About the Episode
Did you know that the most regretted college degree is journalism? A recent study I found dove into a list of degrees that most people wish they didn’t get. When I reviewed the top five, I completely understood why they wished they never went to college for their degree, looking back now and this is why I agree.
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- Is College worth it?
- 75% of People don’t work in the field their degree is in
- What does College teach you, aside from a specialized degree?
- College is the starting line, experience is what follows
- The speculation of in person versus remote work
- Sales in person versus on Zoom
What shakin’! Hey, it’s good to be with you today because today we’re going all in. Alright? I’ve got something pretty wicked and pretty sick for you today. I’ve talked about it before and thrown out a statue about education, right? College majors, the degrees, and today, this is a topic that you’re gonna wanna stick around for the whole thing for, because is college worth it? I’ve talked about this stat before, and this still remains true 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 3, 475% of people don’t even work in the field that their degree is 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 is, you know, how to write papers and, 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. And 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 gonna 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 the public media, mass media tells you about education and even more so whatever your parents think about it or whatever, you’re, you, the 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’s certain things you have to learn, like GAAP best practices, you can look it up in order to have your accounts start off correctly in order to report things correctly to the SEC, which is what my company’s involved in.
We have to report audited financials to the SEC because we’re a public company, right? This is a field that you absolutely have to have higher education for. You can’t just learn this stuff on your own, but there’s many, there are many traditional fields of major that it just, just doesn’t apply anymore. And what sparked this, right, because I’ve, again, I’ve talked about this before, but what sparked this for me is that a couple weeks ago I saw a A CNBC article actually was on November 26th, okay? So not that far back. November 26th, about the most regretted college majors, the five most regretted college majors. I’m gonna give ’em 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, 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 gets you to like the starting line of those certain fields. Now you have to gain the experience afterwards. You can’t just walk into, typically walk into 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, that is no longer in the field or maybe didn’t even start it 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 Medi Medical School in your forties. I talked with an acquisition a couple weeks ago, right? A couple of months ago actually, to 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.
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 in CBNC, 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? So 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, to 10, 15 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 a, 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, uh, you know, the, the media that, 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 is streaming only news programming, you know, and, and journalism is like the most regretted. This was the number one, the 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, uh, about going to News Nation now where his new show landed on, 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 gonna defend him, of course I’m gonna help him and provide him with what information I have because he’s my brother. Of course, I’m not objective because he is my brother. But then he started talking about, you know, all this stuff around the Trump era of 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, like journalism, that 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 the 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, 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 as 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 kindly, 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 ’em. I could see it benefiting how people interact a little bit, you know, and, and how, 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 a regret 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 years with her. I haven’t seen it yet. You know, it’s been more like opinion and speculation, not by people who have actually studied the interactions of people. And I’m talking about, uh, uh, 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 like sales as an entrepreneur, and I still say that nothing closes like in person, right? You talk to large investors, they wanna 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 vaccine’s 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? I mean, long distance zooms can only go so long. Are you tracking with me on that? Come on now. But I think that we’re missing some really good sociologists and even to the point where we depend on those types of interactions.
I would love to see true studies based off of that, but you know what? They don’t really get paid that much for the most part, so why would they even do it? The number third one is liberal arts. It’s interesting because I got a, like I just said, I went to school for, uh, two weeks, right? And I’m like, this isn’t for me. And I just got into business and, and learned a lot that way in technology. Uh, liberal arts. I got an invitation the other week, somebody who was looking on my LinkedIn profile and seeing everything that I’ve done so far. And this was like always something in the back of my head. Like, I’d love to have an honorary doctorate someday, but I, I really don’t know why, you know, I just see those being given out. It’s like, that’s cool. And, you know, I don’t know if Kanye was given one, but imagine if Kanye had, maybe he did give one.
I don’t know. You know, he’s been in the news obviously a lot lately. Not for very good reasons, but there’s certain people that you’re like, they give that person honorary doctor, come on now. But I received an invitation from UIC, right? It’s here in Chicago where I live. University of Illinois, Chicago, you know, a prominent school telling me about this new masters of liberal arts program that they may have specifically for people like me who have already achieved so much success in their life that they want to re-enroll me to obtain my masters of liberal arts. And remember what I just said, I got two weeks of college. I’ve never been through gen. ed., I’ve done all these other things and I’ve got my first invitation now to actually complete this program. And it can be done in less than a year. I can go to school, right?
12 hours a week, whatever it is, for about a year and have my master’s degree because of all this other experience that I’ve had already. And I just started thinking about that. Then my first thought was, well, dang, what about all those other people who went through four years and now they still have, uh, to get their bachelor’s now they have to go through a full two years to get those masters. It’s like I cut out over 85% of the schooling that I needed to get to the point that I’m in right now, and have achieved success along the way and made a lot of money, of course, taken a lot of lumps and made a lot of mistakes along the way too, which is also a great educator on its own. To the point where I was invited to go to a prominent school and obtain my master’s degree in liberal arts in under a year.
It was blowing my mind, and I’m thinking, I’m like, is this real? I, I check in with, I’m like, yeah, this is real. Okay, but what do you really apply that to? And I started thinking, well, that would be nice. Like that honorary doctor that I was talking about could finally hang a piece of paper on my wall. I’m like, do I need that? Would I do it for just ego? What in the world? Right? But all those individuals, it’s like, well, what’s the application here? Would it really do anything for me? That was the second question that I had, which I’m sure a lot of people and why this is the number three most regretted major are asking that question after they get out, because this is regretted, meaning you got your degree already looking back and be like, man, now I’m one of those 75% because my bachelor’s in liberal arts.
