Is College For Dummies? #548

a million and pick up girls for Dummies. Uh No, this is we are going to talk about college during this episode, and with with fall basically right around the corner, we felt that this was a good time for us to revisit the topic of college and specifically if it's gonna make a lot of sense for folks. And I think there might be some folks who are listening and thinking, you know, thanks a lot of guys, But I'm a

recent college grad where I'm a young professional. The fact is, I guarantee you know more high schoolers than we do. Uh And so I think this is worth listening to because you can help guide them through this critical time in their in their lives, or at least send them the link to this episode. Well, in the very least,

there's just a lot of interesting information. I feel like a lot has changed when it comes to the value proposition the college offers and it's just not as much of a slam dunk because it used to be uh years ago. So we're gonna kind of get into that in this episode. We're gonna kind of help you ask some questions, whether you're a parent or a high school student, or someone who knows one of those people about like maybe how to navigate the process of thinking through the

value that higher education offers or doesn't offer for you. Yeah, and if you're a parent, you also might be thinking, well, my kids are too young. I mean, that's that's kind of where we are. Kids are pretty young. But the fact is this is something you should start thinking through now, because I don't think you get to a point to where you say, okay, it is now time for higher education, like higher age. Educating your kid is a process like that is what you are living. It's not an event.

It's not appeared in time when you're now all at once going to make the right decision. It's not a singular event, I guess, is what I'm saying. And so I think there are steps that we can take now to start guiding our kids as they are learning things as we are shaping them to become adults. Yeah, and it starts to help inform those conversations about Like literally the other day, my nine year old said, Dad, are

you saving money from my college? And so it prompted this opportunity to say, like, yeah, I'm saving some but it's not it's not a high priority for me. I've got these other things that are a bigger priority. And college is kind of expensive. But the cool thing is there are other ways to pay for it if you want to go. And by the way, it might not even be the best move. We'll see kind of as

we get closer to that time. That's kind of the conversation we're gonna be having with you, dear listeners before we get into it. Man, we you and I. We got to share a beer with the listener yesterday. He uh, his parents live here locally, he lives out west, but he was in town. Hit us up and we're like, you know what, we actually are free to grab a beer. And it just reminded me of how great our job is.

And I mean, who else basically gets to sit around read the things that are interested in all day, talk about it and record there's thoughts into a microphone, all while doing it with your best bud. We truly do have, I think the best job in the world, and we would not be able to have this job, this profession if it wasn't for all of you listeners out there.

So in connecting with those listeners, whether it's some sort of listener event that we get to do, or you know, when we meet them randomly in public, or when somebody reaches out like like Andy did, where we get to have a beer just kind of one on one and chat.

That was man, that's so much fun. That's one of the best parts is kind of the community or even if it just just the emails, the Facebook group, like, the different ways that you're able to engage with the folks that are part of the community is I mean, it's a huge part of the joy I derived from doing this. It ranks up there for me as well, but it certainly I think those social interactions rank higher

for you than they did for me. But that doesn't mean I'm any less thankful, uh, And it makes me think just how we wouldn't have this show without all the listeners out there. Literally you let's need to this podcast is what helps to pay our bills, so a huge thank you for that. It also helps us to pay for the craft beer that you and I get to enjoy most of the episodes. We we don't drink every episode, if you're wondering, Our Friday flights are a bit shorter and so we avoid cracking open a cold

one then. But every Monday, every Wednesday we're drinking a craft beer, and today we're enjoying a food or beer by Southern Brewing. I'm really looking forward to sharing our thoughts on this one at the end of the episode. And if you don't know what food er is, that's a funky kind of word. We'll talk about that at the end to um. But Matt, let's let's get out too. Let's uh, let's tackle this question. Is college for dummies?

For dummies? We talked a lot about the middle class last week, which was I thought a really fun episode and going to college it's kind of been the bedrock right of creating this modern American middle class that we've had for the past decades. But I guess the question is is college is it's still the predominant path forward to being in the middle class in the future. That

is some thing that we want to tackle that question. Yeah, because it makes me think about the reality that, for the longest time, Matt, most parents have basically no problem with their kids playing football. Right. It was an organized sport that allowed kids, kids to develop their athletic prowess, to develop friendships, to become more disciplined, Bill's teamwork. Yeah, it seems like it's mostly a good thing. Even some kids get scholarships to go to the colleges of their choice.

Kids who are there's a lot of benefits, particularly good at football. Then yeah, I could go to a big school and get their college paid for. But but here's the thing. Yeah, the value proposition of your kid playing football has changed quite a bit in recent years, right, as we've learned more about CT, which I didn't know what it stood for, but it stands for chronic traumatic

and it's a philopathy. I think you're saying, Well, it's the more we know about c T now, the more it's called into question whether or not it makes sense for your kid to participate in let's say, Pop Warner Football League. Right, and so we've seen something like a thirty five percent fewer kids playing the sport now than played ten to fifteen years ago. It's it's just there's

a dramatic change in perception, and understandably so. And we think that actually higher education and recent things happening in that space has revealed some striking similarities where where you're gonna want to think twice before you send your kid out on the football field at the young age of ten, eleven, twelve.

