The Hidden Truth About College Degrees

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]Degrees are signals of skill, but increasingly they're really becoming signals of class, and that's a much more uncomfortable conversation to have, I think, because yes, degrees still represent knowledge, but they also kind of like represent something else. They represent time, they represent money, they represent stability, they represent support. Think of like what it actually takes to finish a degree. You need financial ability to stay enrolled, you need enough stability in your life to show up consistently.

[00:00:30]You need access to guidance, whether that's professors, advisors, or parents who understand the system.

[00:00:37]Um students whose parents went to college already know how to navigate office hours and internships and networking and, you know, course selection. I am a college professor, my daughter will be equipped with a lots of knowledge when she goes to college, if she goes to college. Other students are trying to figure all of that out from scratch. So, when you see someone with a degree, you're not just seeing intelligence or skill, you're seeing that they had enough structure around them to persist through the system that kind of like quietly rewards people who already understand it. That doesn't mean degrees don't matter, as somebody with multiple degrees, right? Um absolutely they do, but we need to stop pretending that they are pure measures of merit, because they're just not. The reality is that a degree signals not just what you know, but the conditions you had access to while learning all of that stuff. I agree. And if we if we go into the class thing, let's talk about how you rank, uh you know, you the the esteemed degrees, you got your your lawyers, your your doctors.

[00:01:41]Um you know, your your engineers.

[00:01:45]Um then you get like the people with the super cool molecular microbiologist type stuff. Uh then you get into the um esteemed universities or top 50, then you got your your Ivy Leagues and all this different stuff where people do you say as a class thing? This goes back into where people arguing last year about money and class and how like they're not tied to each other, but most of the time they kind of are. I'm I'm going to say if I know that somebody got a doctorate degree, I am 1,000% sure not going to assume that they are low income.

[00:02:20]I'm not. It's not necessarily that I'm going to assume that they're, you know, at the highest income level, but I'm going to assume that they're spending some money to invest education.

[00:02:32]Um so, I can I can absolutely see the correlation and the relationship between degree and {quote} class.

[00:02:43]And if that's all you have, if you're not exposed to anything else and you're more blue-collar worker, that might be something that's hard for you to understand.

[00:02:57]Yeah, so I did a quick search and it said people with doctorates, PhDs in the US earn average salary often exceeding $100,000 through $120,000.

[00:03:08]Though this varies heavily by the field, industry, position, etc., etc. Frequently paying over $130,000 while academic roles often start lower, 75 through 95k.

[00:03:18]Top earners can make over $200,000 while others, particularly early career academics, may start closer to $80,000.

[00:03:25]And then if you get into the tax brackets, that's the working class and all the other cool stuff. But yeah, and that's the interesting thing now, I actually am glad that if my kids do decide to go to school, they will not be first-gen graduates.

[00:03:38]Cuz cuz you already didn't did the muscle work and the hard work. It is hard, if you a first-gen, you know, it is hard out here, honey. Right. It is hard, even from the smallest things.

[00:03:49]That I cite this paper right, that I cite this resource right. You know? Am I emailing my Am I Am I emailing my professor the right way? You know, it's so many nuances that you just don't think about that you don't like you just have to be kind of thrown to the wolves to figure it out. You want to talk about citing papers? My first like >> What what was What was What was your style in college? Most of mines were APA. Um so, I had to write You know what's funny? I had to >> from straight MLA to only APA.

[00:04:21]>> the opposite. My fine arts teacher really prepared us for college. She made us write our stuff APA format. Her and there's another teacher. But I didn't have to write a lot of papers in high school. I wish I had to, because I felt like I didn't need to source anything if I didn't use it in my >> black of you.

[00:04:38]>> No, if I didn't use it in my writing.

[00:04:41]I didn't So, for example, I had this paper, I probably could find it right now on my drive.

[00:04:46]Well, it was like a Are video games good for you? So, everything I wrote was really >> Wait, they're good opinion based. Yeah.

[00:04:53]And I brought up how like initially there was a no ratings like Mortal Kombat, ESRB, and then they came in and said mature, teen, all that other stuff.

[00:05:02]But I didn't really have to cite nothing.

[00:05:04]Why not? That didn't come from your head.

[00:05:06]>> I was going through life experiences, but that's not like a A cite was like if I use something verbatim.

[00:05:11]>> It doesn't have to be verbatim. It's the knowledge that you gained from that source.

