$1.6 trillion in debt. $80K per degree. And a job market asking if you “also have 3 years of experience.”
In this episode of Stay in the Gray Podcast, Ryan tackles the student loan crisis—and whether college is still worth the price tag. From useless degrees to the pressure cooker of academic culture, this one pulls no punches.
🎙 Topics include:
– The $80K question: ROI vs. regret
– Which degrees are actually paying off
– Mental, financial, and generational fallout from debt
– Alternatives to college and Charlie Kirk’s “no degree, no problem” take
Whether you're a grad, a dropout, or just pissed about the system—you'll find something here.
🔥 Hit Follow if you think financial literacy should start before FAFSA.
Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction: The Burden of Student Loans
01:07 - Welcome to the Stay in the Gray Podcast
01:49 - Is College Worth It? A Complex Question
03:07 - The Financial Reality of Student Debt
05:27 - The Value of a College Degree
06:28 - The Problem with Certain Degrees
09:51 - Generational Perspectives on College Education
12:19 - Political and Social Aspects of College Life
13:35 - Charlie's Take: Success Without College
19:23 - Conclusion: Rethinking the Path to Success
00:00:00
The loans have become more of less of a stepping stone and
00:00:03
more of a ball and chain that's tying you down.
00:00:06
I just feel like so many college kids graduate and they find
00:00:11
themselves screaming into the pillows in the middle of the
00:00:14
night. According to Pew Research, as of
00:00:17
2024, Americans owe a total of $1.6 trillion in student loan
00:00:24
debt. That's a lot of money.
00:00:25
I don't have to have a college degree to tell you that, but
00:00:28
that's actually a 42% increase over the last 10 years.
00:00:32
A study by NYU and Georgetown that found that on average,
00:00:37
college degrees do yield 9 to 10% annual return each year over
00:00:43
your lifetime. There's so many people that come
00:00:45
out of college and they don't use their degree.
00:00:48
They get jobs that either number one, you don't need the degree,
00:00:52
4 or #2 it's just that's what they fall into.
00:00:56
I'm one of them. Just under 4 out of five people
00:00:59
in this country do not think the college education is currently
00:01:03
worth it. Why?
00:01:07
Hello to all my wonderful listeners, slash viewers, slash
00:01:11
fans, slash whatever you want to be called.
00:01:14
Welcome back to Stand the Great podcast.
00:01:17
Today I was at my kids school and I was standing at the coffee
00:01:22
machine where I find myself quite a bit talking to some of
00:01:25
the security guards, talking to some of the parents, spreading
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the word about the podcast. And one of the topics that we've
00:01:33
been discussing recently a lot is about College in the United
00:01:37
States, in College in the United States now in 2025 or Gen.
00:01:42
Z and whatever the new ones called.
00:01:46
I don't even know what it's called, but I know it's here and
00:01:48
they'll be hitting College in the next few years.
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And it got us thinking, is college worth it?
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It's simple. Or is it?
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It's a lot more complex than you think and perfect for a show
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like this where we like to stay in the middle and kind of assess
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it from both sides. So imagine this, I'll set you up
00:02:06
here, 22 years old. You spent four years in college.
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You experienced life away from the home to a point, assuming
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that you are on campus and you're not living in your
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parents home, which is fine. Also if you decide to do that,
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but you get out of school and before you even get a job or
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even if you have a job lined up, you haven't been paid yet and
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all of a sudden you have the $80 in debt, $100 in
00:02:32
debt, some even more depending on where you went.
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You haven't even cashed a paycheck.
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Yeah, that's a big deal. It's basically what you get for
00:02:40
graduating. This is big debt, so the loans
00:02:43
have become more of less of a stepping stone and more of a
00:02:47
ball and chain that's tying you down.
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I just feel like so many college kids graduate and they find
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themselves screaming into the pillows in the middle of the
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night, waking up from this bad dream, asking the same question.
00:03:02
What was it worth it? That's what we're going to talk
00:03:04
about. So join me, let's get rolling.
