Is College Worth It? Real Talk on Student Loans, Degrees & Life Paths

College: is it a golden ticket or an overpriced trap? In this episode of TUF I step away from my usual dad and parenting content to dive into a hot-button topic that affects millions—college, student loans, and the real value of higher education.

As a college graduate (who switched majors after burning out on pre-med), I share my personal experience navigating higher ed and my take on whether a degree is really necessary for success. We break down:

🎓 Why college isn’t for everyone—and why that’s okay

💰 The predatory side of student loans and government-backed debt

🛠️ The rising demand for skilled trades vs. traditional degrees

🏫 Why public universities are absurdly expensive (and what should change)

🤖 The impact of AI on job markets and future career paths

Whether you’re a student, a parent, or just questioning the system, this episode will give you an unfiltered perspective on higher education, debt, and real-world career choices.

👂 Listen now and decide: Is college truly worth the cost?

#CollegeDebate #StudentLoans #HigherEducation #TradeSchool #Parenting #CareerAdvice #FinancialFreedom

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to College Perspectives
• 5:11 Is College Necessary
• 8:24 Student Loans and Debt Issues
• 15:26 The Cost of Public Education
• 20:15 Conclusion and Reflections

Transcript

Robbie (00:00)
All right, everyone. Welcome to the show. Hope you're having a fantastic day. Great week. Good start to the year. Hope you're sticking all your New Year's resolutions and that everything's going amazing for you. Got a little bit of a different type of episode for you today. Going to take you away from our normal dad focus, parenting focus content that I've really been kind of honing in on the last, I'd say, couple of months or so. But I do think that this episode is something that is going to be relevant to a lot of listeners out there.

If you are someone who has has gone to college, if you're someone who is planning on going to college, if you're someone who's currently in college or if you're a parent and you've got kids that may eventually go to college, I think that there's going to be some ideas within this episode that will be pertinent to you. So go ahead, give it a listen. If none of that sounds interesting to you at all, go ahead and just click it off right now. But before you do that, go and give me a five star review. Just kidding. You don't have to go and do that.

You can click out now though if you don't want to listen about my thoughts about it more so about college loans, student loans on the financial side, but also just my general thoughts on going to college Fair disclosure, I am a college graduate. I went to the University of California, Santa Barbara. So I am a gaucho and my story just very briefly because it's not really super important to the episode is

I went to UC Santa Barbara. was the first kid within my family to really go to college. I did well within chemistry and math, and I was on the pre-med path in college. My parents wanted me to graduate early. We didn't really know, you know, what it was going to be like. But I went in, got a bunch of AP credit, started off as a sophomore in terms of units, and really just burnt myself out so fast. Went in.

is a biochemistry major and made it through two and a half years fucking just crashed and burned lots of personal things going on. On top of that, I had just started drinking alcohol as one does typically when they go to college. didn't drink in high school. But yeah, I stopped doing biochemistry, stopped pursuing med school. I figured that if I wasn't going to be making it through

college all the way that I want to spend the rest of my life in school going to medical school. So dropped out of that. They had to figure out what degree I could finish within a year and a half. Sociology was it. And that was a was a cakewalk. I look back now with some regret on the fact that I wasn't able to get into a little bit more of a technical major, one that would be

more useful in the job market and just in life in general. Although I did learn some good stuff within sociology, but that was more so on like the interpersonal skills, communication skills, writing, reading, all that good stuff. So anyways, that's just my story. But I wanted to jump in today on my thoughts on going to college and some of the big hot button topics that you hear today in society, in the news, all that stuff.

And first off, I would say that I am, like most things, kind of in the middle on this. When you listen to it, either on CNN or Fox News or wherever the fuck you get your news from, podcasts.

which you always hear people talk about. It's usually you have people bitching on both sides. You have one side that's just like, we need free education. We need to be given all of this stuff. And then you have the other side that's like, I'm not going to college. Why the fuck should I pay for other people to go as well? I'm not going to pay for them to go and do this stuff. But no one's really looking at, in my opinion, at the real causes of, I don't know if hardships the right term, but some of the real fucked up things and predatory aspects of

going to college and that's what I wanted to dive in today and just kind of be like, no, these are the things that we should be focusing on. if I had a dually appointed representative actually diving into what some of the issues are with going to college and getting student loans, these are the things that I would be looking into.