You might want to think twice if you are a high school student or a parent of high school student before you just, without thinking send your kid to you know, their local public university or to some sort of private school the town of state. That's right, yeah, you know, And we're certainly not encouraging a widespread revolt against higher education, but it's understandable that folks want to know if the value proposition is still there when it comes to getting

a degree. Right, it's college actually still worth it? Uh, It's it's clearly not the slam dunk path that it used to be thanks to a variety of reasons that we're going to talk about today. The first one has been well documented and is most definitely the number one reason to reconsider taking that path. Student loans they are at insane levels right now and Uh, there's problem people there. Oh yeah, dude. Uh, and they're now equal to more

than one point seven trillion dollars overall. Uh, that debt it spread across forty five million folks, and there are quite a few among that number who feel that birden more acutely, you know, it's a it's it feels like a like a millstone around their neck, right, preventing them from from all sorts of formally normal young adult activities like just simply being able to invest, but even getting married, starting a family, buying a home because they already have

a mortgage payment, that is, their student loans that they're paying off. Still, any one percent of adults with student loans say that they've delayed some of these life milestones because of their debts. So it's having a real tangible

impact on what our lives look like to me. And even in the past ten, twelve, fifteen years, like we've seen kind of the amount, the average amount of debt that a normal student comes out of school with just skyrocket, which can and should change your perspective on whether or not it makes sense to go in that direction. So, yeah, student loans are obviously one of the number one problems.

One of the number one reasons to reconsider college and and to ask the question if it's if it's a dumb move or not well, and another one is is just, yeah, the higher cost of college in general, because we've been talking about inflation quite a bit, and you know, prices at the grocery store have gone up quite a bit in the past twelve eighteen months. You know, use cars, new cars, all that stuff. Those things have taken off like a rocket in terms of price in just the

past couple of years. But when you actually zoom out, there's certain segments of our economy where inflation has been impacting us severely for not just the past couple of years, but for the past couple of decades. Uh. And so yeah, the college, the staring cost of college takes the cake, even beating out right the awful increases that we've seen

even in our health care system. Um. And there's just so many reasons for that, but easy access to those student loans that are widely available from the federal government is at least a part of that reason. And being able to easily borrow more and more money it means that colleges can hire more administrators they can build nicer buildings, they can inflate their costs more than they would otherwise be able to if there wasn't easy money for teenagers

to get in order to go get that higher education. Right, It's it's not that those additional dollars are significantly increasing the quality of the education either. We'll talk about that later. They're they're not. And plus, you can't shake these student loans. You can't. When you pay more for college and you take on more debt to get that degree, that debt sticks with you through thick and thin, even if you

file for bankruptcy. It's like this financial tar that sticks to you for for basically the rest of your life. You can't shake them. That's definitely a hindrance to higher education or college specifically making sense, But false assumptions are another problem in the space U. The popular mantra has consistently been that if you just go to college, if you just go there, you get a degree, it's gonna lead to a higher paying job. It's like this is

something that one plus one equals to right. It's like it's like this is a guaranteed fact that well you have it doesn't matter how hard you work or what you do. Just as long as you just go get that degree, you're gonna be fine. And I do think that that that used to be like overwhelmingly true, and and it was a part of the American dream. But a college degree back in the seventies and the eighties it looks quite a bit different than getting one today,

right in two on multiple levels. Given the absurd increase in costs for the average high school graduate and the now more faulty promise of high paying jobs upon graduation, a rethink of that widely held belief is in order. The stats from Pew Research show that something like four and ten graduates between the ages of twenty seven are under employed, where they're actually making less than the degree would suggest that they should be making. And so folks

are not making the kind of salaries that they're expecting. Uh. And younger college graduates also, understandably, they tend to ascribe less value to their college degree than older college graduates. And we believe that's because a degree it's less valuable today and it's less reliable than it used to be. Yeah, when you when you see that that five year span after college, that something like people are not getting the value that they hoped or that their parents got from

that degree. It's, of course it's going to shine more of a dark shadow on that false assumption right that most people held, which was going through college equals middle class equals higher paying job and niquals the house with the garage cars in the driveway data. So I believe this.

I do. Also there's a part of me that also thinks, Okay, there's also a good chance that folks are just as young, right, And like when you're younger, I think oftentimes you don't give enough credit to the things outside of your control that might lead to your success. And so I think there's especially in your twenties, you think, Okay, the reason that I got this job or the reason that I got that promotion is due to my ingenuity. Well where

did you learn that ingenuity? You know? And I think a lot of times when you're younger, sometimes you cannot attribute some of your success to something like undergrad because I know that's legit how I felt as a graduate, as a you know, somebody in my twenties, I remember thinking, did I really need to go to college to have

the job that I currently have now? Whereas now as I'm a little bit older, I'm thinking, you know, I think I could probably give a little more credit to the like the softer skills that I learned while in college. I think that's a good point. And I think, yeah, those first two years are typically hopefully your lowest earning years two out of college, so and hopefully you only get wiser from that point and hopefully your paychecks won't