00:03:07
I'm going to start with some facts.
00:03:08
I'm going to start with some numbers to try and back up what
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I'm going to talk about. And I think it's good to do
00:03:13
that, especially in this case. According to Pew Research, as of
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2024, Americans owe a total of $1.6 trillion in student loan
00:03:24
debt. That's a lot of money.
00:03:26
I don't have to have a college degree to tell you that, but
00:03:28
that's actually a 42% increase over the last 10 years.
00:03:32
Forgot to add that part. It's important.
00:03:34
The average federal student loan debt per borrower is $37.
00:03:39
That's a little lower than I thought it'd be, but it's still
00:03:41
a significant chunk of change for not having savings getting
00:03:46
out of college. Except for the people that have
00:03:48
extenuating circumstances, of course.
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Where there's family money, where there's something that was
00:03:52
invested for them or school and to pay off loans, etcetera,
00:03:55
etcetera. But it's the older people who
00:03:58
can't seem to get rid of the debt.
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So 25 to 34 year olds hold 30% of the debt and 35 to 49 year
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olds hold the most debt in total.
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And so they're not getting rid of it.
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They're not paying it down. It's hard.
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I mean it, it really is. Now it's one of the best low
00:04:14
interest long term loans that you can get out there, but it's
00:04:18
still for the amount, that's a big amount of debt to have.
00:04:21
It doesn't take three to five years to pay it off.
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It takes a long time. And if you think about the
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numbers, it's a lot on somebody's plate right out of
00:04:30
college. You're trying to learn life and
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all of a sudden you're learning how to write a check that
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sometimes you don't have each month.
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But they're not just numbers. That's what I have here.
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It's things like postponing a wedding, postponing a vacation,
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not having children when you really want to have children,
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especially the housing industry the way that it is.
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I mean, you're not going to be buying a home until you're
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you're more secure the apartment, the apartment
00:04:55
industry is doing very well, but it's basically pausing life.
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It's delaying life. And for somebody that did a lot
00:05:01
of the things I just mentioned later in life than most yours
00:05:05
truly, I can attest to this. And and there's a concern.
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It's hard to do all of the things I just mentioned.
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And I finally have children and a wife and a house and all these
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things. And I cannot imagine being 22
00:05:18
years old with a lump of debt, not knowing how you're going to
00:05:21
do, never having a job truly affiliated with your skill, your
00:05:25
degree plan. We'll get to that.
00:05:27
I mean, so the big question again, I asked if the copy
00:05:29
machine was does would college degree really pay off?
00:05:33
Does it pay off? Well, there's some nuance here.
00:05:35
There's a study by NYU and Georgetown that found that on
00:05:40
average, college degrees do yield 9 to 10% annual return
00:05:45
each year over your lifetime. OK, fair enough.
00:05:49
That sounds OK. I'll take nine to 10% return
00:05:53
yearly over a lifetime, OK. And that's, that's an average.
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So that's what we're going to get to.
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And a bachelor degree earns 86% more than those with just a high
00:06:03
school diploma. So there is something to it.
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I mean, that's what you always heard growing up, at least I
00:06:08
did. High school diploma is not going
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to get you anywhere. You got to get that college
00:06:12
education. And that's what they're talking
00:06:14
about here. There are many, many things,
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many industries, many fields that you can go into that
00:06:21
require some sort of degree, some sort of education that
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relates to that topic, relates to that subject, relates to that
00:06:27
field. And so the twist is this, not
00:06:30
all degrees are created equal. We know this.
00:06:32
You could have figured this out without my help.
00:06:34
The bottom line is you can't go in there and get a get a degree
00:06:38
in gender studies and come out and expect to do a lot of
00:06:41
things. That's the question.
00:06:44
A lot of these kids are going in out of high school or whenever
00:06:47
and they're going in and getting degrees, You know, I hate to
00:06:50
bachelor, but communications degree, I don't know, be a
00:06:53
little more selective. A lot of people go into
00:06:55
marketing with that. A lot of people go into writing
00:06:58
a lot of journalism, things like that.
