#120: Skip the Loans, Keep the Dreams: Hannah Maruyama's Degree-Free Revolution

Hannah Maruyama joins The Homeschool How To podcast to challenge everything you thought you knew about higher education and career success. Having walked away from college at 16 after discovering its politicized environment and questionable academic value, Hannah shares her journey to developing a groundbreaking approach to career preparation that's saving families hundreds of thousands of dollars while launching young adults into thriving careers.

The conversation reveals shocking statistics about our student loan crisis. Despite the cultural push toward college, only 7.7% of jobs legally require degrees—a mere 0.3% increase since 1965—yet we've accumulated $1.7 trillion in student loan debt. Hannah exposes how government subsidization of student loans created artificial demand, leading to bankruptcy-exempt debt that follows borrowers for life. Most disturbing is the poor return on investment: only 27% of graduates use their degrees, while the average bachelor's degree costs $104,000 and takes 5.5 years to complete.

For homeschooling families, this information is especially valuable. Rather than measuring success by college admissions, Hannah suggests focusing on four key questions: Where does your child want to live? How much money do they need? What schedule works for them? What work environment suits them? From these answers, families can identify careers that truly fit their children's goals and strategically acquire the specific skills employers need—without unnecessary degrees.

Through her company Degree Free, Hannah has helped hundreds of young adults identify their ideal career paths and secure high-paying jobs through targeted skill acquisition, often out-earning their degree-holding peers in a fraction of the time and cost. Whether your teens are approaching graduation or you're just beginning your homeschool journey, this episode offers a refreshing perspective on preparing children for genuine success in an economy that's rapidly changing beyond what traditional education can support.

https://degreefree.com/

Hannah's Instagram TikTok: @DegreeFree

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool
How-To.
I'm Cheryl and I invite you tojoin me on my quest to find out
why are people homeschooling,how do you do it, how does it
differ from region to region?
And should I homeschool my kids?
Stick with me as I interviewhomeschooling families across
the country to unfold theanswers to each of these

(00:26):
questions week by week.
Welcome, and with us today onthe Homeschool How-To, I have
Hannah Mariyama.
Hannah, thank you for beinghere.
Absolutely.
I've been looking forward tothis all week.
So I don't even know much aboutlike your brand.
I just know that you promotethe degree free kind of

(00:48):
lifestyle for students here.
And actually you wererecommended to me from one of my
very good friends we bothhomeschool our kids and she was
like have you heard of this lady?
She maybe, maybe we're on likethe Thousand Hours Outside
podcast or something, and she'slike you've got to listen to
this.
Get her on your podcast.
So I was like okay, and I justsent you a message and then I
watched a couple of your thingson Instagram and I love it

(01:10):
because I was that person thatwas told to be, somebody.
You got to go to college.
Got to go to college.
You got to go to college andback in you know 2000, that was
kind of that era where, likepeople were, everybody was
starting to go to college, orthey look at you like you're
just going to be a scumbag forthe rest of your life.
So you did it and then you comeout with $200,000 of debts and

(01:35):
then we wonder why nobody canafford houses or nobody can
afford to be a one incomehousehold, you know, and be able
to stay home with our kids andhomeschool them, because we're
all in a million dollars of debt.
And that's even before you'rehome.
So I love what you're promoting.
Where did you even get intothis idea or have the
realization that we can have asuccessful lifestyle without the

(01:57):
college degree?

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Well, my experience actually comes from my own
background.
So I had a teacher in highschool who told me that I was
bored in high school and that Iwas wasting my time, and so he
said okay, well, you need toclip these classes and then go
ahead and do enroll at the localuniversity.
And so I did that, and so Iactually was accepted into

(02:19):
college when I was 16.
And so I started going fulltime my senior year of high
school.
I didn't go to high school atall, I was full time on a
college campus, and thatexperience was really eye
opening for me because one I sawthat there was very little
academic or scholarly value.
I will say.

(02:41):
I saw that open thought was notsomething that was welcome on a
university campus and thatasking questions was frowned
upon and that everything wasincredibly politicized, which I
found rather shocking.
I was not expecting that when Iwent Ended up doing really
poorly in some classes because Iwas given bad grades because of
the opinions that I had and thequestions that I asked during

(03:04):
class.
Grades because of the opinionsthat I had and the questions
that I asked during class, Iended up taking those things
that I had written that hadgotten me those poor grades and
instead they got me a paid jobat the university paper.
I was the youngest paid writeron the staff of the university
paper.
And then I was just sitting ina class one day about to take a
sociology midterm what wouldhave been my.
I think it was on track to be asophomore at that point, but it

(03:25):
was during my freshman year ofcollege.
And just sitting there with asociology midterm, with this
absolutely insufferableprofessor who I could not stand
and I just went what am I doinghere?
So I tore the midterm in half,I threw it in the trash and I
left.
And that was actually myexperience with I no longer call

(03:47):
it higher education, withcollege.
That was my experience with thecollege industrial complex.
And so I left not knowing, nothaving a clear plan which is
something I've now fixed foryoung adults.
But I left with no clear plan.
I was just working.
I was working, I was puttingmyself through school at the
time and I was.
I had moved out, I was livingwith roommates and I proceeded

(04:07):
to work a series of jobs, a tonof different kinds of jobs.
I worked as a, I worked on adolphin boat, I worked as a surf
instructor, I worked at ajujitsu gym, I did all kinds of
stuff and ended up that I Iended up working in tourism and
sales and then COVID hit in 2020.

(04:30):
I was living in Hawaii at thetime and I realized that my job
was not going to come backbecause tourism was absolutely
decimated and, at that time,having held several jobs already
that required a college degreebut obviously did not, because
they had hired me, and I hadreally begun to question the
validity of okay, you know allthese people, people love the

(04:52):
college, oh, but degrees arerequired for all these jobs.
Yet I had held already at thatage I was I think I was 25 at
the time and I had held multiplejobs that said they required
degrees and profits, you knowlike big, big kid jobs basically
and ended up 30 days Ireshuffled into tech with no
technical background whatsoeverZero.
I cannot stress enough howlittle technical background I

(05:12):
had.
31 days of study, $362 later Ihad a remote, four day workweek
job that was out earning themedian master's degree holder.
On my offer letter it saidcollege advanced computer
science degree required and thattold me that there was further
to push this envelope and alsothat it wasn't real to begin
with and that just led me todeveloping a process for helping

(05:35):
people figure out how tostrategically figure out what
jobs actually require degrees,and then how to learn skills
necessary that employers areactually looking for, because
they don't hire based on theirjob descriptions.
They hire for other things andso being very strategic in
figuring out what you need tolearn, the order you need to
learn it, and then figuring outwhether degrees are legally

(05:55):
required for that or not.
And then I have now used thatprocess hundreds of times with
young adults 16 to 20 years oldto help them figure out what
they need to be learning, savethem hundreds of thousands of
dollars years in college and getthem into old.
To help them figure out whatthey need to be learning, save
them hundreds of thousands ofdollars years in college and get
them into jobs that help themactually live the way they want,
as opposed to having to wraptheir entire lives around work.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
I love that.
I love that and you know, onthis podcast, I primarily
interview homeschooling families.
But if there's information thatcan help homeschooling families
, this is it, because one of thethings that we hear as
homeschoolers is oh well, howare you going to get your kid
into college and I've createdposts on this before that one
your kid is going to be acceptedinto college if they want to go

(06:35):
to college.
As a homeschooler, you know, ifanything, colleges want them
more because they show a littlebit more independent thought and
initiative.
However, why do you want yourkid to go to college should be
the question.
What is it that?
Are you just pushing them Like?
I was kind of pushed like go anddo the thing and then when I

(06:56):
came out, I was twiddling mythumbs and I was like I guess
I'll take a government civilservice exam because that's what
my parents did and pushed me todo because they had pensions,
even though my mom is 77 yearsold right now and trying to work
at a grocery store.
And I'm like what was the wholepoint of working 35 years for
the government to get a pensionand you're 77 now and still so

(07:17):
bored that you need yeah, thatyou want a job, just to have a
reason to get out of bed in themorning, because it's like you
didn't spend those 35 yearsfinding something that you
really loved to do.
And I think it goes right downto the school level.
And when we push our kids to gojust to regular school, just
primary education, why, why dowe do it?