get fat. Right. But another downside, and we'll talk about, you know, the good, good things about college too in a second. But another another problem with higher education right now is that there's more college competition right more. It's a trend starting to change, actually, but more and more young folks have been pursuing higher education because they've been told that it's the best bet for success for their future. But for the first time, almost of of individuals over

the age of have a college degree. That's up from in um and like I said, like the pandemic, it's actually kind of curbed the rise in college participation. And we'll see how long that trend lasts. Is that just like a blip, or is that something that's going to be a shift that's gonna you know, go into through the rest of this decade. But overall, we've been seeing more young people opting for a university education over the

past twenty years. And and that's also just has this other impact of watering down maybe your ability to stand out from the crowd based on having a college degree, and and so that now much more expensive degree becomes even less impressive in a world where more of your peers also have them. That's right, your smarts are now they've been deluded, especially amongst all the smarts less concentrated, right um, and so yeah, the the while, while these

problems they're still real. Right, While maybe your college degree costs more and it's not worth quite as much, and those student loans can be quite a burden. Uh, there there are still perks for going to college. Let's talk about the flip side, Matt, and offer some thoughts on how to decipher the value of a potential college degree in the future. We'll get to our thoughts on that

right after this. All right, we are back, and you know, we've covered some worthwhile information about the declining value that college degrees are providing folks. Now, but let's talk about some of the data on how much a college education will actually enhance your earning prospects. The b l S, the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the average college graduate will earn a million dollars more over their lifetime than their high school graduate equivalent. So the fact is, uh,

that's what the stats show. There is data to back that up. It doesn't necessarily mean and that that's the rate at which things are going to be going moving forward, but that is what the past. That is what history has shown and what it's proven. Also, folks with a college degree more likely to own a home, and a massive amount of the new jobs that are being created today are are going to college educated folks, and reflecting that the unemployment rate, it's lower for people who have

a college education. Basically, if we enter into a recession, individual with the college education, they're going to be impacted less severely. Uh so you've got more money, you've got more security, and more opportunity. All of these things sound like a lot of positives on the pro college side of the cure. Yeah, and again like we're kind of nuance dudes. Uh, we're not like hot take shock chalk style podcast hosts. And so the reality is that college does pay off for a bunch of people, or at

least it has in the past. And it has in the past, but this episode is still titled Colleges for dummy or this college asking the question, and and for for a lot of people, it's not a dumb move, um, and that needs to be said. And we will kind of talk about how you can determine that in just a bit. But a decent chunk of college graduates will reap the rewards that you're talking about, Matt after just

four years, right, um. And and so they will find that path still uh to the middle class through higher education. But we are concerned about a growing number of folks who opt to pursue a degree who aren't going to benefit from it in the same way. And that's the

worst exactly. And stats from Pew. You know, we're we're referencing pe a lot last weekend this week, but we've been diving into the research and we have got to back with data and and and these stats that that you found showed that only sixty two of folks who start their college education end up with a degree after

six years. So we always talk about like a four year education, but the reality is for a whole lot of folks it's more like a six plus year education or a uh never ending and I never actually got my degree sort of education, right, So, um, a lot of folks just don't end up getting a degree at all, which actually puts people in the worst possible position, loaded down with debt, without any real ability to earn more money based on the time that they've spent in class learning.

So it's crucial to consider the opportunity cost that lies ahead of you if you decided to go to college, because instead of spending tens or or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on an education, please don't write that may or may not pan out. Um, what what if you invested that money instead, or instead of dedicating four or six years of your your prime years grinding it out on campus, what if you throw yourself directly into an industry that you're curious about in order to learn

to see if that fields for you. Basically, what we're trying to warn people against is the blind pursuits of academia without considering the alternatives, because by not doing so, by not thinking through that value proposition, by not being wary of the opportunity costs that many will pay in order to get that college degree. Um, it could lead you to a lot more debt, and you like to then you like to be in and and potentially wasted years that you could have been doing something more exciting

or that you're more energized by. Exactly. Yes, it's not just a proposition where you are considering the numbers or the finances, but it's something where literally this is your time. This is years of your life that you might be hopefully not fretting away studying something that you're not even interested in. Well, usually those college years aren't hope hopefully they're not wasted. Hopefully they're hopefully that they're fun. There's

part of building a network. I mean, college offers more things than just some sort of like a degree that you're handed at the end of it, like it's the only thing you're going to all those additional soft skills, networking people you get to meet, basically learning how to live life. But hopefully that's also something that you can do fairly cheaply somewhere else. Well, you're not paying thousands and tens of thousands, or like you said, even hundreds

of thousands of dollars to learn that lesson. Uh, and so that's it's definitely worth bringing that up because it's not just the money, it's also the time opportunity cost

affects both of those arenas. Uh. And it's also important to keep in mind that not all degrees are created equal, and so we want you to essentially to be choosy and to exercise some discretion here because one think tank they found that more than a quarter of degrees in fields like psychology, religion, art and music, they leave the majority of students worse off than if they had never enrolled in the first place. They actually have a negative

return on investment. So we would suggest thinking about how you can pursue a degree that offers maybe a wider variety of of high paying job opportunities, Like the engineering degree is going to be vastly superior to the art degree, and I hate it for all the creatives out there, but it's just that's the that's the truth, that's the facts. Yeah. Yeah, So we would recommend for you to check out the

Department of Educations College scorecard website. Will make sure to link to that in the show notes, but you can check fields of study in particular colleges to see how that specific degree stacks up against others. You know, there's very few things that we buy in life without doing a cost benefit analysis, you know, like even I mean think about all the things where you can compare, Like even just like buying a roomba, which I personally like, Like you can click on the website, you can compare.

