when you're that age, especially, and, and you're, you're still in learning mode, especially too, It's a really important time for you to learn something new if you're trying to learn something new.

And so it's very, in my, in my mind, it's very defeating to tell somebody, oh, continue to do this thing that not only do not want to do, but you can't afford to do also.

Ryan: So, I think that you started to touch on what I wanted to talk about, which is the goals. I think that at this point, so if you're even asking this question, like, should you finish your degree?

Okay. The first thing that you have to like, think about is why am I asking you this question? Like, why are you asking this question? There's obviously something that's making you question continuing on this path and you need to figure out what that is, right? And it's like, what are you trying to accomplish?

Are you trying to get a piece of paper that says that you're a college graduate? Are you trying to buy a degree? Well, if you're trying to buy a degree,

Hannah: Then keep buying.

Ryan: Well, yeah, there's, there's no other place to buy a degree. You know what I mean? You might as well just stay in college because you're almost done. All right.

If you're trying to get a job, getting a degree and getting a job are not, equal.

Hannah: No, and getting a degree does not guarantee you a job either.

Ryan: Exactly, and so I think the biggest thing is like, do you actually need it?

Hannah: Right? And that's something that I think one, people have not been told how to test that. And two they're afraid to, they're afraid to, it makes people very uncertain to even go out and try to get a job in their field before they have a degree.

People feel like when, when they're told that a lot of times they're actually like, oh, can I do that? I was like, of course, you can do that. It's clicking a button and pushing apply. Of course, you can. No, one's going to come out of the woodwork while you're trying to submit an application online and tell you to stop because you don't have a degree.

I think that that is important. The conversation needed to have with yourself is what are you trying to accomplish? Like you're saying, what are you trying to accomplish by getting the degree? Is it the degree for the degree’s sake? Also, I think a good question to ask here is can you afford to buy a degree for a degree’s sake?

Because most people can not. Like, especially if you're from a working-class family, you can not afford to buy a degree for a degree’s sake. You need, it needs to have a function, or it really is a purchase that you need to stop making.

Ryan: Yeah. And, and as we talked about before, there are very few jobs which actually require a college degree.

There are a lot of jobs. Every job under the sun is going to say college degree required. Why? I'm not sure it makes no sense. As we talked about before, if you're trying to fit all— if you're a company trying to fill a position and it actually doesn't matter if they have a college degree, if these candidates have a college degree or not, why are you putting that on?

Right because it doesn't matter.

Hannah: Is it lazy and antiquated?

Ryan: Right? Absolutely. That's what it is. It's just that's how it's always been done. It's apathy. It's ignorance, really, to a large degree.

Hannah: I think it's confirmation bias too, in a way, because the people typically who write the job descriptions are people that have degrees.

And so I think to an extent, I don't think in a malicious way, but I do think that a lot of people who write job descriptions are going to be in HR and people in HR typically have college degrees because that's one of those fields where you can easily get into it without having a college degree. But a lot of people think that you must have a degree in order to be an HR, and I think that a lot of it is they have one. And so they feel that others should have one also. And so I think that they don't advocate for taking it out because why? Right? Like it's an easy measuring stick and it's been used for a long time and it's socially acceptable to do so, and they have one so why shouldn't other people. When you're trying to figure out what you're trying to accomplish, and this is hard because a lot of people, the way they got in this situation was they didn't know what they wanted to do. And so they went to college and while they might have a slightly better idea, now they might not really have a clear picture of what they want to do.

And that also is paralytic because not only are they jumping from a boat into a bunch of dark water where they don't know what's out here, they don't know what they're trying—they don't know where they're trying to go. They don't, they don't see land in the distance. They're not trying to get to a specific place.

So I think for people who are feeling this way and you don't really know the answer to what are you trying to accomplish, but you have a general idea of what you like to do, or an industry or field that you wouldn't mind being in. Look up entry-level jobs in those fields and see what the qualifications are, and then see one, you might be surprised at how many you already have and then two, see if there's some you can easily pick up that will help you in trying to figure out, okay, like what do I need to learn?

Like, what do I need to get out of this in order to apply for these jobs?