And I'm going to break this down into three parts, and then I'm going to kind of do at the end a little story about my experience within college and some of the things that kind of led me towards that burnout. But there are some specific things that I think could be corrected within the education system. So the three things, first one is that despite popular opinion, I do not think that everyone should go.

to college. Do I think that there's a benefit to going to college, even if you don't get like a super technical degree in civil engineering or biochemistry or biology or mechanical engineering? Like, yeah, I think that there is a benefit to it. Right. I was able to move away and learn.

a lot of the life skills that I needed to learn, learn how to do my own laundry, how to manage a budget, how to sign up for classes, like have this responsibility place on top of me. And then on top of that, when I did eventually move into the sociology realm of my major, I learned, you know, reading, writing.

communication skills, like there's a lot of just generalized knowledge that I learned by going to college, but I don't think that everyone needs to go to college in order to gain those skills. And if you're going to get a degree in some random, I don't know, some random major, like underwater basket weaving or some shit like that, it's really not gonna be super applicable to you in the future.

Maybe you do want to go do that. Maybe that's your passion. You can go. You can go to school. You can pursue that. And maybe the path forward is if it's one of these random, I don't know, just purely academic majors or subjects, is that you continue on with your education. You continue on with education, master's, PhD, and then eventually teach or do research on that. But that's part of the problem is that

There's only so much research and work or teaching that can be done on these really niche, niche, niche, whatever the fuck you call it, subjects. And so you've got a bunch of people that are signing up and doing this work, but then there's not really work for them afterwards. So what do they do? They end up like me and they end up in a fucking sales job and you got another salesperson or a recruiter or some other thing that they didn't really go to school for. And then they're still paying off.

the debt that they incurred in order to go and get that education. And so I think that college can be an option for a lot of people, but I don't think that it's a necessity like a lot of people require, like think that it should be required or they think that they're better because they've gotten a college education. That's not true. You can learn these things outside of college. have siblings that didn't go to college and a lot of them make more money than I do.

They went into a different industry. stuck with that industry and they continued to work their way up. And that was something that they were able to do. Now I was blessed because I was able to go to college, meet my wife and have the family I have now. Every step that I've taken, there are certain regrets that I have within my life.

I don't truly regret it because every step that I took led me to where I'm at right now with two beautiful boys, my beautiful wife, and the life that I'm currently living. So I'm grateful for the fact that I got the opportunity to do that, but I don't think that it's this huge requirement,

especially if we start going to this age of AI where a lot of these quote unquote technical jobs, coding, and eventually customer service and things like this are going to be taken over by AI and artificial intelligence.

If that ends up happening, there's going to be a huge demand more so on like the skilled labor side of things. There already is a huge demand on the skilled labor side of things as a recruiter, someone who works within the skilled trades. I've already seen this demand and this lack of qualified people to go and do the work. And so that's a viable option for people out of high school, you know, go learn a trade.

figure out how to do that. You can make a lot of money that way. You can have a really good life that way. And so it's just having this diversity of thought that college isn't the only way to go. So that's number one.

Number two would be more so in terms of like the hot button topic right now, student loans, debt forgiveness, all that stuff.

Do I think that the government should be paying or giving out loans to people to go to college? Maybe is probably the answer. I don't know if I would really give them that responsibility. But what's what's the bigger issue to me outside of the debate, whether or not the Department of Education should be giving loans to citizens anyway, if they should be using tax money to give out loans to go to educational institutions would be.

the fact that these loans are, in my opinion, fucking predatory. Some of the interest rates that my, luckily I've paid off my student loan debt, but my wife went to graduate school and became a professional and she makes good money because of the profession that she went into. But we have these student loans that are as large as some mortgages. And the interest rates on some of these vary anywhere from like seven to 11%. And it's just fucking ridiculous. And these aren't private,

private loans that are being given out. These are government loans that have been given out to her that have these ridiculous interest rates associated with them. And on top of these huge interest rates is they do like income repayment plans, which help when you have such a huge amount of money that you're taking out and that you're getting a loan for. It helps to have these

income driven repayment plans, but What they don't really go into and this became a law for private companies like private credit card companies a while ago Private credit card companies cannot have your minimum payment Be lower than the interest amount that you have to pay each month So essentially if you make the minimum payment on your credit cards each month theoretically, you should pay it off eventually

Now, that's a good thing. That could end up taking you still years and years and you pay a ton of interest on all that stuff. But eventually, if you keep on making that minimum payment, you will pay off those loans with what I've been seeing, at least on my own, you know, in our own personal situation is that we get into these income driven.