It's like, oh, what features does this one offer that this one doesn't. But oftentimes we don't do that when it comes to college, when you can be like, wait, the three hundred dollar roomba, like, and I like those features, but in the one just makes more sense for what I want, and you know what, I'm gonna wait for a tick on sale. Went for the two one, So it's got that smart mapping going on. But a lot of times we don't even consider college even to that extent.

We just throw ourselves into an alma mater or a school that you've always dreamed about going to. And I'm not saying that that's not something you should consider, but it is worth looking at what that degree is going to be able to earn you once you graduate. You know, we've just become so desensitized to the price of how

higher education right whereas we're we're not. We're highly sensitive to the price of everything else in our lives, and so it's not that there aren't additional factors that we need to weigh and consider, but the price needs to be more at the forefront of the decision than it typically is for a lot of individuals and families. And a large contributing factor to that negative r O I that you mentioned, Matt, that some degrees offer is is the reality that, like we said, a fewer folks are

finishing the college degrees that they start. It's like, I think it's like stress and debt levels they often like convinced people to abandon the pursuit of that degree before they finish, and and I think maybe that's one of the reasons we're starting to see undergrad enrollment dropping, especially for young men. And like I hinted to earlier, Uh, the quality of education isn't actually getting better for for the with the more money that we're paying, and in

some cases it's it's getting worse. Uh. There was a recent article in the journal than It talked about how a lot of colleges are starting to use mass produced content in the form of online classes and programs that that they offer to students. And this isn't relegated to

for profit colleges or your local community college. Like great schools like Vanderbilt, uh, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the University of Oregon, they have begun to rely on third party companies to the live are some of the courses and certificate programs that they offer to their students.

So uh, a lot of people have been disappointed in the equality of education that they're getting in some cases because that university is outsourcing the education to third party companies that aren't doing a great job, even though you're

still paying name brand prices. So yeah, you might still get the degree or their certificate with the respected school of your choices name on it, but chances are you might be less impressed with what you've learned, with the actual coursework and kind of with how prepared do you feel going to the job market at the end of

the day. Yeah, And that's kind of a crappy way for things to go, right because what that means it's that's an entire workforce that's out there working there in their profession and they're not really maybe they're not doing a great job because they were hired because of a certain university, a certain degree that they earned, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be able to bring innovative ideas to whatever field or to whatever industry

that they're working in, which also means that we as a public are gonna see the benefit right of their creativity and in our own lives. That's credentialism, right. You're paying for some sort of credential. You're paying Alpha wazoo in some cases, for some sort of credential instead of an actual education that's gonna make you better, that's gonna challenge you, that's going to sharpen you into basically give you better ideas. That's not give you better ideas, but

give you the ability to create better ideas. That's what I'm saying here. And another thing to keep in mind is that the price you pay for something that is a large determinant of whether or not it was a good purchase. You know, like getting something valuable that you'll use every day, but not paying a sent for it, maybe because your neighbor was giving it away. That's like

the best case scenario. Right. I'm talking about curb alerts here, but they're not really giving away high quality college educations. Uh that often these days. In most instances, though, we have to weigh trade offs, and so the number one determining factor of whether or not a college degree is worth it is how much it is going to cost you. If you get an underwater basket weaving degree, but it didn't cost you a time, right, you know, like more power to you see a little bit of time, but hey,

at least you'll learn a skill. No debt that's hanging around your neck for that worth Listen, Yeah, yeah, but if you wracked up a hundred and fifty dollars in student loans plus interest for that useless degree, it's gonna haunch you probably for the rest of your life. And so scrounging for scholarships, scrounging like scoring grants, that is going to be key. If you want to make sure that your your college degree is going to be worth it.

