Are College Degrees are a Becoming Worthless?

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2:58Complete Disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures. It's 104 million people that are not even looking for work or not in the American job system. So talk about a scary fact. And even for us as African-Americans, a lot of us have been pushed out of corporate and forced into entrepreneurship purely by necessity, not by choice. So there's a lot of conversation about how strong the economy is i know the index is only down two to four percent depending on which one you're looking at but that's a large swath of america nearly a third who have given up on the job market altogether and i think it's definitely a sign of the times yeah i'm with you uh it was interesting i was watching a ceo of service now mcdermott talking about the workforce going into the next five to ten years and he thinks college graduates it was pretty alarming he said he thinks that 30 percent of college graduates won't have a job post-graduation i think the average right now is like six to seven percent he says he's going to 30 uh we watch meta have layoffs uh early early last week um and so you're seeing that cycle and the most important thing i could say is yes we understand the importance of ai and the disruption is going to cause, but I don't think we're paying attention to how we need to execute and using it, becoming educated by it.

4:25That's why I think Thursday's episode is one of the most important things we've ever done, because it gives you the foundational layers of how we need to look at this going forward, so we can take advantage of it, participate in it, and make sure we don't get left behind. Yeah, but it's happening. It's happening. Rashad, to your point, because you made me go research this, what do we do? Because honestly, if kids are not able to get job placement after the solution okay one alternative is to invest but if you don't have any capital you can't even invest or you can't buy the pro version of claude or open ai is are there any solutions for those who may feel like that status to doom and gloom unfortunately not i mean once again going back to the episode that we coming out with on thursday when she was talking about how AI is going to really force everybody to become an entrepreneur in some way or another.

5:19And just looking at the landscape, I see AI really, really, really taking over in a variety of different ways. So can't beat them, join them. I don't necessarily think that we're going to go back to a world where it's going to be how it once was. No, it's over with. It's only going to get worse from here as far as like that level of thinking when it comes to jobs. But, you know, there's opportunities in other areas, freelance work. And I think you're going to have to be a little bit more creative. But I don't think that is going to be a world where you can actually just pay for education. And then after you graduate, then get a job.

6:03and really questions if education has the same value, especially from a financial standpoint, if you want to spend a lot of money on education, is that education worth it if the education does not guarantee or is not a pathway for success? Yeah, that's part of the conversation. The pathway will definitely be changed. I was reading the article. It might have been in the journal. Could have been in maybe Yahoo Finance about where they think technicians, plumbers, how will their salaries increase over the next five to ten years? Will they be now replacing? Will they be the highest paid professions?

6:47Because those are skills that are going to be needed. I don't know. Yeah, they just say anything. I've seen a dude. I've seen a guy from what tech company? He was some tech company, and he said that plumbers are going to start making LeBron James money. No. Let me just finish before you go there, because I don't think it's true, but it does speak to a shift on that new path. What is it? I think it is skill based. We have to figure out what a skill is, not so much of what we should be studying to now figure out if we can get a career in that path. What is the skill that we have? How do we converge that skill with artificial intelligence to get ahead?

7:28Yeah, but the whole logic behind it doesn't make any sense because we always needed plumbers. It's never like we didn't need plumbers. And it's not like we're building 50 million new homes all of a sudden. So it's like the idea of like plumbers are going to start making twenty five million dollars a year. I just don't understand it. Like we always needed plumbers, have plumbers. We do have a shortage of plumbers, but it's not like every single plumber in America is going to die tomorrow. and then there's going to be 10 plumbers. Well, then, yeah, their value would be$25 million a year if there was only 10 plumbers that can actually do the crap.

8:05But what is going to change in society? Because artificial intelligence is not threatening plumbers right now. So why would a plumber's value just automatically go up to$25 million a year? I just don't understand the logic. The thought is if AI takes over, there will be a limited supply of jobs. Therefore, the value of those will go up. But to your point, every CEO who I ever heard say that they never tell their kids go be a plumber and they never resign a CEO of a tech company. Right. I think that was part of the piece. It was like we're going to see careers be completely disrupted. Right. Like the example they use was like lawyers going forward.