Repayment plans and we're essentially just paying interest and some of them. We're not making any any dent on the principal We're just paying interest and the the principal is growing because we're not paying the total amount of the interest being charged monthly For these loans and so our principal continues to grow the amount that we are owing is growing and growing and so You know, we're 10 15 years out of this now and our principal is the same but we've been you know making

20, $30,000 worth of payments each year and our principal is the same. It's fucking horseshit. And this is something that frustrates me is that this is not what's being looked at. In my opinion, in this humble millennial dad's opinion is that if the government is going to be giving out loans to students for educational purposes, the interest, the maximum interest amount on these loans should be the bare minimum to cover

the administrative costs of whatever it is to give those loans out. 0.5, 1%, something like that, right? Giving student loans should not be a money-making opportunity for the government. It shouldn't be a chance for them to make a ton of money. And I know in reality it probably isn't because you have so many students who get these degrees and shit.

majors and then they can't fucking pay him back and they just default on their loans and then it leaves the bill to all the people that actually make their payments like my family which fucking sucks. It's a broken system and it shouldn't be that way. And I think that ideally if you are going to be giving these loans out make it a non money making venture for the government where they're literally just lending the money out to go to these publicly public institutions.

these educational institutions, is theoretically for the betterment of society. And so something that the government could have the right to do.

and

and don't go make it so hard to pay this stuff back. Cause right now it seems like it's mostly like a predatory environment. And that brings me into like my third point on this and these kind of blend in together would be the fact that these publicly funded institutions are so fucking expensive to go to. They are so expensive. When I went to UC Santa Barbara back in the good old mid to late two thousands,

I think my quarterly, quarterly tuition was like seven grand, seven grand a quarter was that I don't even want to look to see what it is nowadays. But you know, when I came out of college, I think my total debt owed was like, and I was lucky. I had people help me pay and I worked through college. So my total debt owed was like 10 or 11 grand or something like that. My wife was like 25 grand, which is not terrible for undergraduate, right?

It's not like a graduate program, but to my understanding now, some of these loans, people are coming out of undergrad with loans of 50, 60, 70, $80,000. Like just these massive, massive loans that are already getting them off on the wrong foot when they're starting. And my question would be, why is it that an institution that's already publicly funded or publicly subsidized in some way, or form, why is it that those schools are so expensive to go to?

It shouldn't be that way. And then you have almost like this weird incestual relationship between like we can make the government's giving out these loans with seven or eight, 10, 11 % interest rates. They're giving out these loans. Like it's just free money. It's not, it's already our money. They're giving out money that the taxpayers are paying into. They're giving it to these students to go to these publicly funded institutions.

So what the fuck do they care if they're increasing the price of going to a publicly funded institution? They're going to give that money out and then they're going to be able to collect on the interest on that. And so you just have this like, sure, raise the prices of the publicly funded institution because we're going to give out this money. We're going to get that paid back there. It's essentially a tax on a tax on a tax, which is a lot of the shit that the government does a lot of times. And I'm not just don't want to sit here and talk about taxes and

government spending and all of that stuff. But it is a huge issue in my opinion to have these the same. I know that it's not like the same department, but it's the same government is responsible for not only lending and having the setting the rates of the money that they're lending out for these institutions, but they're also in charge of the price of that institution. And in my opinion, if that was a private institution, there would be multiple laws that would be being broken. And the private

side would be held to a higher standard almost than the government's holding itself. And so those are kind of the three things that I look at when I see this big issue of student loan debt and going to college and is it worth it and all that stuff. The three things, right? Not everyone should or needs to go to college. Number two, it's a predatory lending.

environment I feel like the interest rates are super high. The government's handing out a shit ton of money, but they're charging a ton on the interest side and you can make minimum payments and not be making any dent to your principal and you just have these loans that you're paying for years and years and years and it never really goes away. It's almost like you're just stuck for it for life. Like I'm going to be making this payment to the government for my entire life, which is, which is taxes already. Like it's another tax essentially. And then third would be the fact that

These publicly funded institutions are so fucking expensive when they're already getting money from taxpayers to subsidize their programs or to fund the institution.

