Is College Still Worth It?

Watch the episode here:

• Discover why most people regret their college majors.
• Get real statistics on education and career paths you won’t hear elsewhere.
• See how your career dreams could survive or thrive without a degree.
• Understand if your chosen major will give you what you’re looking for.
• Find out what really matters for success in today’s world.

What’s shakin? Hey, I’m Rick Jordan, and today we’re going all in all right, I’ve got something pretty wicked and pretty sick for you. Today, I’ve talked about it before and thrown out a statute about education, right? College, majors, the degrees. And today, this is a topic that you’re going to want to stick around for the whole thing because Is college worth it? Is it worth it? I’ve talked about this stat before. This still remains true about to this percentage point that it’s only around 26 so it’s like one out of every four people after they graduate have their bachelor’s degree, are actually still in the field, or even start working in the field that they got their degree in. It’s stupid, right? Because they go through all these years and incur all this debt, and then they get to the point where three, 470, 5% of people don’t even work in the field that their degrees in and it’s like I racked up all this debt. What am I doing 10 years from now? 20 years from now, it’s like, Why did I even go through that? You know? And I’ve heard all these other things, like, well, college teaches you all these other soft skills, like building presentations and all that. It’s like my kids went through that when they were in sixth grade, in school, okay? It’s a different world. Now. That’s what I used to hear; you know how to write papers and all this other stuff.

My elementary school kids, when they were that age, learned how to do all that stuff and can write better than most adults. I don’t believe that anymore. What I want you to do is have a successful life, and I want you to ask yourself the question because I cannot answer this for you. I’m going to give you some information today, and only you can make the choice for yourself, but I want it to be the truth, and the information is the best way. Truthful information is the best way, no matter what public media or mass media tells you about education, and even more so, whatever your parents think about it, or whatever your older generations. Think about it, if it’s actually worth it for you, okay, there are some industries, right? I just hired a controller for my public company. He has a master’s in public accounting. Okay, there are some industries, and I’m giving you this as an example. As an accountant, you have to know these things, there are certain things you have to learn, like GAAP best practices. You can look it up in order to have your start of accounts correctly, in order to report things correctly to the SEC, which is what my company is involved in, we have to report audited financials to the SEC, because we’re a public company, right? This is a field in which you have higher education. You can’t just learn this stuff on your own, but there are many, many traditional fields of major that just don’t apply anymore. And what sparked this right? Because, again, I’ve talked about this before, but what sparked this for me is that a couple of weeks ago, I saw a CNBC article actually on November 26 Okay, so not that far back, November 26 about the most regretted college majors. 

The five most regretted college majors. I’m gonna give them all to you today and talk about it, but I want this to be just a self-reflection point, especially if you’re still in it okay if you’re if you’re gone, you have your degree already, that’s great. Maybe take an inventory and be like, Am I one of those 75% that’s not working in my field that I actually got my degree in? Or am I one of those 25% if you are one of those 25% that’s awesome, right? And because there’s another part of this too, is that if you were or if you are, that’s the thing, is that your education doesn’t stop there. It can’t stop there. And you probably found out the hard way. It’s that you didn’t even learn all you needed to learn in college, right? That just gives you to the starting line of those certain fields now you have to gain the experience afterward. You can’t just walk into typically walking like a six figure job right after you get your degree, because all you have right now is stuff in your head. You have to learn how to get it out of your head and actually apply it to what you’re doing. Now that’s just the starting point. Okay, so are you one of the 75% if you’ve already graduated and are no longer in the field, or maybe didn’t even start at all in the field that you got your degree in? That’s the question today. Because if you’re in it right now, if you’re in college right now, you’re looking at going to college right now, or maybe even shifting degrees right maybe it’s like Patch Adams jumping into medicine medical school in your 40s. 