(07:38):
Why are you sending them there?
Some people might have validreasons, but mostly we don't
think about it, we just do whatthe masses do and it's like well
, what do you want them to comeout?
Knowing to be self-sufficient,to run a business, to be, you
know, a world traveler?
What are the things that youwant for them?
We never like really stop andthink about that.

(07:59):
So that's why I love whatyou're pushing so much, because
it's like at the point now wherewe're investing tens of
thousands of dollars and thenyou get behind the whole college
loans, I mean where else willthey just let you take out that
kind of money with no security?
Well, they do have security.
They take our tax dollars andthey pay themselves.
It's just like so convoluted.

(08:21):
I love this.
So I mean that is a bigundertaking.
To start a business, to learn,where you need a degree.
And where you don't, how didyou even begin to find the job?
Like you know, did you goundercover.
Do you really need a degree forthis?

Speaker 2 (08:36):
Well, so after I got that initial tech job, I ended
up at an AI and machine learningstartup that was training
really complex software thatessentially reads legal
contracts for Fortune 500companies, and so I saw some
things while I was doing that,because I did that for about

(08:59):
three and a half years and thattaught me a lot about product,
about problems and also aboutthe way that those companies
were hiring, which I thought wasinteresting because I saw quite
a bit of change while I wasthere, and some of it was
definitely brought about byCOVID, but, upon further
research, actually the removalof degrees in general has been
going on since 2014,.

(09:20):
According to the Burning GlassInstitute, this is not a new
phenomenon and it's all startingto.
The market's basically startingto level out, and because the
addition of degree requirementsall goes back to a legal
precedent that was set by theSupreme Court in 1971.
And it's a case called Greggsversus Duke Power, and basically

(09:41):
what happened was a company wasusing a skills assessment to
discriminate against certainpeople that they were hiring.
This is a civil rights issue andthey were in the wrong for sure
, and so what the Supreme Courtruled was they could no longer
use skills assessments, and socompanies began to use degrees
because the only people thatcould afford degrees looked a

(10:02):
certain way, because the onlypeople that could afford degrees
looked a certain way, and sothat is something that was very
much the motivation behind allof the degree requirements.
And still to this day, theresult of that was companies
relying on it and not evenunderstanding why they were used
as requirements in the firstplace.
And so a huge thing thathappened was that, as a result

(10:25):
of that case which had happenedI believe it was because in 1965
, the Higher Education Act.
I'm going into a little bit ofhistory because I think parents
really need to understand wherethis all started.
So in 1965, the problem started.
That's when the governmentstarted subsidizing student
loans and that is when there wasan explosion of, because about
that time, only 10% of highschool seniors in the US were

(10:45):
going to college and only 7.4%of the jobs required degrees.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
And if you can really get down to what that means.
The subsidizing the loans isbasically they were paying for
them with our tax dollars, right?
So if the student defaulted,the university was still paid
and the bank was still paid.
They were taking our taxdollars.
So this whole thing with Bidentrying to do student loan
forgiveness, to me that soundedlike kind of a joke, because I'm

(11:10):
like we've been doing that thewhole time.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yes, because the government is the one that funds
the loans.
Yeah, they're government-backedloans.
The whole history of thestudent loan crisis is what I'll
call it, because we do have$1.7 trillion in student loan
debt, and so having peopletaking them back towards the
beginning so they understand theroot of the problem is really
key to me, because if you go tothe how did this start?

(11:34):
Why, whenever you have economicsystems that are not behaving
naturally because they're notbehaving naturally right now
what is it that caused this tooccur?
Not behaving naturally rightnow?
What is it that caused this tooccur?
And so what caused it to occurwas fake government incentive,
which is the governmentincentivized people to borrow
money that they didn't need tobuy things they didn't need and,
as a result, and also to befair at the time, what they did

(11:57):
was they just identified demandfor something that looked on the
surface like a good idea,because we, as a culture college
, we just went wow, this isalmost like different.
We've removed it as a product.
We don't even think about itlike that.
People do not have a rationalview of purchasing degrees.
They do not, and so people arehyper irrational about it.

(12:19):
Not only did you have all thesereturning GIs from World War II
who were coming back and buyingdegrees to become lawyers, to
become doctors, to become civilengineers, to get professional
engineering license.
That required degrees forlicensure.
They were going into thingsthat legally required degrees
for them to become professionalswith additional educational
experience Not the same thing asjust going to get a bachelor's

(12:42):
degree.
Not the same at all.
Not the same thing as justgoing to get a bachelor's degree
.
Not the same at all.
And so what had happened waspeople were going.
Well, when people buy collegedegrees, they get really good
jobs.
And really what they saw wasthey were able to build
businesses because CPAs, lawyers, doctors, all had these
licenses.
That protected them and gavethem increased business value.
Right, because now they had theability to build their own

(13:04):
practices, their own firms,their own dentist office, etc.
And so they saw oh wow, if youbuy a college degree, you do
really well.
And so people just began toassociate that.
And also we had an almostequivalent supply to demand.
So 7.4% of jobs requireddegrees.
10% of high school seniors weregoing.
Now, if you fast forward to 1976, 13% of the population was now

(13:24):
going to college.
So it went from 10% or sorry,it was more than that.
Actually it more than doubled.
So it went up to almost 20%.
Almost 20% of high schoolseniors were going to college
and the default rate went from2% to 9% in that time a 450%
increase in defaults.
At that point the governmenthad to amend the Higher
Education Act to make thembankruptcy exempt, because so

(13:45):
many people were defaulting onthe loans because it was not
paying their money back.
And so we have been running onartificial, on something that's
completely artificial, since1976, because people would be
defaulting on the loans, peoplewould be.
Nobody can pay their loans back, and that's the thing that
we're obscuring, because thegovernment made it so that you
can't discharge them inbankruptcy.
So now the current default rateon student loans is 2%, but

(14:08):
that's because you can'tdischarge them in bankruptcy
anymore, and so Okay.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
So to lay that, out if I went to school for four
years and I defaulted on my loan.
Now I can't claim bankruptcyand just have it wiped.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
But what they will do , you can't default on them at
all.
So how do you mean?
So?
Lay it out for me, like in ascenario so there's no way for
you to escape the loans?
Because, when they amended, theonly way for you to do so is to
prove that it causes unduehardship, which is almost
impossible to prove in a courtof law.
It was designed that way onpurpose, which is why the

(14:42):
government still issues theloans, because it's safe for
them to do so, because peoplecan never escape the student
loan debt.
They just can't.
It doesn't matter If somebodydies and they have student loan
debt, it's still.
Your parents will still have topay it.
Whoever's co-signed on theloans will still have to pay it.
It doesn't matter, they willget that money from somebody.
And it's one of those thingswhere it's so insidious, because
it's just this tax and thisdrain largely on the middle

(15:05):
class, because that's who sendstheir kids thinking that a
four-year degree is going toguarantee them some sort of
result, when in reality it'sgoing to do nothing of the sort.

