Degree Free

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207

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Jul 2026

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About the show

Welcome to Degree Free! It’s our job to share fundamentals we’ve discovered and the mistakes we’ve made while self educating, getting work, building businesses, and making money. We’ll tell you how to make it happen, no degree needed!

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August 19, 2026Episode 617 min

College Won’t Save Your Son. This Will. (The Hannah Maruyama Show #6)

July 16, 202644 min

What College Will Take From Your Daughter (Degree Free #201)

Want to guide your 16-20 year old to careers that help them reach their goals? Check out our workbook set: ➡️ https://degreefree.com/book Want a custom career plan for your 16-20 year old? Apply for the Degree Free Launch Program: ➡️ https://degreefree.com/launch We want to talk about the worst advice we give young women right now, and it's this: if your daughter wants to be a stay at home mom, she needs a backup plan, and that backup plan should be college. We've been hearing this from financial personalities, guidance counselors, and well-meaning parents for decades. It sounds responsible. It isn't. Here's the thing. College as a backup plan is not a backup plan. It's a hundred thousand dollars and five-plus years of your daughter's life spent building debt that will follow her into her marriage, prevent her from staying home with her children, and force her into full-time work she never wanted. We've seen this play out over and over. A lawyer making $75,000 a year, unable to leave her job, six weeks after having a baby. Teachers messaging us in tears because they can't afford to stay home with their own children. Moms who went back to school, got the degree, and still can't do the one thing they actually wanted. Women now hold two thirds of all US student loan debt. That's nearly $929 billion. And a huge portion of those degrees are in fields that don't pay enough to justify the cost, let alone give a young woman the flexibility she needs when she has a family. The real backup plan for a daughter who wants to be a stay at home mom is a high-earning, flexible, in-demand skill. Something she can build now, maintain while her children are young, and return to later on her own terms. Architectural drafting. Court reporting. Medical billing. Construction scheduling. Freight brokering. These are real careers with real income and real flexibility. None of them require a four-year degree. If your daughter knows what she wants from her family life, the job is to build her career around that, not against it. That takes planning. It takes strategy. And it starts now, not after four years and a diploma she'll never use.

July 9, 202631 min

The College ’Experience’ Isn’t Real (Degree Free #200)

Want to guide your 16-20 year old to careers that help them reach their goals? Check out our workbook set: ➡️ https://degreefree.com/book Want a custom career plan for your 16-20 year old? Apply for the Degree Free Launch Program: ➡️ https://degreefree.com/launch The college experience is one of the biggest reasons parents push their young adults toward a degree. But when you pull it apart, the experience people are describing has nothing to do with college. It's just what happens when you're between 18 and 22. You grow up. You make friends. You figure out who you are. College doesn't cause that. Age does. Take the spouse myth. Less than one in 100 American couples today met on a college campus. Most people now meet online, at work, through mutual friends, or in their own neighborhoods. The data is clear. If you're sending your child to college so they can meet their future partner, that plan is not working. Friendships are the same story. 57% of college students report feeling lonely. Colleges promise a rich social life and then don't deliver. And when graduation comes, whatever social structure existed on campus disappears overnight. Your child has to start over in a new city with no network and no idea how to build one from scratch. Contrast that with a young adult who spends those same years going to local meetups, joining a run club, volunteering, playing community sports, or showing up to a chamber of commerce meeting. They're building real relationships in the place they actually plan to live. Those friendships don't evaporate. That network grows. Gen Z already gets this. They're going back to third places. Dances, book clubs, gyms, churches, community leagues. They want real connection with real people. Your child can have all of that without $100,000 in debt hanging over their head. The college experience was never about college. It was always about the years.

July 2, 202618 min

Why This Mom Hired a Life Coach... (Degree Free #199)

Want to guide your 16-20 year old to careers that help them reach their goals? Check out our workbook set: ➡️ https://degreefree.com/book Want a custom career plan for your 16-20 year old? Apply for the Degree Free Launch Program: ➡️ https://degreefree.com/launch We got a call from a mom who was doing everything she thought she was supposed to do. Her son was 19, had left college, left trade school, and was stuck at home feeling depressed and directionless. Her solution was a life coach to help him feel better about where he was. We get why she did that. But we think it's the wrong move, and here's why. A lot of what looks like executive function problems in young men this age is actually just a complete lack of direction. When you don't know where you're going, you don't know what to do. And when you don't know what to do, you freeze. That's not a character flaw. That's a predictable outcome of having no clear path. What these young men actually need is work. Real work. Entry level roles where they show up, do the job, and earn respect for it. That process builds them. It gives them somewhere to put their energy. It gives them a reason to get up. Sitting still and working on your feelings does not do that. The other mistake is telling them to just get any job. That's better than nothing, but it still leaves them in the wrong vehicle heading somewhere they don't want to go. What actually works is figuring out what they need from their work, finding the right strategic entry level roles, and building a real 12-month plan to get there. We've done this with young adults for years. Parents tell us their child becomes a completely different person almost overnight. Not because we fixed something broken in them. Because they finally had somewhere to go.