00:07:00
Well, then go go that route. Don't you know this broad degree
00:07:04
is the issue. So the Foundation for Research
00:07:06
on Equal Opportunity found that 23% of bachelor degree programs
00:07:13
and 43% of associate programs, which is the two year programs
00:07:17
have a negative return on investment.
00:07:19
That's not good. That's a lot.
00:07:21
I know it's only 23%, but that's a lot of people and a lot of
00:07:24
degrees should have got a list of all these, you know, kind of
00:07:28
the funny sounding degree plans with a lot of people that don't
00:07:31
know when they're 18 years old and 19 years old, they don't
00:07:33
know what they want to do. So they grab one of these and
00:07:36
they go and they have fun in college.
00:07:39
And I agree that there's something to that.
00:07:40
Also, you do need to live life. You do need to learn what it's
00:07:43
like away from the home, and you need to learn how to make
00:07:46
decisions that are beyond academia, but you've got to be
00:07:51
able to at least shift and transfer, direct yourself into
00:07:55
something that's a little more specific to what you want to do
00:07:58
with it. There's so many people that come
00:08:00
out of college and they don't use their degree.
00:08:02
They get jobs that either, number one, you don't need the
00:08:07
degree for or #2 it's just that's what they fall into.
00:08:11
I'm one of them and I've, I've used it here and there and to
00:08:15
teach and to do these things and back and forth.
00:08:17
But, but I'm also doing a lot of things that have nothing to do
00:08:19
with my degree. And I have a masters as well.
00:08:21
So there's, there's a lot to it. And that's why we've got to
00:08:25
analyze what the problem is, why I'm doing this.
00:08:30
The one that gets me the most frustrated, the most not sad,
00:08:35
angry, the most enraged. Our education degrees.
00:08:39
The return on investment for education degrees is -54.67%.
00:08:45
That is not OK. These are our teachers.
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These are our educators, many of whom are trying their best these
00:08:54
days to instill fundamentals of life and fundamentals of
00:08:59
academia into children. We'll get to this in a second,
00:09:03
but there's obviously an argument to a lot of the things
00:09:06
that are being taught in the schools.
00:09:07
And of course, that's different. The teachers work hard.
00:09:11
The vast majority of them, they spend so much time.
00:09:13
It's not just 8:30 to 3:00 or whatever you you think it is.
00:09:17
It's not. There's grading, there's lesson
00:09:19
plans, there's teacher meetings, there's teacher parent
00:09:22
conferences, there's you're constantly thinking about it in
00:09:25
that to come out in debt and to make what they make is
00:09:31
insulting. I would argue they are one of
00:09:33
the most valuable careers when it comes to taking care of
00:09:39
people that's out there. Obviously that aligns with
00:09:43
nursing and being a doctor and a firefighter and police officer
00:09:47
and they're underpaid as well. Doctors up and down.
00:09:50
That's a whole other show. So let's talk about the
00:09:52
generational divide and all this.
00:09:54
It's interesting to me as a Gen. X person, that's all I'll tell
00:09:58
you that to hear that we are, and I see it, we often times
00:10:02
scoff at Gen. Z for questioning college.
00:10:07
They're asking these questions that I'm asking you right now,
00:10:09
and a lot of us go, do you need to get your colleges?
00:10:12
You just get a college education.
00:10:14
You just need to do it. But why?
00:10:16
It's because we're taught that in our lives and in our
00:10:20
experiences, the time period that we went to college, perhaps
00:10:23
it was more valuable. In fact, I would argue that it
00:10:25
was. According to Pew, only 22% of
00:10:28
Americans now think a four year degree is worth the cost if it
00:10:34
involves student loans. So I guess that changes.
00:10:37
If people feel like, hey, I've got the money or my parents are
00:10:40
going to pay, or I get full grants or scholarships, then
00:10:43
that changes things because why not at that point just, you
00:10:46
know, yes. But if you're getting student
00:10:48
loans and you're going to come out heavily in debt, people are
00:10:51
starting to think that it's not worth it.