Speaker 1 (15:14):
Hey everyone, this is Cheryl.
I want to thank you so much forchecking out the podcast.
I'm going to keep this shortand sweet because I know your
time is valuable.
I want to ask you a seriousquestion Do your kids know what
to do to actually save theirlife in an emergency?
The most important thing we cantalk to our kids about is
knowing their first and lastname, knowing mom and dad's
first and last name, mom's phonenumber, dad's phone number,

(15:35):
their address, what to do ifthey get lost, what to do if
someone who's watching them hasa heart attack, a stroke, an
accident where they fall andyour child needs to get help.
We live in a world where there'sno landline phones anymore,
basically, and cell phones a lot.
Does your child know how tocall 911 from a locked cell
phone?
It is absolutely possible, andmy book demonstrates how to do

(15:58):
that, whether it's an Android,whether it's an iPhone and, most
importantly, it starts theconversation, because I was
going through homeschoolingcurriculum with my kids,
realizing that, gee, maybe theyskim over this stuff, but they
don't get into depth, so mychild's not going to remember
this should an accident occur,right?
I asked a couple of teacherswhat they do in school and they

(16:20):
said they really don't doanything either other than talk
about what to do in a fireduring the month of October fire
prevention month.
So I wrote a book because thisis near and dear to my heart.
I have had multiple friends thathave lost kids in tragedies and
I don't want to see it happenagain, if it doesn't have to.
We were at the fair over thesummer and the first thing I
said to my son when we walkedthrough that gate was what's my

(16:42):
first and last name, what isyour first and last name and
what is my phone number?
And if you get lost, what areyou going to do?
You can get my book on Amazonand I will put the link in my
show's description Again, it'scalled let's Talk Emergencies
and I really hope you'll checkit out because there's just no
need to be scared when you canchoose prepared.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
And again this all goes back to this cultural value
where people believe becauseit's been grandparents, parents
and kids and we've just beentold, oh, you go to college, you
go to college, you get educated.
And also the assumption thatcollege educates you is a
massive leap to.
Anyone who stepped foot on acollege campus anywhere in the
last 10 years knows that you'reno one's getting educated on a
college campus.
I don't know what's going onthere, but it's definitely not

(17:24):
education, which is why I nolonger call it higher education,
because it's.
It's not.
I don't know what it is, butit's not that.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
I went 20 years ago and I can't say I learned very
much.
There's a lot of partying goingon.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
Yeah, and that's what happens when you get a bunch of
18 year olds who are living ontheir future borrowed income
that they haven't even made yet.
You know, it just doesn'tincentivize a lot of
responsibility, it doesn'tincentivize people to actually
examine what their outcomes aregoing to be, it just doesn't.
So the only people who get realsuccess from it are people who
go in with a clear goal to get adegree, because they need it to

(17:57):
do a specific job, and when Isay need it, I mean it is
legally required for that job.
So again, 1965, 7.4% of jobsrequired college degrees.
Currently, how many jobs do youthink require college degrees?

Speaker 1 (18:08):
Oh gee, I'd guess at least 50%, 7.7%, Really.

Speaker 2 (18:14):
It's still seven.
Yes, there has been a 0.3%increase in jobs that legally
require degrees.
Wow, there has been a massiveincrease in the types of jobs
that there are, but there is nota legal.
So a great example of that isand differentiating here between
degree requirement and degreerequest.
A degree request is when anemployer is asking for a college
degree for something that doesnot legally require a license to

(18:35):
do it.
There's no reason that somebodywho does not have a degree
cannot do that job.
You're not legally barred fromit, okay now let me ask you this
.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
So my niece right now was just telling me she's 22
and she spent some time in themilitary and I think she has
some college credits from highschool.
She wants to become a policeofficer and they told her that
you cannot take the exam.
You can take the exam, but youcan't get hired unless you have
the two years.
They didn't say a degree, butit must be.

(19:05):
What do you take?
A semester?
Sixty credits in a year, I mean.
So one hundred and twentycredits or whatever.
Whatever the number was.
Basically, she needed two yearsof college credits in order to
become a police officer.
So do you think that's accurate?
Or would that be something likeif we looked in the fine print?

Speaker 2 (19:24):
That is highly, that is highly dependent on the
police department you areapplying to.
So, by and large, policedepartments don't have those
types of requirements, unlessit's maybe a large metro area
and they recently added that orit's just it's a policy change,
but no, by and large, policeofficers, detectives, anybody
like that is not going to havean actual degree requirement.

(19:45):
But that is a legal requirementbecause that is an actual
government department and theysay you cannot hold this job
unless this, and so typicallythose types of jobs are going to
be ISTs, like audiologists,ophthalmologists, cardiologists.
Those are the ISTs, all theISTs.
Speech, language pathologists.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
Those need the degree Psychologists.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yeah, because usually your ISTs are tied.
Your IST jobs are tied to somesort of legal license.
Now, this is a big jump forparents, I know, because this is
massive information for themand it's new, and again, nobody
talks about it.
There's just all these repeatedtalking points about where
people just think that there'sall these jobs that require
degrees and there's a massivedifference between a job posting

(20:25):
that a degree is required andactually requiring a college
degree.
That's not how ATS works, whichis applicant tracking software.
It's also just not howcompanies hire.
Companies do not hire peoplethat look like their job
descriptions, so they don'tactually screen for people.
Harvard Business Review did astudy where they found 63% of
people that hold degree requiredjobs are actually degree free,

(20:46):
which is reflective of how muchof the employed workforce is
degree free, which is 60%, andso that's about right.
It's actually a little bithigher, and one of the big
things that parents need tounderstand is that, like I said,
degree requirement, degreerequest, not the same thing.
A request for a degree shouldbe ignored, always Apply anyway,
and one of the biggest things,too, is that people

(21:07):
self-eliminate a lot Womenspecifically do this, and so
it's hard to get a gauge of whatthe real amount of jobs that
require degrees are, because somany people that do graduate
college don't even try to applyfor the jobs that they would try
to apply for until they buy abachelor's degree.
So a great example of thatwould be a marketing.
An entry-level marketing roledoes not require a bachelor's

(21:28):
degree, but people who buymarketing degrees never try to
apply for those jobs untilthey've bought a bachelor's
degree.
So you really don't know,because people don't try, and
that's the thing that I wantparents to take away is all your
18 year old has to do is try,and you will be shocked at the
results of targeted trying andstrategic skill acquisition.
Wow.