You can check out sites like bold dot org. That's a new one, but fast Web They've been around forever, college Board. These are all just a few sites where you can search for some of the different scholarships that

are out there. Essentially, we want you looking for scholarships to become basically a full time job because effectively it is yeah yeah, and you want someone else, hopefully paying for a decent chunk of that education instead of it coming out of your pocket or you're taking it in the form of debt for and paying it off for years to come. And if you do want to go to college, we would highly suggest Ron Lieber's book we had wrong on the pod cast I don't know, maybe

a year and a half ago. His book was The Price You Pay for College, and it's just this invaluable resource. Spend the thirteen fifteen bucks whatever it costs, uh, even less now because it just came out in paperback. Yeah yeah, So yeah, you can get or and you can get used on eBay. I'm sure too, um, but your library. Yeah yeah exactly. But finding ways to lower the cost

will increase the value of that degree, right. And so what one site that we talked about when we had Ron on the show, Matt was tuition fit dot org. And that's a great way to kind of compare your financial aid letters, uh, the offers that you're receiving from different colleges to other people what they're getting with like similar backgrounds and g p A s and at the

same college. So so that can help you be a more informed shopper when it comes to deciding where or to go to school and kind of what degree to get. But what if the cost is still just too high, what if you don't qualify for enough scholarships, and what if you don't get much financial aid or merit aid from the school that you want to go to, Well,

maybe it makes sense to avoid college altogether. We'll talk about alter native paths and then we're gonna offer you some questions you should ask yourself that will help you determine whether or not college still makes sense for you. Well, we'll talk about that how you can make a wise decision right after this. All right, we are back and this is the third and final section of this episode,

and we're asking the question, is college for dummies? And hopefully you don't find yourself on the dummy side of the chart that you're creating within your mind here and Jel what what you're hinting you're kind of talking about some of the alternatives to college. And what we're gonna talk about now is blue collar work. And we'll start by saying it certainly isn't going to be for everybody, but it is just a fact that some folks who go to college would be far better served by leaving

high school and instead working within a trade. We talked about the value of blue collar work and how to make a great living without going to college back in episode two seventy seven with can Rusk check that one out. But as we were talking to a Ken, he was telling us how some plumbers in Atlanta can make something like ninety thou dollars, And this is a couple of years ago, so I'm sure that's up to a hundred

thousand dollars now coming straight out of school. The demand for these skilled trades has just completely outpaced the supply. But you know, with the decline of in particular shop class and high schools, there are just fewer young folks who are given the opportunity to develop those skills in order to see that it would be a better route for them to take. That's something that I would love to see brought back to a lot of different high

schools that are out there, for sure. Man. So one of my one of my friends is a science teacher at a local high school and he has basically like uh delta donated a plane to their school that the kids can kind of like work on and tinker with. And so he has a whole class for uh some like was it like in the playground, Like there's a playground and then to the side of it there's there's an airplane. Yes, yes, and you can choose what you want to play. I'm sure it's not like the entire airplane.

I haven't actually seen in person, like the airplane graveyards out in like Utah or Arizona where they just like sit there out in the desert at this picture of that, but next to a school. Yeah, So i'llous get him to send me some pictures. But but it's what he's told me kind of about how much these kids are able to learn in this class. Is there um, kind

of learning some airplane mechanic skills? And he told me that these kids, upon graduation are going to be able to instantly without going to college, earn more money than he makes as a teacher, which is incredible. Um. And he went to a four year I went to school with this, uh, and so I remember seeing him in college, and I know that that cost him some money, yes exactly, And but some of his students because they are learning a skill in high school, they're gonna be able to

turn that skill into a money making venture immediately. And so some of those some of those kids would be would be silly. Um, if they're so inclined to pursue this line of work, they'd be silly to think about going to college. Um, because they've got a marketable skill immediately at the age of seventeen or eighteen. Yeah. Unfortunately, it's it's not a failure oftentimes in the students part,

but on the school's part. Sure, if a school is not offering a variety of options and if there are basically just trying to shuttle all of their students down the college path, I think that's an example of not

being able to serve the kids as individuals. It's also a societal failure where we have created a line of messaging that says one plus one equals to that says home ownership is the American dream or college is the American dream, and it's like, sure, for some people it can be a great avenue, but um, we need to rethink both of those things, and in college in particular, right, Yeah,

that's true. Yeah, But that being said, even if you do opt to go the blue collar route, you might still need a degree, you know, depending on what specific route you want to go. Uh to your degrees in fields like construction management or agricultural studies are actually in really high demand these days. Uh. There's degrees are often far less expensive, and they contribute directly to the ability to land a specific job or to help you to be able to start your own business. What I love

about these degrees is that they're just so daing practical. Uh, you know, Like the problem is oftentimes is that high school students, high school graduates, they don't necessarily know what they want to do at that point, and then they go off to college, sometimes paying lots and lots of

money for a liberal arts education. When I feel, oftentimes that should be the job of high school and like it should be while they're getting an education for like folks that is absolutely free within the bounds of high school, where you're not having to pay tens of thousands of dollars.