Ryan: And then I think. Just going back to the basics really helps too, about what I said earlier, which is if you're asking this question, should you finish your degree? There's a reason why, there's something, there's a question that you need answered, and you're not getting the answer currently. So take the time, figure it out. You know, is it because you're not happy with where you are? Is it because you think that you're wasting your time? I'm not sure there's an infinite amount of reasons, but figure, but honing that in is really the most important step.

If it's about the fear of not getting a job without a college degree. That is just, you know, it's mostly unfounded, it's mostly unfounded. And so the kind of just goes into the second point that we want to talk about, which is like, if you have an idea of the industry that you want to work in, well, then just start applying.

Hannah: Apply apply, apply, apply, apply.

Ryan: And don't just start applying for internships, apply for actual jobs.

Hannah: I really hate the internship thing. I don't hate internships. I really dislike how people use them. Oftentimes when I say you don't need a college degree to get a job, people say, well, I mean, but I can get an internship.

And I'm like, you can do work for no pay. Like congratulations. I realized that there's some paid internships, but the thing is most of the time, those don't lead to jobs, they don't. And it's something that I feel like people use it to prove the value of college, but an internship, in my opinion, is a sidetrack from just getting an entry-level job.

How about instead of paying a premium to a college for a piece of paper so that you can work for free. Why don't you just go work for a lower wage instead of going into debt? Like, because an entry-level job is an internship, but you're already there.

Ryan: I hear what you're saying. So I think the internship itself is fine.

Hannah: I'm not saying you can't learn things.

Ryan: No, no, no, no. So I think the internship itself is fine. I think it's very similar to like an apprenticeship.

Hannah: I'll see, you can get internships without going to college. That's the thing that frustrates me. People think you have to.

Ryan: Well, that's I think that's the bone that you're picking more accurately is is that.

It's not the fact that you have a bone to pick with internships. You have a bone to pick because I think you and I both agree on the value that experience has. The value, because internship is just a fancy word for apprenticeship, right? But I think we disagree with that apprenticeship and that internship being in a college setting where you get college credit for this, right?

I hear what you're saying. I hear what you're saying. I don't disagree with the entirety of internships. I disagree with it being within the college bounds. I disagree with the fact that you're paying.

Hannah: For something you can get without paying

Ryan: Exactly, exactly. So. Maybe then the argument there, I suppose, is that there are a bunch of colleges that have a lot of connections with certain offices and certain companies throughout the neighborhood or throughout the local, whatever.

Right? So it's a little easier and then you get better access to these different internships. So that's an argument for.

Hannah: I think that that said, and this is, this is my impression of it too. So I think, I think you're right in that it's definitely like, oh, we have all these connections we have with these relationships, with these businesses and these businesses.

I think the only, colleges where that has any any possible, any possibility of being an argument of the value and in order to justify the, what they're charging college students would be an Ivy League school, which has almost nobody. That applies to almost nobody, because, I mean, you did an internship, right?

Yeah. How did that work? How did that work?

Ryan: What do you mean?

Hannah: Like you, you're going, you're going to UAH and then, and then you got an internship and was it paid or unpaid?

Ryan: My internship was paid.

Hannah: It was paid. Okay. But did you get it because of outside connections or did you get it because of college?

Ryan: So interesting. I had two internships lined up.

Hannah: And everybody, the reason I ask this is because 80% of the job market is informal.

Ryan: I had two internships lined up in college. One internship that I had. I ended up following through with one going all the way, and then I ended up not liking the other one or not, or deciding to not, to not pursue that.

The one that I didn't pursue was with the connection from the university. The one where the university was an interesting one, because it was an internship with a financial advisor slash insurance sales firm, and the internship was basically cultivation for leads of your family.

Hannah: It was sales, right?

Ryan: It was completely sales, which is, that's what the whole industry is financial advising and insurance. That's all sales, it's 100% sales. And so I don't want to get into it, but I just disagree with a lot of the industry. And maybe in a different, different episodes, we can talk about that and stuff like that.

But I, wasn't a huge fan of the way. That they were going about this quote unquote internship. And so I didn't go back. I went for my initial meeting and then the internship, you have to interview for the internship, but literally anybody that interviewed got the internship, you know what I mean?