[00:05:14]>> Back then though, it was like if I needed to cite from >> No, like if you're doing a quote, yeah.

[00:05:19]Yeah, it wasn't it wasn't no quote.

[00:05:21]>> That was my favorite. When I When it came to writing a paper in college, I used to always open up my papers with a with a quote. With a quote to answer the question whatever the paper was about. I would be like Well, let's just say the paper was about like, you know, is McDonald's good for you? I would open up the paper with a quote on why McDonald's is good for you or how many people have consumed McDonald's or something insane.

[00:05:43]Like that's the type >> I learned to write better in corporate than I did in college. Nah. I had a I had a professor in college. I thought I was a good writer until I got a paper back from her. And she was like, you're not good writer. No, no what's funny what pissed me off was like um My cousin that wrote a couple of essays So, he reviewed my paper. He liked it.

[00:06:02]My teacher didn't, but the thing was if you can see that, hey, this person is trying, let them redo it. Like I got picked like She did let me redo it like that.

[00:06:11]She knew she was wrong. She seen me in the hallway and looked and she didn't want to even come near me. She walked the other way.

[00:06:17]That's how like she made She's the reason why I started off college like so bad. She gave me a bad grade in English and I'm like, look, I'm expressing you Did you take a 098 class?

[00:06:25]>> She was a new teacher. No, did you take 098 math or English? Mhm. Cuz you were smart. Well, for y'all who did, me too.

[00:06:32]I took a >> No, it wasn't cuz I was smart. I think like I mean, my ACT wasn't super high. I think I took a 098. I didn't I didn't have to take that class, but I know that math was a struggle for me, so I chose to take it because it had like 3 hours a week built in for tutoring. And I was And after I took that, then I was good to go to the next math class or whatever, but I did start lower on the on that lens.

[00:06:58]But um I did take that class. If you have to take those classes in college, don't feel bad about it. Take the coursework, it'll help prepare you to take the actual class itself and put you on a better predicament than if you would have started off doing something that was more advanced than what your skill set could actually handle, because I knew for a fact coming in that me and math were not going to get along, you know, that well. And so, I was like, well, whatever I can supplement it, if it's 3 hours a week, so be it. And it was just like an hour built in to each class, I want to say. Like an hour pre, you know, you can come an hour before class starts and you can redo whatever or ask questions, and we had a great time.

[00:07:42]Yeah, like um I think I started off with the good math. I didn't have to retake anything. I had to retake one because I didn't have my financial aid squared away the first quarter. Let's talk We need to talk about that. Let's go ahead Put that on the Put that on the next next next week's docket. Financial aid and all the challenges that you go through.

[00:07:57]>> always caring people's kids on taxes and stuff. And that too.

[00:08:01]And that kind of stopped me from getting everything. They only is So, I was only able to start school because of like since you have TOPS, we're going to let you stay here, but if your stuff isn't finished by this time, we going to make you come back next quarter. So, that's what made my first quarter so rough. I had a bad computer, learning like the I would say Like what do you What do you mean? No, no, what do you mean by bad computer?

[00:08:25]>> I had a Acer that was very slow. Had a bad sound card, had to plug in stereo sound card into it. The typing was bad, it loaded up slow.

[00:08:33]>> just not a good >> me through school though. I mean, but we did have a computer lab.

[00:08:37]But back then You used that for 4 years?

[00:08:40]Yeah. I wasn't No, three. Three.

[00:08:41]>> I did three in the quarter. I I went in September 2010 and graduated November 2013.

[00:08:47]Um but back then I wasn't keen on like Google Docs had just got hot. Like we just started using Google Docs and stuff like that. But it was just so much stuff I wasn't prepared for, cuz it'd been years since my my mom and them went to school. Two semesters.

[00:09:01]>> You need a license and you need to even figure out if you can get a license for free. I figured that out my freshman year was that nine times out of 10, your university has a way for you to get a free Microsoft license for a year.

[00:09:14]Yeah. At least.

[00:09:16]Nine times out of 10.

[00:09:17]Yeah, well, so we I got that and then it was just that. I think by the time the end of sophomore junior I finally figured out my stride. It just was a lot It was so hard to come back from doing bad in like some of my classes.