And then once you are able to graduate, sure if you then want to go to college and get a degree in a specific field, or you want to go to a tech school, or you want to get whatever it is that you want to pursue, you can then pursue that degree or that field or that profession with just this laser like focus. That's when it makes a

lot of sense. It's it's just sometimes people go to college and their undecided on their major for the first three years of it, right, and they're waffling back and forth, and so they're paying good money taking classes when they don't really know what they want to do with their life. And so that we'll talk about something else in a little bit, like like a gap year is potentially best for like that totally the solution for that for sure. Well sticking a blue collar worked up for a second

mate one of the other things. Like I think some people think that blue collar or doing work as a skilled trades person means that you're just trading time for money every day for the rest of your working life. But we would say that's not true either. Like you can you can totally become a blue collar entrepreneur, which can allow you to make even more money by building

a business by hiring other people. And you know what's more motivating than getting tired of doing manual labor by yourself as you get older, than to kind of start a business around it, hire other people and and become kind of the master of your own domain. Uh, in terms of building a business, So it doesn't have to be I make seventy dollars an hour as a plumber or an electrician or an h fact technician. It can truly be I've got this business where other people work

for me. I mentored them, and they they are going out and doing most of the work. But I am now a business owner and that's my main function because my knees are bad right, my back hurts, and I don't want to be the one out there in the field anymore. Just guys, maybe I loved it now and I find something else I love about the process of being able to like I mean, maybe doing the work still occasionally, but now building a business is kind of

more enthralling, like more more fun to think about. Totally. Yeah, but again, you know, blue color work, it's not for everybody. You don't see us out there digging ditches or welding or fixing furnaces. That's not for everyone. I do. I do change my own air filter so sore, which you should do. How often do you do it? By the way, I don't know, like every three months do do you really? If you do it every three months, then you're like

the guy that flosses his teeth everything. Nobody does it every You're not good at flossing, but I'm good at dude that will. That's It's like you oil change in your car. Don't don't wait on those two things because it'll cost you more money do those things. But what we're talking about here is that blue collar work. Even though it's not for us, that doesn't mean that this route doesn't make sense for millions of high school graduates.

But here are a few questions, though, to ask yourself in order to help you make a smart decision when it comes to that pursuit of higher education or not.

And I think the first one is has a lot to do with lifestyle, you know, Like I want you to ask yourself what you want your life to look like, because for some the idea of sitting behind a computer screen eight hours a day, like that's going to sound like like nightmare work for them, right, Whereas like others might naturally have skills that would make them a very

successful uh software engineer or a programmer. And then still others might want to be like a biologist, which would require a completely different approach to thinking about higher education. There there, there's not going to be a one size fits all approach. Uh, and your aptitude, your desires, they're going to be crucial to making a smart decision. And these are the kind of things that are important to start thinking through that will help to point you within

the right direction. Yeah. I mean, man, I met somebody at the beach who teaches. He's an entomologist at the University of Georgia, and for him, uh, college college wasn't dumb, That wasn't a bad choice because he's turn it into a career that he loves. He followed a passion and it takes a lot of higher education, a lot of time spent in at the university in order to get to the place that he got. So so much of it does depend on your bent, like what you want

to pursue in life. And then immediately after weighing some of those lifestyle considerations, you're gonna want to dive into the numbers. Right, how much is my education gonna cost? And how much am I likely to earn? Those are two really really important questions before you proceed. So if you want to go into a profession that requires a college degree, well, how much will it cost to get that degree? And even if you're thinking a skilled trade is the best route for you, what will the cost

of that trade school run you? And do you even need to go to trade school? Right? Or can you apprentice under someone? But then immediately after considering the cost, you should be figuring out what the likely earning potential will be for that job or career path that you're interested in. A part of the equation isn't just what folks in the industry are making now, but what the trajectory of that industry is going to be in the

coming years as well. For instance, some occupations the Bureau of Labor Statistics is projecting to have the most growth in the next ten years are wind turbine technicians, nurses, and physical trainers, So those totally make sense. They do about mental health professionals, right, That's another thing we've talked about, how Emily is going back to get her master's degree so she can become a licensed therapist, and it's like, great, she's not gonna want for job opportunities with that degree.

And so one of the things that we we talked about as a rule of thumb is we want people to to be able to make in their first year out of college more than the amount of debt that they took on during their entirety of college. And so preferably you're able to keep your debt load even lower

than that. But the problem is if you take on a hundred fifty dollars in student loan debt and you're starting salary coming out of school is fort like that that's a losing proposition, that is when that college education is more of a burden than the help. And so at least use that rule of thumb hopefully to help you make a better decision about whether or not college makes sense for you or or which college you you

actually end up going to. Yes, right, yeah, And this is all assuming though that you have an idea that like like an assumption that you do want to pursue higher education. But if you don't, sort of like we were talking earlier, if you're not sure what you want to do, that you might be better served by taking the gap here, because I mean, like most folks will

will opt to do that between high school and college. Um, I think that makes a ton of sense because for a lot of young adults, their brains are quite literally still developing. You have no idea what you want to do. What better way to spend that time than maybe just like you, like you said earlier, to like working within the field for a period of time where you're not taking on loads and loads of debt there too from me, Yeah, yeah, you maybe you don't want to learn, uh, and you

are able to instead earn some money. But if you're in a lucky enough position to have maybe some money set aside, man the actual ability to do like what you envisioned when someone says a gap here where maybe you're able to travel for a little bit of time where you're able to go abroad and not do like the tourist to the backpacking thing where you dropping tons of money every single day, but like literally going finding a city and finding a way to earn a living