00:10:53
Again, one in five, a little over one in five think that it's
00:10:57
worth it. So again, my major wasn't math,
00:11:01
but that means four and five. Just under 4 out of five people
00:11:04
in this country do not think the college education is currently
00:11:08
worth it. Why?
00:11:09
Nearly half believe a college degree is less important than it
00:11:12
was 2 decades ago, which is what I was just talking about.
00:11:15
Things have changed. Again, a different show, but
00:11:17
it's one of the reasons the Department of Education is being
00:11:19
scrutinized and is under the microscope and it's being
00:11:23
dismantled and hopefully rebuilt to handle these types of issues.
00:11:27
But it's not laziness. It's hard for me to say that
00:11:29
about Gen. Z.
00:11:30
I'd love to to bash them, but I just think it's logic.
00:11:33
I think that when you look at the things that we're talking
00:11:35
about, I'm no longer going to get on them about it.
00:11:37
I'm going to discuss it with them.
00:11:39
Entry level jobs demand skills that tie to degrees that they
00:11:44
have. But so many are now adding a
00:11:47
third, which is experience. It's a triple threat that most
00:11:52
people coming out of college cannot stand up to.
00:11:55
They don't have. How are you supposed to gain
00:11:58
experience if nobody will give you a chance to gain that
00:12:01
experience because they want experience.
00:12:04
People go through that with older people as well when
00:12:07
they're shifting careers or or changing jobs.
00:12:10
So that's a whole interesting thought as well.
00:12:12
So I've offered you facts and I've offered you statistics in
00:12:15
regards to this. Let's talk a little bit.
00:12:17
In the time I have left, obviously political reasons that
00:12:21
many, including myself, feel that campus life and university
00:12:26
living and the administration and professors at these
00:12:31
universities and colleges are not good for the people there.
00:12:35
There's a overall woke progressive mindset.
00:12:39
And you can't really argue this. It's you just see it and the
00:12:43
administration, the teachers and it's on display right now with
00:12:46
these protests. I believe it was Colombia.
00:12:49
Things have changed since then, but right when the initial
00:12:51
protests for Hamas came out in our own country supporting a
00:12:55
terrorist organization, the school was sending it's students
00:12:59
home to complete coursework online so that the protests
00:13:03
could take place because they felt that it was their right to
00:13:06
protest. Well, what about the right of
00:13:08
the students to be on campus? One could argue that if you went
00:13:11
home and took your courses online that it would not be as
00:13:14
effective. Some it may work, to others it
00:13:17
won't. You won't get as much out of it
00:13:21
being at home. Where are your priorities to the
00:13:23
universe? That is an issue.
00:13:25
The priorities of these great, once great establishments, and
00:13:29
I'm talking about a lot of Ivy League schools and a lot of high
00:13:32
end schools, the priorities are out of whack.
00:13:35
That's another reason to question going.
00:13:38
So I'm going to play a video. This is a gentleman named
00:13:40
Charlie Kirk. I've played him before.
00:13:42
I agree with a lot of what he says.
00:13:45
There are a few things that I I don't quite line up totally
00:13:48
with, and that's OK. But I admire the man.
00:13:50
I think he's very intelligent. He never went to college and
00:13:54
he's got strong opinions about that.
00:13:56
And so by playing this, this is his opinion on whether college
00:14:00
is worth it. So take a listen to this if you.
00:14:03
Do not have that worthless piece of paper from a local college.
00:14:06
You could still succeed to great heights in this country.
00:14:09
I guarantee you. Some of you right now have
00:14:11
friends, family that are saying oh why didn't you get that piece
00:14:14
of paper? Why didn't you go $100 in
00:14:16
debt? You probably hear that.
00:14:17
You're like man, can I still succeed?
00:14:20
Notice how they do political polling in this country.
00:14:23
They do college educated and non college educated.
00:14:26
What are they really telling you?