And that's so anyway, that's the, that was the type of relationship that the university provided for me, and then the internship that I ended up getting and following through with was outside of the university, and I had to you know, write a paper or whatever about, and to my advisor and say, okay, well this is an outside internship.

I got this one on my own. Can I get college credit for it? That's how it worked for me.

Hannah: Did they give you the credit?

Ryan: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So the university one was unpaid intern. I didn't, I ended up going to the initial interview. I got it. Cause everybody got it and I didn't like it. So I didn't go.

The one that I got by myself that was paid. And then, I wrote a paper and then I got college credit for it.

Hannah: Smart of the other internships it's a great way to build their book of business. For free.

Ryan: No, it was great. It was a fantastic.

Hannah: It was a stealthy though.

Ryan: No, it was great. It was a, it was a very, very smart, but that's how you start.

That's how you start in any of those things. That's how you start prospecting.

Hannah: Right, with your people around you.

Ryan: Right. You can only prospect that people you know, or at least when you first start.

Hannah: That's true, or you're just gonna get trapped on cold calling.

Ryan: Well, you don't know, you don't know what that is at first, right? And so you, they have you write down, you know, They have you write down your, your dad and your mom, their address, their phone number.

Hannah: I vaguely remember that. Did you do that? No, right.

Ryan: No, I looked, I looked at the paper and I was like, I know what this is and I just throw it away. And I walked out and this is retarded. I don't know if I do this.

Hannah: I'm not gonna, I'm not going to give you, I'm not going to give you leads.

Ryan: Yeah.

I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to subject, I'm not going to subject my family to these products.

Hannah: So think of all the people that did it, right. So they got, not only did they get free unpaid labor, but they also got leads. They did that. So . Smart, super smart. And for people that succeeded in that, great.

Ryan: But the good thing too is I will say I'm not completely just knocking on them.

I just disagree with, with that. And so I don't want to be a part of it, but like, but for some of the people that, that got, have gotten it, that got internships and I'm not sure about anybody in that class stick with that internship. But I mean, if you learn the sales process and if you learn how to sell,

Hannah: You can make money.

Ryan: You can make money, right? I mean, you resolved, it's not like it didn't have any weight behind it and it's not like it was completely useless. It was I'm sure it was very useful. I'm sure I would have learned a lot if I stayed. I just don't. I just don't want to be in the industry. So this is all to say that if you're going to go, if you're thinking about not finishing your degree, because you want to get a job.

Our advice. It's super simple.

Hannah: Get a job.

Ryan: Get a job, start applying to jobs, start applying to jobs and start seeing, put out feelers, if there's this top tier job that you want, whatever, you know maybe settle for the job right underneath it. Maybe you can work into it, right? If you're thinking about, if you want to be a mid-level manager somewhere, or top level manager at a company go be a junior associate at the team company, or be a junior associate at the company across the street, whatever. Just get some experience, get your foot in the door. And like we said, like we say all the time, just because it says college degree on the thing doesn't mean that you can't, it doesn't mean that you can't apply.

Once you get a job, that already proves your work that proves your work. You don't need college.

Hannah: You've tested your theory because you thought you needed a degree to get a job, but now you have a job without a degree. So therefore you have proved to yourself that you do not need a degree to get a job. Yeah, they should stop buying the degree.

Unless it's relevant or they say you need to finish it.

Ryan: Right? If for whatever reason, say you need to finish it.

Hannah: Also, almost nobody is going to do that. There are so few fields where they're going to do that to you. It's going to be like contingent, like high-level engineers, where they say fine, we'll hire you. We'll promote you to this contingent on you finishing this.

Ryan: Right.

Hannah: Or like they hire you at a CPA firm as an accountant and they say contingent on you getting your degree. So you can take your CPA exam. That is not the same. That's not the same thing or, or lawyers also, that's a little bit different because you can read, you can, you know, you can read the law in certain states, but like if you're outside of one of those states Washington, Virginia, California, and I think it's Maine or Vermont. If you're outside of those states and you are a lawyer, they will hire you and they will say contingent on you passing the bar, and in order to pass the bar, you do need the degree to pass the bar so that you can take the, so you can take the bar. Right? So that is different for everyone else, which is almost everybody.