there for a little bit, like working for a small period of time, experiencing some different cultures, exposing yourself to just the vast variety of life that's out there before you commit yourself to this path that's going to end

up leaving you in this massive whole of debt. I think that can be seen as like a self indulgent move right to take time away from school at that period, but I think it it's horizon broadening and maybe if you're not sure what you want to do next, like encountering some different people, some different ways of living, different parts of the country, may be different parts of the world, and and spending you know, you didn't have to cost

a lot of money in order to travel. Again, it's travel the country, specially if you are living somewhere first

of all that's affordable. She right, Like we're not talking about you move into like Tokyo or New York City or London, but like, I don't know, somewhere in Thailand where it's crazy affordable and you can make some money on the side and just take your stage wagon and you're sleeping bag and a tent and like travel the country for a few months and just kind of to Alaska and try to hike out into the wilderness and then right, no one ever finds you don't pull the

Christopher McCandless thing, um. But yeah, I don't do that. There. There is like so much to be said for getting away from school for a little bit of time and kind of getting some perspective about what you want out of life, because we don't always know. After what twelve years of education right from ages six to eighteen um, sometimes we feel overloaded and we need our brain needs a little bit of rest and we need some time to kind of figure things out before we just launched

directly into four more years of school. And it's not necessarily that it's been twelve hard years of hard education, right, But in my mind, it's the fact that you have gone from one grade to the next without having basically to make any decisions, any choices, and that is just a muscle that young oaks haven't flexed. They're not ready

to make life changing decisions like this. And I think it can be helpful to make smaller ones that have shorter expiration dates, right, rather than ones that will last not only four years, but student loan debt that might stick around for twenty or thirty years, and they be one thing if it was life changing decisions. But these life changing decisions are accompanied by life changing sums of

debt most of the time that stick with you. It's like we're talking about earlier, with student loans being like tar and so another question we want folks to ask themselves, is if you could potentially d i Y your higher education, because if pursuing some sort of higher degree is it's still in the cards for you, and maybe you want to do it on a shoestring budget, maybe you don't

have any money on hand at all. Something we would suggest is sort of a like more of a d i Y college path, and that's because there are more free resources now than ever before to educate yourself. Of course, you're not gonna get a diploma that you can hang on the wall, but you also don't have the debt burden that goes along with it. Peer to peer university

that's worth checking out. It allows you to delve into topics that you want to study without an instructor, but you're still able to do it within sort of like this learning circle with other folks. UH. The amount of free information that you can get thanks to other other resources like Project Gutenberg, Google Scholar, it's incredibly impressive as well. UH Alison dot Com that's another site that offers free online courses that can even allow you to actually earn

some like a type of degree and some certificates. There are a lot of different options out there where. If you are just thirsty for knowledge, there's a way to do that without you going going off to university, hanging out on campus, you know, uh, throwing the frisbee on the quad like like which which are all these are all fun things. But if that's not your jam, if that's not something that really interests you, there are still ways to learn and to acquire knowledge without the sort

of debt or the lifestyle shift. What makes me think, Matt, that we have hired one person to help us with something recently on how the money and it's kind of fun to to bring someone into the fold to help us out with some tasks. And I don't know, actually if he has a college degree, no clue. We never asked. We made the decision. We made the decision based on that's so funny work that he's been putting out into

the world for a number of years. And so I think that your college degree matters so little after a few years for for a slew of professions, including the work that we have hired, and he gets paid a decent rate per hour, that just means we're just terrible interviewers. No, it means that, like it's really not that important for for what he's doing for us. And I'm not saying

that's not important for some things. If you want to be a doctor, you should have a degree, like like, you gotta go to medical school if you're going to operate on my heart, right, Like, it doesn't matter that I've been doing this for a couple of years. I've been putting out a good work. I got good reviews on you help. That works for some things, but yeah, not very high level professions or occupations like being a lawyer,

being a doctor. There are a lot of degrees that you could you mentioned some of them earlier that have a negative r o I and you need to avoid and all, Like a lot of people need to avoid those degrees in particular, But then some other ones where it's like, yeah, maybe they're giving you some hard skills, but even some of those skills can be developed um on your own for free, just through kind of working

and working on it. And and because the cost of college is often so opaque, that makes the decision I think really hard for people right to determine whether or not it makes sense. We'd obviously love to see more transparency when it comes to the cost of higher education.