I talked with an acquisition a couple of weeks ago, right? A couple of months ago, actually, where they were selling their technology company at age 39 because now they wanted to go to school and be a dentist, not making it up just what they wanted to do, which, by the way, is another field that you have to go to school for. Wholly believe in that. But for the majority. Of at least Americans, I don’t think that it’s necessary anymore, which was kind of the basis of this article on CNBC about the most regretted college majors. Are you ready for the first one? You’re gonna love it. Journalism, that’s right, reporting on the media now, it used to be a different world years ago, right? To where journalism really was, like hard, hard, tangible products, like a newspaper. And I remember those kinds of articles I actually used to love, like 1015, years ago, when I was traveling and staying in higher-end hotels, when I had the opportunity to, even though I was broke when I had the opportunity to, I used to love seeing the Wall Street Journal in an as a newspaper format and reading it that way, because there was some very good journalism with those kinds of things. Now most people see journalism as being like online blogs or being, you know, the media that’s just like TV, and now it’s streaming news and all these other things. I mean, I’m talking like Fox. I’m talking about News Nation. 

I’m talking about Newsy, which streams only news programming and journalism is the most regretted. This was the number one, most regretted college major. And I can see why, because after all of the issues with the media, especially around politics the last several years and coming through the pandemic, it’s like nobody knows who to believe in. I found another interesting article too, because whether you like Chris Cuomo or you don’t like Chris Cuomo, it was an intriguing scenario when he had an interview about going to News Nation Now, where his new show landed, and they were talking about his, you know, quote, unquote, disgraced firing from CNN, and he was talking about, it’s like my brother who I defended in New York because he was the governor of the state of New York, Andrew Cuomo, my brother who I defended there. Of course, I’m going to defend him. Of course, I’m going to help him and provide him with what information I have because he’s my brother. Of course, I’m not objective, because he’s my brother. But then he started talking about, you know, all this stuff around the Trump era politics and everything like that, and his take on it was pretty interesting. It wasn’t just reporting the facts. And this may be why, like journalism is the most regretted degree right now, because you find out that that might be like 20% of actually what you need to do if you end up becoming a big, huge newscaster like Chris Cuomo, because he said that, I think that the American people demanded, because the Trump campaign and the stuff that he was saying going into 2020, elections was so extreme on one side that he felt like the American people needed to have a balance. 

This is what I took out of this article, that they were demanding to have a balance, and that balance, because of the Trump campaign, was so extreme to one side that the only way to balance it out was to be so extreme to the other side because being moderate wouldn’t have pulled it back and kept it in check. Enough. That’s an interesting thought, isn’t it? I’m not saying whether it was right or wrong. I’m just saying it’s an interesting thought because it goes way beyond what you would learn in college. Is journalism, way beyond just super interesting right now, number two was sociology. I don’t really know. I didn’t look too much into that. But I remember, you know, I took a course in my first year of college. Now, when I say my first year, because I went to school, I went to college for two weeks, okay? And sociology was one of them. I could see it benefiting how people interact a little bit, you know, and how relationships take place. I mean, it might have changed a lot now in the last couple of years, because we really got to see this nice, great worldwide experiment called a pandemic on how people interact under different kinds of circumstances and all that. 

But it’s, it’s a regretted college major, nonetheless, and my best guess as to why with this one is because of money. I think sociologists are rather underrated because it would be intriguing to have a really honest review of the last couple of years, which I haven’t seen yet. You know, spend more on opinion and speculation, not on people who have actually studied the interactions of people. And I’m talking about even down to hybrid work or remote work, right? How did that truly affect the workplace? There’s a there’s still just a lot of speculation right now, right? I still go back to sales as an entrepreneur, and I still say that nothing closes like in person, right? You talk to large investors, they want to still meet you in person. And even with sales right now, the best sales are happening because people are getting back together in person. It doesn’t matter which side you were on, or if you think that the vaccines right, or anything like that. With the pandemic, there’s this thing about people, they like to be next to each other. Okay, how do you have a romantic relationship without being next to somebody at some point?