Speaker 1 (21:47):
I mean, yeah, and I feel like I've always complained
about this Schools never reallyeven teach us all the jobs that
are available.
College definitely doesn'tteach us about all the jobs that
are available.
To think that we need to takeout the $200,000 in loans to, uh
, for a degree in the field thatwe want to go into when we're
18.
And we don't even know whatkind of you know clothes we're

(22:08):
into, or just silly things likewhat color hair we want to.
You know, dye our hair nexttime we get it done.
But yeah, but take out the 30years that you're gonna have to
pay this back for what you wantto do today.
It's so asinine.
So, like, where would you evengo to, like, find the list of
all the jobs?
Or even and I would imagineit's changing because, like,

(22:30):
there wasn't a podcasting jobwhen I was 18, you know that's
23 years ago.
So jobs, new jobs come up allthe time.
What are?
What should parents do to evenhelp their kids find what they
want to or could do for careers?

Speaker 2 (22:46):
So this is a great, this is such a good question and
the way that I answer this nowand it's funny you bring up that
we don't know at that age whatwe want to do and I get that
comment a lot when I tell youwhat I'm about to tell you,
which is so funny because Ithink that if you can't answer
the questions I'm about toexplain that parents should
figure out with their kids.
They should definitely not begoing into bankruptcy-exempt

(23:06):
debt.
There is no argument that thatis a responsible thing to do.
It would be more responsible tobuy your child a Ferrari than
it would be to buy them abachelor's degree, because a
Ferrari they could actuallydrive Uber with.
There is no guarantee that youcan use your bachelor's degree
for anything.
All you get as a guarantee ofthat is money out the door and
time spent.
That's it.
That's the only guarantee youget out of a degree and that's
why parents so interesting.

(23:27):
How people and how great of ajob they've done at college is
just objectively speaking andmarketing their product.
Right, Because there's no otherproduct that fails at a 50%
rate at least.
Right, Because at least 41% ofcollege graduates or sorry, 41%
of college students don't evengraduate right.
And then 60% of them take atleast five and a half years to
graduate of a four-year program,which is staggering.

(23:50):
And then I think it's one infour of them are underemployed,
in that they make less than$32,000 a year.
And then of that, only 27% ofthem use their degree.
A tiny, tiny fraction of peopleescape unscathed from the
college industrial complex.
There's no other industry thatwe would let target children in
this way and turn a blind eye tothe poor result that they have

(24:12):
gotten.
But they spend so much money onmarketing and they rely so
heavily on this generationalmarketing.
It's almost like you.
It's almost like relying ongrandparents to sell timeshares
to their kids, to selltimeshares to the grandkids.
It's wild.
It's wild and it's amazing.
And it's just cloaked behindthis veil of oh, this is
education and therefore it'sdifferent.
No, it's the same, becausethey're in writing.

(24:35):
On the fact that you're going tobuy it, Parents, a lot of
people will say, oh well, youknow you can't put a price on
education.
I said, yes, you can.
It's $104,000 on average for abachelor's degree.
It takes $156,000 on average,according to the NCES, if it
takes five and a half years.
And the total all-in costtuition, lost wages and interest

(24:57):
is well over half a milliondollars.
For that, just go.
Oh well, you know they earn somuch more.
I'm like, no, they don't.
Actually, what you have is youhave a wrap-up study from
Georgetown University from 2012.
You've probably heard this.
Everybody has.
It's the talk, this is thetalking point.
They earn over a milliondollars a year.
I call it the million dollarearnings myth because this is
what they say.
One, it's an average.
Why is it an average?
Because they need master'sdegree holders, PhDs and

(25:21):
doctorates, actual people ofprofessional practice, in order
to obscure the real results.
There's a reason it's not justbachelor's degree holders, which
is the majority of collegegraduates.
There's a reason that theydidn't pull out bachelor's
degree holders of businessdegrees, which is the majority
of people who graduate fromcollege.
Right, there's a reason theydidn't do that because if they
did, it would be abysmal and youwould quickly find that your

(25:45):
premium that you get is lessthan $100,000.
So your lifetime earningpremium for all of that is
$100,000.
And a lot of people are notgoing to be positive.
They're not going to have apositive net worth until they're
55 years old.
For what, Literally.
For what Is that worth it?
It's not, no, yeah, and that'swhy.
And then there's just so manydifferent.
I always get lost in the saucewhen I'm talking about this,

(26:06):
because it's so.
There's so many differentproblems here.
But how parents can help theirkids with this is four simple
things.
Where do they want to live?
How much money do they want tomake to live the way that they
want?
Buy a little homestead, live inJapan, you know like build a
house of their own Doesn'tmatter how.
What kind of schedule do theywant to work?
This is huge.
That impacts your life so much.

(26:27):
If you want to be astay-at-home mom, you need a
schedule that actually works forthat right.
If you want to travel for work,you need a schedule.
Oh, I'm going to go be a nurse,I'm going to go work in the
medical field, and they're goingto be absolutely miserable
because they're going to be in awindowless area with

(26:49):
fluorescent lighting all daylong and it's going to make them
really hate their lives.
Some people are fine with that.
Some people are okay with thosetrade-offs because they're
getting something else out of it.
But not thinking through allfour of those criteria we call
them the degree-free.
Four is really going to makeyour child unhappy.
If they cannot answer thosefour things, they have no
business buying a college degreebecause they don't know what
they want yet.
And then, once you do answerthose, then the ugly answer is

(27:13):
that you have to go out to theInternet because that's the best
available resource for this.
We're working on some things tofix that, but the best
available resource that is themost up-to-date, that is, the
most comprehensive of currentjob titles and of current roles
in your area.
Right now it's going to be theinternet.
So you have to go out equippedwith these four things and look
through okay, my child needs tomake $60,000 a year.

(27:34):
My child needs to make $120,000a year.
You know, my child needs afour-day work week, whatever
that looks like.
My child needs to work in awork environment where they're
working with an internal team.
They don't want to be customerfacing, that's just not their
speed.
Or they want to work in sales.
They want to talk to everybody,that's just what they want to
do.
Or they want a work environmentwhere they go out during the

(27:56):
day, they're not sitting at adesk all day to do a job, these
types of things.
And once you stack those thingstogether, you get a very clear
picture of what you're lookingfor in the internet, Cause it's
like an Easter egg hunt You'relooking for a specific thing
that fits those criteria, butyou have to know what you're
looking for in order to find it,and so it just does take a lot
of research, and that's one ofthe things that we do actually
for our business is, we do thatresearch for people, but parents

(28:19):
can do it, especiallyhomeschool parents.
They're very well equipped toresearch, they're very good at
it.
So Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
And something you mentioned earlier which I hadn't
thought of when I was incollege because I was on that
side, was that college is so onesided politically and it was
political and I don't think Irealized it at the time because
I just went with the masses.
You know political, and I don'tthink I realized it at the time
because I just went with themasses.
You know, I live in upstate NewYork and very liberal high

(28:48):
school Our teachers pushed Iremember it was during the um,
my 11th grade English, uh, 11thgrade history.
It was during the Bush and Goremust've been election and my
teacher would call Bush littleshrub and you know so to us it
was, and she was also mycheerleading coach, so of course
I was going to take whateveropinion she had, you know, and I
was like, oh yeah, so he's thebad guy and you know it's so

(29:09):
funny because then I just tookthat with me to college and
never thought anything.
You don't even realize it'spolitical going on when you're
in it.
It wasn't until later in my life, probably COVID, that I kind of
like woke up to some things andmedia not really telling us the
whole truth and nothing but thetruth.
So I started seeing things andat work I would kind of be a