So that we can make more informed decisions. There there aren't many decisions that we have to make as consumers that are so kind of fraught with peril that we can't we can't look at a price and look at the product and easily determine whether or not it's a good deal or not. Literally, it's higher education and the healthcare. Is it any coincidence that they say that we've seen the highest price increases in within these industries while simultaneously

the transparency has just been non existent. Yeah, exactly. Again, we would like no market forces at play, basically, are there are few and far between that Check out again Ron Lieber's book, because he kind of talks a lot about that and how it's not the price isn't what you think it is. So you've got to dig in and you've got to figure that stuff out because there's no there's no sheet a paper or website online that's

going to give you all the information you need. You've got to kind of come across an amalgamation of things to make a smart decision, and then you have to make a value judgment based on what you encounter for your specific situation. So again, like is college for dummies. Well, we would say that college is still a great path

forward for a huge swathy young folks. But it's crucial to go about the pursuit of higher education the right way, and that evolves knowing why you're going and what you're paying for, and yeah, realizing that there are still a ton of ways to lower the cost of going to college, sometimes making it completely free, and that is worth thinking about. That's worth exploring because that substantially lower price tag it changes the dynamics of your decision. It massively changes the

value proposition. And as the value proposition has gotten worse and worse, as cost of skyrocketed, as people are graduating just loaded down with NEBT and unable to make the income that they hoped or thought they would be able to make, you have to look out for yourself. You have to look out for your friends, your kids, to make sure they aren't making some sort of life altering decision that's going to burden them with with debt for the rest of their life. Man, it makes me makes

me think of like buying a new car. We pretty much always say buying a new cars a bad idea, And I've like kind of lusted after the rivan trucks for those beautiful electric trucks for a long time, and because there's seventy thousand dollars though, so there's no way I'm gonna buy it. But if they were fifteen thousand dollars, I wouldn't. We wouldn't talk bad about buying into electric

car because the value would make sense then, right. But for a lot of people were not principally against the There's not like there's theology against life by buying a brand new vehicle. It's the costs. It's the fact that the depreciation hit that you take, uh, leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to the fact that, oh, well I can buy a used vehicle, uh, and somebody else has already taken that depreciation exactly. Yeah, So you have to think about the value proposition in in everything

in life. And although it's harder to figure out when it comes to college, it's important to get to the bottom of it in your personal situation. That's the other thing.

There's no one size fits all response to this, but hopefully we gave you some food for thought for what it looks like for you, or for your kids or for your friends to to pursue to pursue a higher education and do it in the right way where you're not saddled with debt that you can't pay off for a long period of time, which just uh, you know, those four years were fun, but they probably won't. What's

worth the price tag in that case? Yeah, exactly right, man, And honestly, like, my biggest takeaway from this conversation is like I'm right now, I'm thinking to myself, man, my kids are all going to take gap years because if there were anything like me, and hopefully they you know, they're they're a nice mix. But between me and Kate, right, maybe two of them they're more like her. We'll have they we'll have more of a clear vision as to what they're wanting to do with their life. But maybe

the other two are are thinking. I don't know, because I don't know. If there's any word I said more often as a senior than I don't know, because that kind of summed up where I was at that point in my life. And I think there's a lot that you can gain by kind of stepping out into the real world full time. And I think it can be difficult for us, especially as parents, to allow our kids to do that. And so we're ten years you know,

from having to make that decision with our oldest. But I hope that I do have a similar point of view as I do right now. And it's crazy, though. Those conversations are, like we talked about, kind of starting now anyway, and so it's nice to have this information and be so I can kind of help her be thoughtful along the way. It's not just some sort of senior your discussion. Those discussions are starting earlier and earlier and younger. Exactly. That's right, man, Yeah, okay, So our beer.

Let's get to our beer. You and I enjoyed food or beer, and let's say, just so folks know, food or is spelled fo e d e R, and they complemented it by spelling beer b I e R just to be fancy. But this is an oak aged Southern wild ale. I can think of no style that aligns more with my tastes than this beer. This is my Southern brewing company. What your thoughts on this one? Okay?

First off, a food er by the way you spelled it, Yes, but it is a giant oak vat right for aging beer so that the beer can get a nice key flavor and to an age, and so this this beer is part and it's okay. It's got kind of those two main characteristics of a photo beer going on. In the difference between just a like a wine barrel or an oak barrel and a footer is that footers are like huge. They're like ten times larger than a traditional

Jack Daniels barrel that you might have seen. Maybe even they're h I mean they're like the size of a small room basically and there. But yeah, I completely agree. Man. What was great about this one is that it wasn't overly aggressive. There are some breweries out there which I love, um thinking of Cascade, I'm thinking of the brewery. They also make sours that fit within the description of incredibly aggressive sour beers. And this one just is super chill.

It's like laid back. It's it's like you're sitting on the porch down the south like swatting up mosquitos. I don't know. It's just got this super laid back, chill vibe about it, which meant that by the time you got to the end of the class, you weren't you didn't have palette fatigue. And sometimes that can happen with some of those really acidic aggress of sours, but with this one, you got to the end of it and you were still wanting some more. I'm glad you and

I were able to enjoy this one. And this is a brewery that they're in Athens, Georgia, so not too far away. We've totally got to check them out, like I've never been. Yeah, but I've had a couple of their beers and they've been delicious every time. They're so good. So next time we go, we're definitely gonna have to swing by Creature Conforts, but Southern Brewing Company is definitely going to get a visit most all right, that's gonna

do it for this episode. If you want show notes to this episode, we have a lot of links, a lot of actual websites and resources that we talked about. Well, we'll link to that stuff in in our show notes up on how to Money dot Com. That's right, But that's gonna be it for this episode, buddy, So until next time, best Friends Out, Best Friends Out.