00:14:27
This is what the smart people think and this is what the dumb
00:14:30
people think. But who has wisdom?
00:14:32
It's a much deeper question. What motivates me sometimes and
00:14:35
I want this to be motivation for you.
00:14:36
It's when some snob comes up to you and they say, Oh yeah, you
00:14:40
didn't go to college. What do you have to offer?
00:14:42
What would challenge them and empower you is all of a sudden
00:14:46
they realize that there are hundreds of thousands of
00:14:48
entrepreneurs that want it more, that can create value in such
00:14:53
unbelievable ways because you didn't need to go to those four
00:14:56
years in college. Well, there it is and again, I
00:14:59
agree with them, but at the same time, I also can see see another
00:15:03
side to it as well. And I think it may be a little
00:15:05
bit over the top to a point. There are benefits to the
00:15:08
school. The type of degree matters.
00:15:11
But what he's saying is that you don't have to go in order to be
00:15:14
successful. You don't need to look down on
00:15:16
yourself if you don't go to college and think I'm not going
00:15:20
to amount to anything. So I'm just going to go and do
00:15:23
a, an entry level job for the rest of my life because I'm not
00:15:26
adequately trained to do anything else.
00:15:29
And that's where it's, it gets dangerous for, for individuals
00:15:32
because it's just not true. There are so many entrepreneurs
00:15:35
right now. And I believe it was Charlie's I
00:15:37
read somewhere and I think he confirmed that there are a lot
00:15:40
of millionaires right now, people that make over 1,
00:15:44
three, $4 million a year in the plumbing industry starting up
00:15:47
their own company for trades that you would otherwise think
00:15:51
don't make a lot of money. They do.
00:15:54
It's just about the drive and how much time you're willing to
00:15:57
put in. By no means I'm saying don't go
00:15:59
to college. I'm just telling you it depends
00:16:01
on what you want to do and what you're willing to sacrifice and
00:16:05
how much money you're willing to accrue.
00:16:07
Guess what, doctors, ladies go to school.
00:16:10
I do not support the idea that a person that wants to be a doctor
00:16:14
not go to college. I think that is a prime example
00:16:18
of somebody that I would like you to go to a lot of college
00:16:20
actually before you get anywhere near me or my family lawyers,
00:16:25
This is a different example. Learn the law, and I know that
00:16:28
that's what law school is for, but how about not worrying about
00:16:33
unrelated stuff, but not worrying about those electives
00:16:36
that you have to take? I get it.
00:16:38
Everybody wants that badminton class at 8:00 AM in the morning.
00:16:41
Let's just get some credit for kinesiology.
00:16:44
That should be voluntary. If you're going into law school
00:16:47
instead of accruing all this extra money for coursework that
00:16:49
you don't need, though, there should be a focus point and
00:16:52
that's the law. Leave high school.
00:16:55
Let high school be your foundation and you don't need to
00:16:57
take composition one in college. You've already had it.
00:17:01
And if you don't, if you're not adequately prepared for college,
00:17:05
then maybe you don't get in or maybe you don't do well and you
00:17:08
can be weeded out. College should not be about
00:17:11
reteaching fundamentals. People that go to college or a
00:17:14
trade should be adequately prepared, and if you're not,
00:17:18
then you take a different route. So I did the poll the last
00:17:22
couple days around the coffee machines.
00:17:25
It wasn't a large pole, but it was still enough for a sample
00:17:27
size. What I did was I asked the same
00:17:31
question, is college today worth it?
00:17:33
And not one person said that it was everybody.
00:17:38
Again, my sample size was huge, but it was it was significant in
00:17:42
the big scheme. When you can count on more than
00:17:44
two hands. The amount of people I talked to
00:17:45
about this, that's a lot. And all of them said the same
00:17:48
thing. Back then it was, now it's not.
00:17:51
Why is this all the things I just mentioned?
00:17:54
But the one thing that they were very adamant about was that they
00:17:56
thought that the atmosphere, the life experience and all of that
00:18:01
fun stuff was something that people needed to have leading
00:18:06
into being self-sufficient in life.