(29:32):
little bit more vocal and Iworked for the government.
So it was kind of like everyonestarted like putting a wall
around me and like we don't talkto her anymore.
And it's just so funny that Iguess I never realized it until
I was on the other side and thenI was completely alienated.
And I've talked to some parentshomeschooling parents on my
podcast who have their kids,have grown up in homeschool and

(29:53):
then they send them off tocollege and now the kids are in
this whole dilemma like wow,this isn't how I grew up and
everybody has the oppositeopinion of me and some switch
over and some are just goingthrough that internal battle.
But I mean it's so funnybecause there's just supposed to
be this separation of it andthere absolutely is not.
And now that I look back at it,our whole system you know you

(30:15):
were mentioning understandingthe history of it is so
important.
And I love doing that with theeducation system itself, because
when you look back to thehistory of why we even have a
government education system inthe first place, it was, you
know, horace Mann and John Deweybringing this model over from
Prussia and they wanted tocreate the obedient worker
someone smart enough to do thejob but not too smart to

(30:37):
question it.
And then the Rockefellers andCarnegie's were investing
millions of dollars back in,like the early 1900s, into the
education system.
And just think logically if I'mJohn D Rockefeller, why would I
want to invest millions ofdollars into a system that could
potentially produce competitorsto my business?

(30:57):
Like I'm not going to do that,I that I'm going to want them to
dumb down so that they'll dowhat I need them to do without
rising up and being acompetition to my business If
you ever want to be in for ashock.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
this is one of the things.
A lot of stuff I do is justresearch for things I'm curious
about.
The literacy rate has beensomething that's been really
interesting to me and if youlook and you notice, when they
started requiring degrees forprimary school teachers, the
literacy rate went down higher.
The more degrees the teachershave, the less literate the kids

(31:33):
are.
That one's interesting.
That's an uncomfortable chartthat nobody wants to talk about,
but I find that to be veryinteresting because basically,
when we cross the threshold ofyour teachers having master's
degrees, there's very much anotable decline in the literacy
rates of kids in K-12 school.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
And that's interesting.
I know teachers in New Yorkneed a master's degree, but are
there states that they don'tneed one?
I know teachers in New Yorkneed a master's degree, but are
there states that they don'tneed one?
Because that would beinteresting to look at the
literacy levels of the stateslike in New York versus another
one where they might.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
I never thought to look at that.
Oh, I never thought to lookstate by state.
I never thought to look stateby state because I know it's not
always a legal requirement.
I think it depends on the union.
Maybe Is it the entire state ofNew York.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
Is it under the same?

Speaker 2 (32:21):
union.
I believe so, actuallyMississippi and Louisiana, which
is interesting because foryears people have made fun of
them for being, you know, behind, except for most of their kids

(32:41):
can read.
So they're doing somethingright and everybody else is
doing it wrong.
And it's one of those thingswhere, if I had to guess, if I
had to guess is that theteachers are less papered in
Louisiana and so they're moretailored to education.
The other thing, too is I thinkyou get a real amount of and
this is a caution for parentswhose kids are really fixated on

(33:04):
going into a specific type ofjob that requires a degree,
especially if that job is notgoing to pay their degree back,
if that job is not going to paytheir degree back.
Because people who go into jobsand I think a lot of people, I
think a lot of people go intoteaching because they uh, public
school teaching, specificallybecause they are not doing well
in another major or they'reundecided, and then they go
become teachers and then andthis, this is just true people

(33:27):
can say, oh, it's my passion,like sure it is, but a lot of
people go into education and andthose things because they
weren't doing another, you know,they weren't doing well in
another major, or they justweren't sure what to do, so they
just did that because they knewit's a job and it's there.
I think too, when you see, Iwould guess we're about to get
another flood.
I just read an article thatsaid that there's a massive
uptick in people going to gradschool because they're afraid to

(33:49):
go into the job market.
And that's always a disasterbecause what happens is those
people are four-year bachelor'sdegree holders, general
education, they're gonna go geta master's degree in education
and then they're gonna go intothe public school system because
there's work, because there'sneed and then you're gonna get
people who are bad at their jobs.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
And there is such a need for teachers right now.
And I remember when I graduatedcollege in 2006, everybody was
a teacher and you're so right,it was because I even went for
teaching for a little bit.
Not for teaching, I think.
I was like, oh, let's see,accounting didn't work out,
maybe I'll teach history.
I like never even read ahistory book in my life.
So it's like yeah, yeah.

(34:27):
And then I ended up just mylast semester going into the
dean like here's all the classesI've taken, what can you
finagle so that I can graduateon time?
And he was like, if you takesix classes in communication,
you can graduate with acommunication degree.
So I was like all right, soldGoing in for communications.
So like that's literally how itwas decided.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
But you're so right.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
And it's kind of like that thing I was saying with.
My parents were governmentworkers, so I took a civil
service exam when I graduated.
Same thing with teachersinstead of their parents being
the teacher.
A lot of times it's just well,I know teaching.
It's familiar to me because Ispent 12 or 13 years in the
school system, so I know the job.
I don't have to go looking for ayou know, curator of a IT or

(35:11):
whatever.
I don't have to go looking fora um, you know, curator of a IT
or whatever.
You don't have to make upsomething or actually
investigate.
You're like well, I knowteaching.
I saw them for a few years.
I know what they do.
Yeah, I never thought aboutthat.
So it and then and I'veinterviewed so many teachers on
my podcast who left teaching tohomeschool their kids.
It's insane.

(35:32):
The first teacher thatcontacted me that left her job
to homeschool their kids.
It's insane.
The first teacher thatcontacted me that left her job
to homeschool her kids.
I thought it was like a diamondin the rough.
I'm like you'll never believewhat I have here.
50% of my interviews areteachers who left the system and
they all say you don't need ateaching degree to teach your
kids.

Speaker 2 (35:49):
Well, it's that, for a lot of teachers are like that
because they and again, this isan incentives and expectation
problem, which is something thatwe solve in our launch program,
where we're making sure thatpeople know what they're going
to get out of work, becausepeople work because they must.
That's why people work.
And so if you're not gettingsomething that you need from
your work, why would you do it,unless you are a business owner

(36:12):
which, again, is still givingyou something that you need from
your work?
Why would you do it Unless youare a business owner which,
again, is still giving yousomething that you need and or
want?
And that's actually a bettercombination.
But you have to first coveryour basic needs in order to be
able to do that.
And so one of the things thatI've noticed about teachers and
people always you know, itsounds like I'm ganging up on
teachers all the time I have oneof my best friends is actually
a speech language pathologist,and this is why I speak about

(36:32):
this so often because it's beenreally painful for her to go
through the process of realizingthat she does not like her job,
because she didn't know a lotof the other options and she had
to go get a master's degree tobecome an IST right A speech
language pathologist, underpaid,overworked, unable to be a
stay-at-home mom, which isactually what she ended up

(36:52):
wanting to do, and it's becauseshe did not consider what kind
of schedule works for you.
What sort of work environment doyou want, which, if none, is
the answer, that's totally fine,or if more, in this day and age
, which is more appropriate iswhat's flexible and fits into
our household needs right, likewhat can I turn on and off?
What sort of skills are highleverage enough where I can earn