No one is going to say that to you. No one is even going to ask for your degree. No, one's going to ask you. They do not care. That's the dirty little secret. They don't, they do not get, they did not care.

Ryan: They're never gonna ask that you went to college.

Hannah: That's because it doesn't matter.

Ryan: So if you do decide on quitting college, if you do decide on not finishing that's okay. That's fine. The thing with college is you can go back at any time.

Hannah: They will always take your money.

Ryan: They are happy to have you at any point in your life at any point in your life. You can just start, you can start back up again. Sure, some of your credits will not transfer depending on where you go and everything like that.

Yeah, sure. But you can definitely finish anything. The good thing about getting a job prior to finish up your college degree is if for whatever reason down the line, if your job requires you to get a degree, or if they highly suggest that you get a degree and if you're valuable enough to the company or if they have, if they have some sort of employee benefits, a lot of times you can negotiate where they will pay for it. For you.

Hannah: It would be wise when you're applying to look for companies because there is a lot of them now that do this, but that have education credits or will pay a hundred percent of your tuition because that's a totally different ball game. If you're working and you're making income and your company is going to pick up the tab on your tuition and then promote you based on that, that is a totally different thing because now, instead of getting a degree to get a job, You already have a job and in order to get a better job and secure it, you have confirmed that if you do this, it will get you a better job.

So now you have a reason. It's not a, I think I need this to get this it's because they have said, if you get this and we will pay for it, we will promote you. That makes sense. It might make sense if the pay is high enough, you still have to do the math on like the time you're going to spend doing that, you know?

Ryan: Right. It's hyper-focused instead of just like turning the lights off and feeling around in the dark. So the next factor is going to be like people that are asking this question and they're like, I want to work in a different field than the one that I'm studying. Should I still finish college? Should I still get my degree?

Hannah: No. That is purely opinion, but I'll make a case for it here, which is. Why would you continue to purchase something that you're not going to use? That makes no sense. It's for anything in life. If you have decided that you no longer have a use for something like it's like paying rent on a house that you've decided you don't want to live in, or it's like continuing to purchase a house that you don't want to live in. Why would you, why would you do that?

Ryan: Well, so what a lot of people have been told before is that. I know, I know this because I'm one of those people, but it's like a four year degree shows that you can finish something. It shows that you have the intellect and you, it shows you have the maturity where you're able to sit down for four years and get this piece of paper.

And I think that is what is that myth—it's that thought process that leads people to still get their degree, even though they don't want to work in any more.

Hannah: Okay. So if you're asking, if you should finish your degree, I think that it's interesting how college has packaged people who are asking that question, finishing their degrees as maturity.

When in fact, I think it's fear that motivates them. It's fear of the unknown. It's because one they're ill-equipped to go out into the dark and figure things out for themselves, but also because everyone around them is telling them, oh, it's just safer to just continue to spend the money. And it's some it's sunk costs.

It's not maturity. It's not follow-through, it's lack of knowledge about other options and no one has taught them the skills or even just the boldness that they need, or no, one's told them, Hey, you can just get a job.

Ryan: And then by some costs, you mean because you've already done it. Because you've because you've already got this much time because you got this too much time and money in it.

You might as well just finish it up instead of just cutting it and be like, oh, that was a waste of money.

Yeah.

Instead of just chalking it up to a, to two years and $50,000 a lesson, instead of that, you're going to pay two more years and 50,000 more dollars to continue or to finish.

Hannah: Correct.

Ryan: Because you want to, and so I think there are a few examples that you and I can think about of people that are going through this.

Hannah: A great example of this is on TikTok, the other day, there was a video of a girl who was halfway through her nursing degree and she in the video explained that it's breaking her heart because she wants to be a sports reporter. Every single one of the comments on this video, there were thousands of comments on this video.

Every single one is like, it's okay, babe, just finish your degree. Like, oh, it's okay. It'll get better. Just finish it, and I'm like, it's not going to get better if she doesn't want to be a nurse, and she continues to sink her time, energy and money into a nursing degree that she does not want. That does not make any sense.