June 30, 2026Episode 121 min

Your Teen Doesn’t Need College (Here’s Proof) (The Hannah Maruyama Show #5)

Want to guide your 16-20 year old to careers that help them reach their goals? Check out our workbook set: ➡️ https://degreefree.com/book Want a custom career plan for your 16-20 year old? Apply for the Degree Free Launch Program: ➡️ https://degreefree.com/launch Here's the thing most parents don't know: "degree required" on a job posting almost never means legally required. It means a company added a filter to avoid defending their hiring in court, a direct result of a 1971 Supreme Court case called Griggs vs. Duke Power. Degrees became a litigation shield, not a job requirement. And now that shield is crumbling. States across the country, red and blue, have stripped degree requirements from state jobs. Pennsylvania freed up 92% of state jobs. Massachusetts freed up 90%. Maryland saw a 41% increase in degree-free hires after making the change. The federal government just removed degree requirements for all federal IT managers. And companies like Google, Apple, IBM, and Walmart have already dropped or are planning to drop bachelor's degree requirements entirely. The real number that matters: only about 14.8 million U.S. jobs legally require a degree, and 38% of those are just three roles: registered nurses, elementary school teachers, and high school teachers. Teachers alone make up 25% of every legally gated job in America, and they earn 7% below the U.S. median. That is not a strong argument for the degree filter. The right move for your child is not to pick a major. It is to start with the life they want, figure out what they need from work, identify careers that fit those needs, and then find strategic entry level work. Get hired first. If a credential is actually required and worth it, many companies will pay for it. That is exactly what happened with Quinn McLaren, who broke out of college, got hired as a real estate financial analyst at a Fortune 50 company, and had his employer fund his CPA credential. The system rewards people who show up, apply anyway, and build real skills. Your child can be one of them.

June 19, 2026Episode 19838 min

Her 19 Y/o Son Needs Work (Not Therapy) (DF#198)

Want to guide your 16-20 year old to careers that help them reach their goals? Check out our workbook set: ➡️ https://degreefree.com/book Want a custom career plan for your 16-20 year old? Apply for the Degree Free Launch Program: ➡️ https://degreefree.com/launch We want to talk about what is actually happening to young men right now, and why college is making it worse, not better. The data is not subtle. Gen Z men with college degrees now have the same unemployment rate as degree-free Gen Z men. Four out of ten students who start college never finish. Of those who do graduate, 41% end up working jobs that never required a degree in the first place. And the mental health picture on campus is not better. Depression and anxiety are the most common outcomes we see, not employment. The reason most parents miss this is that they are not in the classroom. They see the grades drop and the mood tank, but they do not see what is actually happening inside those classrooms. Professors who cannot communicate clearly. Coursework with no connection to real American hiring practices. Career centers handing out personality quizzes and calling it guidance. Here is what we know from working with these families directly: 18, 19, and 20-year-olds are not hard to place in entry level work. Employers are more willing to hire a young adult with a little hustle than a recent grad who expects a salary that does not match the role. The problem is that most families have never even tried that path. They go straight to college because that is the only option anyone handed them. The fix starts with one question. Not what major, not what college. What life does your son actually want? Start there. Work backwards to the career that fits it. Then find the strategic entry level work that gets him moving. That momentum is what these young men are missing, and it is completely within reach.

June 18, 202620 min

Parents Need to Know This (Before Your Teen Enrolls in College) (HM#4)

Want to guide your 16-20 year old to careers that help them reach their goals? Check out our workbook set: ➡️ https://degreefree.com/book Want a custom career plan for your 16-20 year old? Apply for the Degree Free Launch Program: ➡️ https://degreefree.com/launch The whole K through 12 system is built around one goal: college enrollment. Schools track it, report it, and put it on banners. But enrollment tells you nothing about what happens after your child signs the form. So let me show you what the numbers actually say. About 62% of high school seniors enroll in college. Only 7% of jobs legally require a degree. That means we are sending eight times more young adults to college than there are degree-required jobs waiting for them. Of every 100 students who start a four-year degree, only 47 finish on time. A third never finish at all. And of those who do graduate, only 27% will work in a field related to their major. Put it all together and the odds that your child enrolls, graduates on time, and works in their field of study is about one in seven. On top of that, 52% of recent graduates are underemployed one year out. And 45% are still underemployed a decade later. Meanwhile, parent plus loan debt has grown 77% in the last decade, at an interest rate of nearly 9%. The average borrower takes 17 years to pay off their loans. That debt delays homes, marriages, families, and businesses. At more than one in four American colleges, the typical graduate earns less than a high school graduate 10 years after enrolling. The fix is not to panic. It is to change the question. Stop asking what college your child should attend. Start asking what they need from their work to live the life they want. Answer four questions first: what income do they need, what schedule fits them, what environment do they want to work in, and where do they want to live. Work backwards from those answers to find the right career. Then, and only then, ask whether that career legally requires a degree. For most careers, it does not. And the path in without a degree is faster, cheaper, and less risky than the one in seven shot the brochures are selling you.

June 4, 2026Episode 19924 min

AI Will Create Your Teen's Career (The Hannah Maruyama Show #3)

Want a custom career plan for your 18-20 year old? ➡️ https://degreefree.com/launch Want to guide your 16-20 year old to their future career: ➡️ https://degreefree.com/book

May 28, 2026Episode 19728 min

Save Your Sons: What Parents Need to Know (DF#197)

Want to guide your child to careers that help them reach their goals? Check out our workbook set: ➡️ https://degreefree.com/book/ Want a custom career plan for your 18-20 year old? Apply for the Degree Free Launch Program: ➡️ https://degreefree.com/launch

May 25, 2026Episode 19727 min

Why New College Grads Can't Get Jobs (It's Not AI) (The Hannah Maruyama Show #2)

Want a custom career plan for your 18-20 year old? ➡️ https://degreefree.com/launch Want to guide your 16-20 year old to their future career: ➡️ https://degreefree.com/book