What am I gonna use that for? You know? And it’s hard to find the application for that, which I think is an issue right now, you know, and the, the, i I matched this up to like a degree in entrepreneurialism. I know people can go to that college now and have a major in entrepreneurship. It’s crazy to me. And, and, and just this gap that exists between the people that are teaching and the people that are there to learn. Because an entrepreneur, you start businesses, right? That’s what you do. But yet you’re being taught by somebody typically who has never done that. That was the intriguing part to me is that you’re, you’re learning from somebody who hasn’t been down that road yet. They might have learned some stuff from a book, but when I came down to it, again, it all comes down to the application, like the experience.
That’s the only way that you can be a true entrepreneur is to actually freaking do it and to take advice from somebody who’s never done it before. That’s bogus. Come on now, how can you actually take that seriously? Okay, the number fourth one, and this goes back to like the first one, I, I wasn’t surprised to see this one I saw journalism is number one is communications, right? That’s getting into more of like the TV stuff rather than written journalism and, and all those things, you know, or how to actually maybe even be in PR or somebody in public relations, whether it’s, uh, an agent or whether it’s actually a public relations vice president or whatever. Within a corporation, it kind of comes down to the same thing because it’s like the master of the spin. You know, if you see a White House press secretary, they’ve probably gotten a degree in communications, right?
Because it’s not so much around actually communicating the truth anymore, which is, oh, it pisses me off, but it’s actually being able to spin things and that’s not really something that they’re teaching. It’s right. You get out of school with a degree in communications, now you’re being said, Hey, this is the message that we need to put out there, so figure out how to do that for us. And it might be riddled with a lot of holes, right? Because you’re trying to make it to the, to where it uplifts the company that’s actually paying you or uplifting the campaign that’s actually paying you, it doesn’t match up. And the fifth one, which really grinds my gears of the most regretted college majors is education. Talked about this before in previous episodes about how I feel about the public education system, and I’m very open to a lot of ways that this needs to change and things that are happening right now, but there’s so much that’s broken with our education system in America.
I love what my kids are doing, how they’re really an online private school. There’s a lot of different skill sets and it’s structured the right way. They’re, they’re excelling. It forces them to actually learn real things rather than go through the motions. Like a lot of other people, they go at the pace that makes sense to them for their own brains rather than being limited or to the pace of other people that are in the class, or even more so sitting in class for hours on end for no apparent reason whatsoever. But even more so, we’re talking about the degree in education right now, because teachers don’t get paid a lot either. Teachers do not get paid a lot. I’m gonna put this out there and maybe at some point this will come back to me. I don’t know, I don’t care. But imagine, right?
Because educators, I’m talking elementary school, maybe ju-junior high, high school right here, right? If I, if I, I, I’ve had an episode before what I, or said, you, I pay for results and not efforts, right? When it comes to employees, I pay for results and not effort. What are the metrics? What should the metrics be rather in public education, because a teacher becomes part of a union, it becomes more difficult to fire that individual and they get paid the same amounts, whether the kids pass or fail. That’s stupid to me. Imagine if teachers were ranked or even incentivized, how about that? Like bonuses, like a salesperson or like, like an operations manager or something like that. You achieve these metrics, you accomplish these things. Your students pass, you get paid more. That’s awesome to me because in everybody’s in this together now, there’s a lot of good teachers out there, okay, with a lot of good hearts that they really, really want kids to learn and they’re putting their hearts and souls into it, but now they’re still in the same system, which is probably why they’re regretting their major, even if they became an educator to begin with, because they’re seeing their peers not care.
I had teachers like that. My kids had teachers like that that just didn’t care. They were around for 20 years already, and then they just said, well, I’m just showing up and doing my time because I gotta put in at least 25 years to get my retirement and all this technology stuff that’s here. I’m still teaching the way I was gonna do 20 years ago. Who cares about all this new stuff? Who cares about altering my methods? Because people have changed. Kids are smarter because there’s a cumulative knowledge effect that takes place over decades. Kids learn faster every single decade because the amount of information that gets crunched into a shorter period of time keeps increasing in a very good way. That’s how society itself moves forward. That’s why we learn things quicker as generations go by because it accumulates knowledge over the last decades and centuries, not necessarily starting from scratch at the same pace. Therefore, education has to accelerate also. So these poor teachers that have a great heart for kids, these poor educators, I don’t mean poor financially, but yeah, that’s it too. They don’t get paid enough, right? The ones that actually matter because they’re, they’re putting their hearts and sold in the stuff, spending their own money for supplies for their kids to, to provide them with the best possible education. There’s amazing educators out there that do this,
But for what? To get paid less than the one that’s has 20 years higher tenure than them, that’s putting in a 10th, 10% of the effort and doesn’t give two fucking shits about the kids in the class. Come on, this system needs an overhaul. It’s no wonder how this one made it on the list of top five most regretted college majors. It should be number one, in my opinion, is education. Let’s have some real people make a change. But today I’m talking about as a whole, what are you in school for right now? What are you going to school for right now? Do you need to go to school in order to accomplish what you want to do? Are you gonna be one of those 75% if you go to school that is not working in the field that you wanted to or that you actually got your degree in? Or maybe you could be one of those that says, you know what I don’t need and I found a different path. Whatever it is, I’m just throwing information and truth out to you today because it’s up to you to figure out with education or any other part of your life how you’re gonna Go ALL IN.