(37:13):
a high hourly that allows me tofree up my time?
Because my family is mypriority, because everybody has
different priorities in life.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
You guys know I am a big fan of the Tuttle Twins.
I had Connor Boyack, the writerof these books, on episode 24.
I reached out to his companyasking to let me be an affiliate
because I strongly believe intheir books and their message.
In the H5-11 book series, whichI read to my son all the time I
mean, he actually asks us toread these books with him.
Book five, road to Serfdom,talks about what happens to a

(37:43):
local town with local businesseswhen corporations start moving
in.
Book six, the Golden Rule,talks all about Ethan and
Emily's experience at summercamp through a series of
cheating and manipulation oncertain races that they're
required to complete.
It talks about how the goldenrule of treating others how we
want to be treated ourselves ishow we all should be conducting

(38:05):
our lives.
Education Vacation talks aboutJohn Taylor Gatto and the
creation of the school systemand what it was actually
intended to do, which you get tolearn about by following Ethan
and Emily on a trip to Europe.
And book 11, the Messed UpMarket, takes you through the
journey of kids trying to createsmall businesses as they learn
all the laws and rules thatgovernment has put in place to

(38:28):
actually make it very difficultfor them.
You learn all about interestsavings versus borrowing, low
interest rates versus highinterest rates and supply and
demand, and these are just someof the books in that series.
Use the link in my show'sdescription or at the
homeschoolhowtocom under thelistener discounts page.
I also wanna let you know aboutsome other books that the
Tuttle Twins have out America'sHistory, volume One and Two,

(38:51):
which teaches all about theinspiring ideas of America's
founding without the bias andhidden agendas that's found in
other history books for kids andmost likely in the schools.
There's also books on how toidentify fallacies, modern day
villains all stuff that we wantto be talking to our kids about.
Whether you homeschool or not,these books bring up important

(39:12):
discussions that we should behaving with our children.
Use the link in my show'sdescription or, like I said, at
thehomeschoolhowtocom underlistener discounts.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
You know, but a lot of teachers did not give any
thought to these four things.
They just take the path ofleast resistance, because that
is the path of least resistanceand, exactly as you said, that's
a huge problem that we've runinto is that a lot of kids only
can name about six to eight jobs, because the people to teach
them only know six to eight jobsand in their minds they come
from.
These very structured liketeaching is fake.

(39:45):
It's a fake.
It's a fake, it's a bubble.
It's kind of like being in themilitary.
I grew up in the military, in amilitary family.
It's fake, like the careerprogression, the requirements.
It's all fake because it onlyexists and it is only true
inside this specific bubble ofcareer, whereas outside of that
it's not true.
There's not all these rules,you don't have to do these stuff
.
It doesn't work that way.
That's just not how the worldworks.

(40:06):
In teaching, it is because it'sa fake government bubble.
And the same way in academia,right?
So a lot of academics have thesame exact problem, which is you
have to do these specificthings in order to get on tenure
track, in order to do this, inorder to do this, and you have
to check these boxes in aspecific order.
But that's not true for mostpeople.
It's only true for certainprofessions.
It's true for nurses, right,because you have to go up, you

(40:29):
know you have to become an RN.
You have to go up, you know youhave to become an RN, you have
to become a nurse practitioner,and you have to go through these
levels to get licenses to dothose things in the same way you
do in teaching and in the sameway you do in the military.
And so their view of work isvery structured and it's very,
and for them it is true becausethis is how it works.
But outside of that it doesn'twork.
That way you don't have to doall these things.
You don't have to go buy abachelor's degree.

(40:50):
You don't and actually it'sgoing to be a giant waste of
your time to do so because otherpeople are just going to go.
What do I actually need to do?
Oh, that'll take me threemonths, and then they go do it,
and then they're employed, andthen they're out earning the
median teacher, and so it'steaching people to not go in
this checkbox way, becausethat's just not how it works.
It's not how it works for mostpeople, and for those you have,

(41:12):
you know, done some sort of, Idon't know, really gotten into

(41:38):
writing.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
Or the English you know, read all this stuff and I
don't know.
Or history.
You've worked in museums,you've traveled the world and
you're here to share yourexperiences with the youth, but
it's not really like that, it'slike here's the test I think
teachers should only be retiredpeople.

Speaker 2 (41:56):
I think that's how it should work.
I think your mom would be agreat teacher, right?
Because she already had acareer.
I think that makes a lot moresense.
I think you should have to gohave a job in the real world
before you go into teaching.
That's what I think.
That's what I feel.

Speaker 1 (42:07):
I think working for government is also like you said
.
It's not real, I would agreewith that, for 16 years.
I twiddled my thumbs and saidcan I have real work to do, not
just like you're giving mesomething to keep my fingers
busy so that you don't have toworry about what to do with me.
Okay, well, here's a programwe're doing.

(42:28):
And then when I look at theprogram in total, I'm like, well
, it doesn't make sense.
A great example was I hadworked for this card swipe
program.
We were going to have everybodythat was on Medicaid every time
they took went to go get one oftheir prescriptions or go for a
ride in, you know, whether theywere going to dialysis and back
or whatnot, you'd have to swipetheir card and we'd have to

(42:50):
spend.
We'd contract with people andspend millions of dollars to get
these little machineseverywhere, inside the vehicles,
to the, to the pharmacies.
Well, the machines never worked,but the but the funny thing was
, as I said, it's not arequirement to be the person
receiving the medication, to bethe recipient to go pick up the
prescription.
So, like I, if my mom'sbedridden, I can go get her

(43:13):
prescription for her.
It's not illegal for me or myneighbor to go pick up her
prescription.
So we're not going to have thecard to swipe.
Oh yeah, we've already spentmillions on this and and not
even on the products, but for,like, the man time, the manpower
behind this program and all thepeople who contracted and UPS
to ship out these Verifonemachines.

(43:34):
It's like nobody thought ofthis.
And that's just in a nutshell.
All these government like, Ithink, the people that work at
the counties.
They do the most work, they getpaid the least and they
actually have the benefit in theend user's life.
Everything above that is justbaloney.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
Yeah, and it's a combination of as with
everything right, it's acombination of problems and
artificial incentives and youget what you incentivize.
So you incentivize peoplebuying paper to do jobs that
they don't need those papers todo.
That's what they will do.
You make it available for themto get funding even though they
don't need those papers to do.
That's what they will do.
You make it available for themto get funding even though they
don't need the funding becausethey don't even need to buy the

(44:18):
thing.
And I think the biggest problemtoo, for homeschooling families
is that and I say this because Iwas actually homeschooled for a
good amount of my school career, before high school, and my mom
fell prey to this too.
My mom was a nurse and so mymom fell prey to this and a lot

(44:38):
of homeschooling families Ithink a lot of homeschooling
moms specifically fall prey tothe.
I have to get my child intocollege and the best college and
Ivy League colleges in order toquantify my skill at teaching
them as a parent, and it justseems so insane to me to watch

(44:59):
people homeschool their kids for12 years and then hand them
over to put them back on theconveyor belt into the meat
grinder for absolutely nojustifiable reason other than to
feel good about themselves.
And it's just such aninteresting thing because I see
these people do this, who arecritical of everything else
about the education system, butthey have not held up college to

(45:21):
the light and examined it, orthey just believe what they've
been told about it, which is sointeresting to me and then they
seem blindsided by one the poorresults.
And then when their kids areback home and in debt and also
now don't hold any of the valuesthat they sent them with, which
is an interesting thing to payfor.
That's a crazy thing to pay for.
You go pay $100,000 to get thatresult.