It doesn't help progress her towards her goals, and not only that, what it does do is it shackles her to a job that she's already decided that she does not want, and so I think what that shows too is that a lot of people are just—it's it's a knee-jerk reaction to just, oh, we need to finish anyway. Why? She doesn't want to be nurse.

She wants to be on TV and getting a nursing degree is not going to help her get on sports anchor tv. At all, it's not going to assist her in that way. What would assist her is going to work at any radio or TV station that will take her, anyone just getting coffee, doing whatever needs to get done, being an administrative assistant or a receptionist at a TV station is going to get her further along that goal than continuing to for two more years be in nursing school and continue to pay into that debt makes no sense.

And that's just interesting because it was like, It's crazy how it didn't occur to anybody that telling this girl who doesn't want to do this job anymore, that the wisest safest thing for her is to continue to go into crushing debt for a job that she doesn't want to do.

Ryan: Well, that goes back to what I just said earlier about the—people think that a four year college degree shows maturity.

It shows that you can stick to it. It shows that you can—I dunno, think for yourself, I'm not sure what, I'm not sure what it shows, but that's what people think is they think of it as some great positive.

Hannah: Right. But what that's actually showing—what's so interesting about that is that to me, would that communicates is fear.

You're not choosing to finish the four-year degree because you're mature. You're choosing to finish the four-year degree because you're scared, and because you think that the safest thing to do is continue to go into debt that you can't afford for most people. And that's interesting because to me it doesn't communicate maturity to not be able to separate sunk costs from the goals that you now have.

You're like, well, I've already been here for two years. I don't want to do this, but I'm going to keep paying and spending my time and energy and money on this.

Ryan: What I mean to say, is that people think that having that one line in your resume, you know, university of so-and-so bachelors so-and-so this year.

They think that that is worth the time and energy it is since you're already in it for whatever job that you apply to. That's what I'm saying. I'm saying like for whatever job that you apply to, regardless of, even if you get a nursing degree like that nursing degree is somehow that nursing degree is somehow going to help you land a finance job.

That finance degree is going to somehow help you get a nursing job, right? That economics degree is going to somehow get you that engineering job, whatever, right? Like that's, that's the equation. That's the math that they're doing. That's the mental math that people are doing, and you said like, it's going to, it's something that you have in your back pocket that you can use at any time later in life.

Right? That's the thought process.

Hannah: That's unbelievable because they've basically chained you to getting one, no matter what you do, because the argument right, is that you need a degree in this thing to do this thing. But then once somebody comes up and says, oh, actually you don't, why would you get that degree if you're trying to do this thing? And then they say, well, a degree is going to help you anyway, that's the logic. It's basically, you're like, damned if you do damned, if you don't like you have to, you need it. It doesn't matter what it is. You need it in order to get work. They've just put these people in this little box and they, they literally don't know how to get out of it.

Yeah. So the way that really really emit a really recent example of this for you and I was a couple months ago our studio got some media coverage, local media coverage here in Hawaii, and we had an interesting experience in that we had interactions with two local media people. One was a was a young guy. They're the same age too I believe. Very close in age. One had a four-year degree from Oregon state. So he had a brand name university and the other one did not have a college degree and had started working at the reception desk at a local media—at a local media company.

What's interesting is that it was very clear speaking to the young man that he was in way over his head with his debt. And he likes, he spoke about it a little bit too, but it was very clear that he was not optimistic about his future prospects, especially staying here and that he was not getting paid very much to do what he was doing.

But he had a lot of student debt and what's interesting is the girl who was now I think probably out earning him already had no debt and she was already being fast-tracked up because she worked. She was there. She was in the room. Whereas this guy was starting from scratch. They both started at the very bottom of the company because that's the thing.

What happens when you get a college degree is the same thing that happens when you get a job without a college degree, which is you start at the bottom. And the difference is that he started at the bottom with six figures of debt and she started at the bottom with zero debt. and honestly too, and I've said this before, and this has been proved in Harvard in that business by degrees study where they talk about this, but people without college degrees tend to stay better and they're easier to train.