8:47What would that look like? Would that be a high paying job? Right. If you think about it, like the way that Claude is moving, the way that open AI is moving. Yeah, we might see disruption in the law of practices from the medical standpoint. Our doctor is going to be the highest performing paid job. We don't know. Right. Like right now, those are the highest paying jobs. But you add intelligence into that. You add efficiency into that right now. Malpractice is out. It changes things. And so they're saying if those aren't the highest paying jobs, what now becomes those? and they're thinking like skills, technicians, electricians, things like that.

9:22Yes, you can make great money doing that now as an entrepreneur. They'll see that going up and increasing over time. And it's a little service. It's not even sustainable. Like as far as nobody's going to play a plumber more than it costs to build a home. If that's the case, I won't even have a home. Like if I have to pay a plumber$500 ,000 to plumb my house because their value has just gone up exponentially, well, what does that do to real estate prices? Because one of two things happen. Either you just can't afford to buy a home anymore or real estate now has to increase with debt. So now the price of a million dollar home is now worth$10 million because the plumbing alone is worth$500 ,000.

10:02I just don't understand. It's one of these things that just sounds good on paper, but when you say a plumber is going to start making LeBron James money. Yeah, that's ridiculous. LeBron's a billion. It's lip service because if I destroy an industry with my software, I didn't have to give you a way to make money. So I'm not looked at as the villain. And this is a prime example of an executive telling you one thing and doing another. They know that the pay rate is not going to increase dramatically. The entire purpose of artificial intelligence is to lay off the majority of the workforce. And like I said, it's 104 million people outside of that right now.

10:42And even if you're trying to get a job, it's just hard to even get through the AI filters through your resume. So it is working successfully. And a lot of times they're saying this too, to get funding because they don't want their venture capital company to, or private equity company to be on the hook for funding them for then also erasing the job market and causing catastrophe there. Also the Canadian economy lost 84 ,000 jobs in February, 6.7 % drop, 32 % chance of a recession in Canada. We are in a crisis and everyone acting like it's okay. And it's not. Well, what I will say is that the education system is going to, is in great danger right now.

11:24And I feel like that's something that, you know, is going to be a crisis when you look at education as a big business within itself. And that's, that's something that a lot of people benefit from. So now when people really start to have second thoughts about education and spending so much money on education, that's an economic effect as well. From people that are reliant on education, not just from teachers, but administrators, the government, student loan programs, a variety of different things. This is a billion dollar industry. So when you no longer see value in it the same way that you once saw value in it.

12:05And how it's been positioned over the last 50 years is that it's kind of like a mandatory thing if you want to excel and get to the middle class or above is that you have to go to college. Now, when that becomes relatively optional and people aren't seeing the value in that anymore, well, that's an economic effect also. Yeah. And you take into it, you start thinking about student loan, right? Who, are you borrowing from? Exactly. You start to cut back on that. That's less revenue. Exactly. That becomes a huge problem. So education reform, I mean, it's long overdue, but I feel like we're at the forefront in our lifetime.

12:46Within the next 10 years, we're going to see a drastic change in how people look, how they treat, how they feel about going to school and the value of it. I mean, we're coming from a generation where it was still the thing like get a good degree. I'm starting to see like the young people that we're around it's like maybe it's not even viable maybe although the reward scenario or ratio isn't even why would i go right i mean just looking at some of the colleges in new york you're looking at 110 per year that's crazy like to pay 400 for undergrad 350 for undergrad and then to make what 60 grand and have all the debt to pay so there definitely needs to be a restructuring but the sad part is that you can't write off those loans or five bankruptcy on them that's the part that sucks pro drivers live for race day but for small business owners every day is race day that's why going pro with lenovo pro matters one-on-one advice it solutions and customized hardware powered by intel core ultra processors keep your business on the right track.

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