And that's going to take me into just kind of the last little story here. And I think one of the reasons why some of these publicly funded institutions can be expensive, but also just one of the reasons why people may not have the best experience when they go to these institutions. And that's the concept of the research professor versus someone who's just a professor. And I don't know the ins and outs. I'm not some school professional, but I can tell from what my experience was is that usually the

The class that fucks people when they're going for med school or when they're going for one of these chemistry or biological majors is organic chemistry. Everyone hates organic chemistry. If you like organic chemistry, you're probably a serial killer. So for me, was no different, right? I did all right. I started off kind of rocky with some of my higher level classes, just being a freshman coming in. But I got into organic chemistry. And in my school, there were two professors for organic chemistry. One of them was

the person who wrote the fucking book that we used at the school to teach organic chemistry. She was a teacher, a real teacher, a real professor, someone who cared about the students that were in her class. And she had a very high pass rate for organic chemistry. I don't know much about it because I wasn't in her fucking class. And then you had another teacher who was a research professor who didn't give a shit about.

the pass rate in his class. actually had a super low pass rate for his class. and I was one of the people who didn't make it past. I was one of the people who failed his fucking class. I can still remember taking the final exam, looking at it for five minutes, writing my name, turning it in and fucking walking out and just being like, give up because it was, I didn't learn anything in his class. I didn't learn anything throughout the time.

And I'm sure there were there were students who did pass that test. They were better students than me. They understood it better than me. That's not to say that there's not some responsibility on my own shoulders. But at the same time, we're paying these astronomical fees to go to school. Having a better teacher could have set me up to where I actually made it through organic chemistry, to where I would have actually learned these things as opposed to be putting into a class where

The guy basically just goes up to a chalkboard and starts writing shit and doesn't explain anything and you don't know what the hell's going on. So for me, as someone who was working two jobs, didn't really have the time to go into all the other, like my, my experience there was different than a lot of people. had two jobs. I worked about 40 hours a week and was trying to go to school full time, which was difficult. It was very hard. I didn't make it through.

But that's this concept of having these research professors. One of the reasons why they're there is because they bring in money, grant money and all this other shit for the university. And so the university doesn't just want them to do the research. They bring them on as a professor so that way they can essentially pay them to come and do this research and to teach their students so they can charge their students for the classes that this person is teaching. But at the end of the day,

Not to say that every research professor is the same as this one, but their incentives are more so aligned with the research that they're doing as opposed to the students that are coming in to take their class or that they're teaching. So that's just something that I see as an additional problem and something that I struggled with when I went to school. I don't know if everyone has that same thing, but I think that that's probably something that's also an issue that needs to be talked about.

something that needs to be addressed and possibly something that's driving up the cost to go to these schools, bringing in big research professors, paying them big salaries, stuff like that. But that's for another conversation for a different time, potentially with someone who's an expert on this, because I am no expert. I'm just an armchair philosopher, millennial dad, your typical shithead who has a lots of thoughts and opinions on a lot of different things.

So yeah, I think that that's gonna probably do it for this week's episode. Like I said, a little bit different from the normal stuff that I go into, but I do think that there's some ideas there that could be beneficial to parents who are gonna have kids eventually. Things to think about, things that might change the way that you perceive what your kids should do when they get a little bit older, or kind of ways to steer them. So that's it for today. If you've got any opinions or you think I'm wrong, you think I'm right,

I always say click that little button, send me a message, let me know. And if there's anything that you would like me to talk about on this show, doesn't always have to be related directly to parenting. That's that's where I'm at right now. I'm in the shit of it. I've got a five and a half year old and a two year old. And so that's a lot of the things that I talk about is parenthood. And hopefully you you like that stuff. But I'm more than happy to talk about things that are outside of the scope of just being a parent, because we're more than that. We're not just parents, but

Like I said, that's gonna do it for today. Have a fantastic rest of the day. Have a good week and I will see you next Wednesday.