And I think that that's because they're compensating for their lack of formal education, and so she is moving up faster. It seems than he is.

Ryan: I don't think she's moving up faster. I think she's moved there because of the same age. She don't move faster. She's been there longer.

Hannah: Right.

Ryan: It's time.

Hannah: It's time. The time that he spent paying for school, she spent working.

Ryan: Right. Right. And so.

Hannah: It's just time.

It's time.

Ryan: It's time. Yeah. She's been there for years. She's moved, she's moving up. He just got there within the past couple of years.

Hannah: And she's got four years of work experience on him.

Ryan: Right. Exactly. And she is paid more.

Hannah: Because she's been there longer.

Ryan: But she has less debt. Right. Sorry. Okay. Well, if you're gonna get paid more and you're going to have less debt. What are you doing in college?

Hannah: Especially if you're asking these questions especially if you're asking these questions, you're like, should I finish my degree?

And you are able to get a job in the field that you would like to work in? No.

Ryan: No, you shouldn't.

Hannah: No, and this is not us telling people to quit college. This is us answering this question for people that are asking this question. If you're asking this question, the answer is probably no.

Ryan: So if you're asking this question, I think the thing is you have to really think about it.

You have to really—do I need this college degree. Okay. Why do I need this college degree? What jobs am I really looking for? Okay. Majority of the jobs, as we've discussed, many times, majority of the jobs out there don't need college degrees.

So if you're going to, if you're going to apply for 95 plus percent of jobs out there that are not doctors, lawyers in most states.

Hannah: CPAs.

Ryan: CPAs in most states.

Hannah: Engineers in most states.

Ryan: Yeah. You know, astronauts, you know, if you're not going to, if you're not going to do one of those jobs, okay you can probably start applying now. Not probably. You should be stuck. You should be applying now and see if you can get hired.

Hannah: Because if you can prove your theory, then why do you need your degree.

Ryan: After you get hired? If they tell you can finish up your degree and you get promoted and we'll pay you for it, do it.

Hannah: Do the math first, then do it.

Ryan: Right. Do the math first figure out whether or not that your time is worth it, whether the money is worth it. All right. Maybe do it. If you're asking this question because you're studying economics and you want to be a photographer.

Hannah: I say this all the time, but economics is the communications of math.

Like you're getting and sorry, babe.

Ryan: No it's okay.

Hannah: If you're getting an economics degree. What are you doing? What are you doing?

Ryan: I agree. If you're getting an economics degree and you want to work in videography.

Hannah: Why are you there?

Ryan: What are you doing?

Hannah: To what end?

Ryan: What are you doing? Right.

Hannah: If you're getting a biology degree and you want to be in marketing, what are you doing?

Ryan: Right.

The two things don't equate. That photography company, that marketing company, that whatever company, they're not going to look at your degree and be like, oh, wow. That's awesome. That's great. So glad that you got a degree so glad that you can show that you've can sit your butt in a chair for 40 years and pass tests.

Hannah: Four to six years.

Ryan: And whatever they don't care. They want to see what you've done.

Hannah: A portfolio of work will get you further than a degree ever will.

Ryan: Yeah. And that one line in your resume is not going to do much for you if it's in unrelated fields.

Hannah: They're going to look at and go.

Ryan: Yeah.

Hannah: They don't care. It's irrelevant. It has no bearing on the job, on the work you're going to do day to day, and so why in the world would a company value something that has no bearing on the work that you're going to do day to day? The key here is the debt too. If the degree that is going to keep you from being able to work where you want to work and get the job, you actually want to get, get the hell out of there.

Like, you know it is not going to help ,you. It's not going to help you do what you're trying to do.

Ryan: All right, guys. I think that that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. If you guys like this episode, if you guys want to hear more, consider leaving us a review anywhere you get your podcasts, it really helps people to find us. Really get the word out there.

Hannah: If also if you want to grab our guide, you can go to degreefreenetwork.com and grab it, there. It's a 40 page guide on how to get a job without a college degree. It has a lot of tactics, templates, and advice on how to go about doing that, figuring out what your skills are and how to apply for these types of jobs.

Ryan: All right guys, until next time. Aloha!