00:18:09
And I don't disagree with that. However, if that's all you're
00:18:11
going for, you don't need to pay that much money.
00:18:13
Just go and get an apartment somewhere and find a basic job
00:18:18
that can support you and and have fun and do those things and
00:18:20
live life. That's my thought.
00:18:22
As an alternative. The debt was another one that
00:18:24
they obviously talked about. And then of course, the
00:18:26
meaningless degrees, more than one of them, including myself.
00:18:30
This whole idea of gender studies, things like that.
00:18:34
Really, what are you going to do with that?
00:18:36
When you stop that, you need to eliminate that and use that as
00:18:40
as a reasoning why people think college is a waste.
00:18:43
There is a psychological toll that's taken.
00:18:47
We don't talk about mental health.
00:18:49
There was a study by American Psychological Association that
00:18:52
shows that student debt is now a leading cause of anxiety for
00:18:57
millennials and Ginzy. People are making life decisions
00:18:59
based on monthly repayments. So therefore they don't get the
00:19:03
therapy they need because it costs money.
00:19:05
They don't take risks in life. They don't stay at a job or
00:19:09
change or or pursue their dreams because they have to pay the
00:19:12
bills. So they stay at a meet at a job
00:19:14
that that doesn't fulfill them. So it's not just financial, it's
00:19:17
emotional and it's psychological.
00:19:20
And that needs to be taken into consideration when you have a
00:19:23
bunch of kids coming out depressed like zombies, not
00:19:28
knowing what to do with their lives.
00:19:30
College can be worth it in my opinion, if you choose the right
00:19:33
major and you're willing to take on the, the, the financial
00:19:36
responsibility, you're aware of it and there's a certain path
00:19:41
that you need to take and you feel like this is best.
00:19:43
And sure, absolutely it's worth it.
00:19:45
But the idea that it's the only path to success is fading fast.
00:19:50
And Charlie Kirk, the video I just played for you, agrees with
00:19:55
that. And I don't, I don't disagree.
00:19:57
I don't have a huge, the huge passion that he does because I
00:20:00
did go to college and Graduate School.
00:20:03
But I can see his side. I'm not anti college.
00:20:06
I want to go ahead and clarify that as we end what I am is anti
00:20:09
blind faith in something. It's the same thing with Ukraine
00:20:12
these days, that people want to just shout at me and shout at
00:20:15
me, shout at me. I don't like the blind faith we
00:20:17
have without asking questions, thinking outside the box.
00:20:21
If the system is broke and it stays broke, then all it's going
00:20:24
to do is dig the rabbit hole deeper and deeper and deeper
00:20:27
where students come out depressed and all of a sudden
00:20:30
our world is affected, our country is affected, the
00:20:33
industries are all affected. I want my doctors to be happy.
00:20:36
I want I want people that wash the car, wash my car to be
00:20:39
happy. I want everybody to have a smile
00:20:42
on their face. And right now, I don't think
00:20:44
that a lot of people that graduate from college have an
00:20:47
initial smile. I think they have a little bit
00:20:50
of trepidation about life and they have some fears.
00:20:53
And if there's a way that we can make that better, that's what I
00:20:57
want. So don't forget to subscribe as
00:21:01
usual, like and follow, do all those things.
00:21:04
If you have somebody that's thinking about college, a son or
00:21:07
a friend or a a cousin or brother or anybody, well, have
00:21:11
them. Listen to this again, instead of
00:21:14
overwhelming yourself with a lot of information, listen to
00:21:18
something like this where I care enough to give you a few
00:21:23
statistics, some numbers, something to think about, but
00:21:26
also to encourage you to create your own path.
00:21:30
We encourage you to latch on if you do want to go to college.
00:21:34
A lot of kids grow up and they want to go to college.
00:21:37
That's what I want. So good luck to you.
00:21:39
If you have any questions about the research that I have on
00:21:42
this, let me know. I hope it helped and we'll be
00:21:46
back next time. Love you guys.