(45:42):
It's wild to me.
And they just hand them rightover to these people who, for
lack of a better term I mean,like I said, I don't call it
higher education anymore, it'smore like a cult it's like you
hand them over to this orthodoxcult with these really dogmatic
wild economic theories, wildpolitical theories and I say
theories because they'reprofessional, most of them
professionally useless people.

(46:03):
You have very few actualprofessors who've worked in
their industry, you have veryfew who've ever worked period
outside of academia, and so theyjust don't know a lot about
anything.
Really, they don't know a lotabout the like.
If you ask professors now I'vewanted to do this as a series
but going around to differentcollege campuses and asking

(46:23):
professors what jobs the kids intheir program will end up
getting, they have no idea.
If it's outside of a medicalprogram, they don't know.
They don't have a clue why?
Because for anything that's notSTEM, they've never worked in
their field in the privatesector ever.
For anybody who is STEM,usually for them they're 10 to
15 years removed fromprofessional work.

(46:46):
In that and just to put this inperspective for people, for a
STEM professor, for a computerscience professor, the computer
science market is getting rockedright now.
For the graduates.
The graduates are in realtrouble and that's because
they're not being taughtanything that's useful and
that's because colleges cannotkeep speed with the pace of
technology.
They cannot keep up and theprofessors who are teaching it
oftentimes unless they'recurrently active VCs, like

(47:08):
they're venture capitalists orthey are professors of practice,
so they have a stake in somecompany that's building in
demand technology which you'regoing to see it like, maybe MIT.
Some of the, some of the Ivieshave it.
You know some of some of themhave it, but most of them it's
been years.
Like there was no.
There was no.
Like there's a software calledwell, there's a framework called

(47:28):
Kubernetes for, like, datastorage.
That didn't exist.
Slack didn't exist.
Airpods didn't exist.
Slack didn't exist, airpodsdidn't exist.
The last time these peopleworked just to put that in
perspective for parents.
And so you know, oh well,they're going into computer
science.
That is not defensible.
Like, if your child is going togo into technology, get them
literally anywhere into themarket and applying for jobs,
entry-level work, pay somebodyto train them.
Do not send them to college.

(47:49):
They don't have four years,they don't have that time, and
at this point it's even like themoney is an afterthought.
The money is six figures.
That's the time that you'regoing to spend.
You're going to put your childinto the charge of these people
who do not know.
They're so far removed from themarket they're about to send
your kids into that.
A lot of colleges now arespending more time trying to

(48:09):
catch kids using AI than theyare teaching them to use it and
that is the craziest thing forme to watch parents spend their
money on.
It's crazy, like as somebodywho worked in that, and I'm like
you need to equip your childrento do this.
They need to be AI proof, andthe way to do that is to teach
them how to work on it or teachthem how to build with it.
You can't.

Speaker 1 (48:27):
You can't send them to police their usage of it.
You're so right.
My nephew's 18 and he is at alocal two-year school and he's
going for engineering.
But again, I'm like what do youwant to build?
What do you want to do with it?
I don't know.
But at least he went to thetwo-year school, but I don't

(48:48):
know what from there.
But yeah, he was just tellingme how, oh, oh, yeah, well, I
wrote a paper with AI and youknow, my professor thought I did
.
He gave me a C because he saidhe can't prove that I wrote it
with AI.
So he can't fail me.
But it's like and I've said thisforever too uh, school and work
, a lot of the times it's justshowing up and like putting on

(49:10):
the look like you know it'sshowing up and like putting on
the look like you know it's.
It's almost like faking yourway through, but you're still
more ahead than like 70 percentof the people that don't even
show up at all.
So it's like, but yeah, thekid's really smart.
But it's like, yeah, I use AI.
But you're right, why aren'tthey teaching?
They don't.

(49:30):
They're not teaching theteachers how to use it,
obviously because they can'tfigure out if kids are using it
or not.
But yeah, work with it and notagainst it.
That makes so much sense.
What is your opinion on liketrades and that sort of thing?

Speaker 2 (49:45):
I have a strong.
I have strong opinions on thetrades.
Actually, the main reason isbecause I see a lot of poor
outcomes with the trade push.
It's one of those things that's.
It's a good soundbite thesedays.
It gets numbers.
So you see Mike Rowe, kenColeman, charlie Kirk, like you
see all the talking heads thatjust go on and oh, we have 11
million open trade jobs, blah,blah, blah, blah, blah.

(50:06):
I hate that because I'm like,stop telling people to go one,
stop telling people that theonly thing they can do is the
trades if they don't go tofour-year college.
That's ridiculous, like it's sosilly, as, as all of them are
in media, as they sit theretalking in media, in
broadcasting, which also doesn'trequire a college degree to do
audio engineering, to do av, todo lighting, to do to do like

(50:26):
gaffer you know, to be a gafferto do video production, to do
script writing, to do product,literally anything, literally
anything.
So that really gets under myskin because that bothers me a
lot personally.
But then and I actually saythis as my youngest sister is a
structural welder, so she's theonly female welder at a steel
company.
That's what she does, she'svery good at it.

(50:47):
She out-hurns, the medianmaster's degree holder.
She's 23.
She has no debt Okay, she's,she's killing it.
And the reason that's differentis because she thought through
what do I want?
How much do I need to make?
Where do I, where do I want tolive?
What sort of schedule works forme?
And then she chose her workbased on that and she found paid

(51:07):
on the job training.
I helped her do this.
This was years ago and that isone of the things.
So the trade school push isreally not good, because really
it's what it is is high schoolsand, as an extension, anybody
who uses any sort of educationalcuration.
Nowadays they use college.
You want to go to college?
Okay, well, there's themilitary.
Those are the two.

(51:27):
Those have been the two for avery long time.
This is what they do.
You don't want to do that.
Now they've got a third bulletit's trade school.
Why is trade school a bad idea?
Because trade school debt isstill student loan debt and
trade school debt to get a tradethat does not meet your needs
is still a bad idea, and that'sthe thing that's so huge.

(51:48):
I worked with a young man whowas 19.
He went to a four-year college.
He got into a four-year college.
Was doing that, hated it.
Transferred to a communitycollege two years, hated it.
He goes to electrician schoolbecause that's the third option.
He didn't want to go into themilitary.
So the third option is tradeschool hates it, and then he's
just like what's wrong with me?
Nothing was wrong with you.

(52:08):
Nobody taught you to thinkthrough what you actually need
out of your work.
He went through a four-weekprogram with us.
The end of this.
This is how not wrong with himsomething was and how wrong the
way that we're teaching thesekids to pick their jobs is and
how disjointed the incentivesare and how their expectations
are wrong.
And that's actually why so manyof them seem really unmotivated
.
It's because they don't knowwhat they're doing, and then

(52:29):
they don't know what they'regoing to get out of it, and that
would be unmotivating toanybody.
I'm unmotivated if I don't knowwhy I'm doing what I'm doing
and what it's going to get me.
What's the point?
you would probably feel the sameway yeah but this kid, he goes
through the program then againthree times.
He's.
He's employed this whole time.
He was working.
It wasn't like he was lazy.
He's working 30 days.