[00:09:31]Like I had lost my TOPS scholarship. For the people in Louisiana, that's where like TOPS paid for your tuition. So, I lost that and my homie Joey was like, hey fool, once you lose that TOPS, you'll never get it back. He wasn't lying. I did not get TOPS back. And um I had to take a couple of easy classes.

[00:09:46]So, I took reading 200. Yeah, exactly.

[00:09:48]>> Reading 200 was so easy. I told my my little brother, and this is also important, parents and siblings >> or kids.

[00:09:56]But this is really for the parents. Your child don't know what they don't know yet cuz they're a child. So, what they think they want to do sometimes, they may hate you for it in the beginning, but go with your move and say, "Hey, I know you want to go to this school. Go to this school close by the house first.

[00:10:09]You do good here, then we can transfer to there."

[00:10:12]My baby My baby brother went to tech and out of all my siblings, I feel like he was the person that probably was supposed to go off to school first. Mhm.

[00:10:20]And he didn't really do good there that first year. It's It's not necessarily hard, but it's All of us did 9 weeks in school most of the time.

[00:10:28]So, in the quarter system, it's kind of like you had the 9 weeks every quarter.

[00:10:32]So, your classes are a little longer and you're having them like, you know, sometimes like three times a week. You have like Monday, Wednesday, one day Wednesday, Friday classes and your Tuesday, Thursday classes are super long. Like, it's a lot to take in, especially if you may have some undiagnosed issues or don't know what's going on. Like, with me, I already knew back then stuff like geology, please.

[00:10:52]I had my Motorola Droid at the time. I made it start recording and I'd go to sleep.

[00:10:57]Back then, I'm like, "Oh, I'm going to listen back to the lecture." Never listen back to it.

[00:10:59]>> Never listen back to >> Now, in today's time, I could throw that bad boy in Loom or something else, transcribe it, break down what it was about. I would pass. So, y'all can use AI to your advantage cuz the teachers they don't care about Look, they getting paid regardless whether you sleep or stay up.

[00:11:16]So, that was like some of the stuff I kind of had to deal with and you can say it's immature, but don't make me take a class I don't want to take.

[00:11:23]Yeah. Sociology was my class, though.

[00:11:25]But, I went to a liberal arts school.

[00:11:27]So, that means that you have to take classes in all of these different areas in order to get your degree.

[00:11:34]Some schools are not like that, but my school was like, "Yeah, girl, you're going to take an art class, you're going to take an English class, you're going to take a history class."

[00:11:43]And I didn't Yeah, I had to take all of them. I took political science. Yeah, I didn't take it that far.

[00:11:47]>> Sociology. I took geology. Why Why on God's green earth would somebody like me take soci- or geology?

[00:11:56]I took world history, too. I'd rather do that.

[00:11:58]>> world history. Um I didn't have to take um I had to take Noah help me out, too, by speaking.

[00:12:05]I think everybody should have to take a speech class. We had a speech lab, which helped. I didn't have to take a speech class because I could just go to the speech lab and do some similar, you know. We had to do one where she said, "Okay, scripture thing out. Your speech is going to be for like 1 or 2 minutes and you have to practice and you have to go there and do your speech."

[00:12:20]>> theater, too, in high school. And I did a monologue.

[00:12:22]>> Yeah, so I was in fine arts, so I didn't have to take another type of arts type of class in college because I tested out cuz it was dual enrollment. So, I had that and I had to do Oh, you was a dual enrollment type of Only had two dual enrollment uh But, you know, even if you only had one, you ate down.

[00:12:36]I never had one.

[00:12:37]>> My little sister is going to go into college like a sophomore or junior.

[00:12:43]What are y'all over there doing?

[00:12:45]>> [laughter] >> She's over there doing stuff.

[00:12:48]Um But, yeah, she got so many credits right now like uh and she got She clearly is the smartest in the family. She got the highest ACT.

[00:12:55]She's going to get an academic scholarship. She's probably going to get TOPS and hopefully she applies to get some other ones. Cuz I'm, you know, she 18. I'm telling her, "Hey, apply to all these other schools. See who's going to give you the most money."

[00:13:05]But, she want to go to wherever her friends say. I'm like, "All right. Just remember, think about what you got to do after that bachelor's cuz you're probably going to have to get a master's or a doctorate to do what you're going to do. That part.

[00:13:13]>> to go to wherever you're going owe the least amount of money." And that's what I told her. And you know, after I I can only tell you. I can't make you do nothing.