(52:49):
He comes into his final reviewcall on that.
I go through a differenteducational option.
So the way our process works iswe go what do you want out of
your life, what do you want itto look like?
We get those degree free for.
And then I find a list.
You know, we find a list ofjobs that actually fit those
things for them and wehyperlocate it to where they are
.
After they do that, theyeliminate the ones they don't
like and then we go through andfind actual skills or licenses

(53:11):
or certifications, things theyactually need to do those jobs.
If a degree is required, it'son there.
You know I had a young lady whowanted to be a physical therapy
assistant.
So you need a two-year, youneed associates to get your
license to do that.
But for him the thing that shookto the top was fiber optic
installation.
That was the one he was really.
He was all about it.
So the end comes, his reviewcall comes his mom and his dad

(53:34):
come on, we go over his topthree jobs.
He picks fiber opticinstallation as the path he's
going to pursue.
I found regional companies thatwere.
They lived in a researchtriangle in near North Carolina
in North Carolina and I was like, hey, this company right here
has an opening that I think thatyou would be really good for.
It's paid on the job, training,they're going to give you a
company car, full benefits, allof this stuff you get paid

(53:57):
during promotion.
And he goes okay and I saidyeah, so tomorrow is Monday,
apply for it.
He applies for it.
They call him in Tuesday,wednesday.
He's hired.
He's been there a year.
He's gotten promoted.
He's gotten a raise.
He's a trainer now.
Now loves it because it's theright fit, because it helped him
see, because he thought throughwhat do I want?

(54:17):
What he wanted was to stay nearhis family.
He wanted to propose to hisgirlfriend, he wanted to buy a
house in the next five to sevenyears.
He wanted to make a certainamount of money for where they
live and it fit all of thosethings.
So he had a clear path forwardto.
This is going to get me what Iwant in my life.
So then, when he gets the job,the connect is there, which is

(54:40):
this is going to help me livethe way I want.
And then that's so easy tomotivate someone when they just
know that if they just do thething that's right in front of
them, they're going to get whatthey want.
And that's the piece that'smissing.

Speaker 1 (54:57):
Well, hannah, I thought that they already had
this job that you're explainingfigured out, and I thought it
was called a guidance counselorat school, but clearly they
don't know any of what you areoffering they don't know the
jobs and and if they don't?

Speaker 2 (55:09):
exactly they don't.
If your kid, if your kid's notgoing to get into a four year
degree, they don't care what'sgoing to happen to them yeah
right, because it's just anothergovernment job to a four year.
Well, because schools bragabout their college admission
rates, their, their entiremetric of success is wrong,
which is how many kids do we putin student loan debt?
That's a crazy success metric.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
Well, and they probably get more funding the
more kids they get into college.

Speaker 2 (55:31):
Well, if you think about it downstream from this,
like the college, so there areschools, there are public
schools in certain districtswhere the entire economy is
basically based on theadmissions rate.
The college admissions ratereally shouldn't be the college
admissions rate, it should bethe student loan debt rate, it
should be the student loanconversion rate to debt.
That's where it should be.
And so these schools will go.

(55:52):
Oh, you know, 75% of our kidsget into college.
You know, get into whateverTexas A&M or whatever and then
they get these kids into TexasA&M.
And now people will move intothe school district to get their
kids into this public school sothat their kids can take on
bankruptcy exempt debt to go buypaper from a specific college.
It's the most bonkers.

(56:12):
So now the realtors will sellhouses based on the student loan
percentages of these highschools.
It's the most insane thing.
It's the most insane thing.
Yeah, it's the most insanething, yeah.
And so, yes, guidancecounselors, and also, to be fair
to them, I will say they'reoverworked, like there's,

(56:33):
there's one of them and there's,you know, 5000 kids.
There's two of them and there's3000 kids.
There's one of them and there's250 kids, you know, but they
just don't have.
They don't have the tools.
They also don't have themindset.
That's the other thing.
I find that people will limit,people will limit kids by their
own limitations, which is, Ithink, one of the real problems.

(56:54):
That's one of the real problems.
They'll just say, well, Icouldn't do it, so you
definitely can't because youdidn't get a this on the SAT,
which is a stupid way to measurewhether or not somebody can do
something.
That's a silly thing to do, Ilove everything you're standing
for and what you're doing.

Speaker 1 (57:11):
I think this is so valuable.
You kind of explained I wasgoing to ask you, you know the
process of what your businessdoes, and you explained it a
little bit in that with umtalking about, uh, the student,
that you had the fiber optics.
But if somebody wanted toutilize your services for their
child, like, what can they, whatdoes your business do?
And then get into how they canget in contact for you, and I

(57:33):
will put everything in theshow's description as well, so
it's easily clickable.

Speaker 2 (57:37):
Sure.
So basically what we do is wedo custom career planning, and
that's the piece that's missing,unfortunately.
That's what everybody needs,because what and the thing is,
parents can do that what I justtalked through, everything that
I just talked to their parentshave the ability to do, it's
just going to take them time.
We just do it really fastbecause that's what we do.
So for parents, you know, it'sthinking through those four

(58:00):
criteria, looking to find thingsthat actually fit them.
If folks would like to work withus and have our kids do this
for them, basically what they dois go to degreefreecom, forward
, slash, launch and you canapply for the program there.
We interview everybody becausewe only work with people who
want to work with us.
People will try to get theirkids to do it, and if the kids
don't want to do it, I'm notinterested in forcing anybody to
do anything.

(58:20):
I'm not about that.
If somebody wants to do it,then we'll do some work.
But you know, so we make surethat the young adult is really
engaged and actually wants tocommit to the process and then,
once they do, then we go throughthis.
It takes about 30 days to gothrough at this point and then
we're actually building anotherversion of it that's a little

(58:42):
bit more accessibly priced andalso that is faster, because
that's one of the things that wereally, you know, 30 days is
pretty good, you know.
It's pretty good for the amountof research that's going to get
done, but we basically builtout something that's going to
execute a little bit faster andgets as more works better for
how young adults currentlyinteract.
Right, they're on their phones,they're busy, they have a lot

(59:04):
going on.
Usually they're working anddoing other things and so we've
designed the program a littlebit more to tailor to how their
needs are and how they nativelyconsume and interact with
technology, and so that'sactually been really cool too,
because we've noticed that we'regetting like better results
faster, and so we're testingthat too now, which is really
cool.

Speaker 1 (59:21):
Awesome, so I will put that link in the show's
description and people canfollow you on Instagram too.
Do you want to give your handlethere?

Speaker 2 (59:26):
Yeah, sure, it's at degree free on Instagram, but if
you want to see the real spicytakes, that's going to be on
TikTok at degreefree.

Speaker 1 (59:35):
I always forget about TikTok, because I was banned
from there years ago and I nevergo on it anymore, it's easy to
get banned on.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
TikTok, yeah, I get reported several times a week
for things.
Oh my God, yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:47):
Oh, hannah, this has been such an interesting
conversation.
I love this.
I love what you're doing.
Thank you so much for beinghere today and I will put links
to everything that you mentionedin the show's description so
people can head there.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you for tuning into thisweek's episode of the homeschool
.
How to.
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(01:00:08):
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Thank you for tuning in and foryour love of the next
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Thank you.