Transcription
Hey, my name's Will, and I don't know what to do. I'm 25 years old. Um, and I feel like I'm in a pretty unique position, a little bit of a unique position. It's definitely becoming more and more common. Um, if you are somebody who is thinking about going to college, please watch this video. If you are in college, please watch this video. Um, if you're in the tech field at all, or if you have kids that are thinking about going to college or in college, please watch this video. If you're in your 20s or 30s and you're stressed out about the state of the world and not sure what to do, please watch this video. Uh, I'm right there with you.
So, I have two bachelor's degrees. I have a BSBA in cyber security. [Music] And I have a BSBA in business process management, both from the University of Louisville. I graduated in spring of 2023. Now, we're going to get to why these aren't doing anything for me at all. Um, but they cost me over $100,000, so I still don't want to set them on fire or anything, do anything crazy like that. It would be good for views. I have tried making this video multiple times. Um, I don't I cannot recommend to anyone to go to college. I can't recommend it. Uh, unless you're going to a couple very specific fields. Um, and we'll get to that. For the general public, I don't think you should go to college. I don't. Now, if your life goes down on some crazy trajectory, uh, and you know, 10 years from now, don't hit me up or whatever and be like, "Oh, I should have done something different." Based on the state of the world right now, based on my personal experiences, based on uh the dozens and dozens of people I know who have colleges, college degrees, and who are currently not using them. But I want to provide my opinion a as I feel like it's this is a developing issue that's getting worse and worse and my particular stance is a little bit unique.
I have always been a try-hard, I guess, in education. Um, I took all AP classes throughout high school. I took five engineering classes in high school when other people were just doing math and science and whatever. I had an aerospace engineering class one year. I had a civil uh engineering class one year. Um, I I took I took 12 AP classes throughout high school and I also went to school an hour extra in the mornings uh and drove to community college and took three or four community I took four community college classes during high school along with 12 AP classes. I did not get any kind of assistance um with my degrees with college. Um, U of L out the gate, I believe is around $25,000 a year. Um, I went to I went for five years, came out with two degrees. Um, now, when I was in high school, um, 17, 18 years old, um, I remember going to scholarship websites and they would be like, "We have 300 or 400,000 scholarships on this website." And then it would have a place to put in like your filters to filter for ones that um, fit you, right? Like there's there's scholarships for art that I would have not qualified for because I wasn't getting an art degree. Um, but I remember going to this one website in particular and I spent a lot of time applying for scholarships. Uh, I remember this one website, it was like, we have 360-something thousand scholarships listed on this website. And then I put in my filters and I selected white and I selected male and then I selected engineering and it cut 360-something thousand down to 200.
Now, I want to preface that I am not, you know, I I want like everyone to have access to higher education. That's not what this is about. It's not about me saying that, you know, other people or, you know, other people are getting scholarships and I'm not or whatever. It's I'm not trying to say anything like that. It's purely a demographic thing. I believe because engineering is a predominantly white male field, it is so companies and organizations and and the school itself is not going to go, "Hey, we definitely need more white men in engineering, so we're going to hand out this money for it." Right? Like I had a lot of friends in engineering who kind of fit in that demographic and didn't really like weren't really offered very many scholarships. Like you get the scholarships when you go to, you know, now women, women in engineering, we need more women in engineering. We def we actually really do. So, there's a lot more scholarships for um women in in engineering because they're trying to make sure that everybody has access to every field. That makes sense. I'm fine with that. My gripe is with the cost of college itself and with the way that government loans work because I'm [ __ ] Like, I I actually believe I'm [ __ ].
So, um, needless to say, I wasn't really able to get any scholarship stuff. Um, I had a couple grand every year through this thing called Keys Money, uh, which is a thing funded by the Kentucky Lottery. Um, so I got a couple grand, uh, for having good grades from the state. That was it. Um, I tried applying for Pell Grants and stuff like that. Um, but my parents um both own businesses. They both own they're very small businesses and they um they were like $1,000 over the threshold of me being able to get state assistance. So, I grew up like lower middle to middle class um in a pretty rundown neighborhood. Um, and without giving away too many details about myself here, like I mean, I didn't have a great upbringing. Um, I've dealt with, you know, abuse from my mother and stuff like that my entire life. Um, I don't want to really get into that in this in this video. Um, but I I didn't have an amazing upbringing. And again, my parents met that th they were they exceeded that threshold for me getting uh help for college to pay for college by like a grand. Had they been had they made a tiny bit less money, I would have half the debt I have right now or less. But because they exceeded that threshold, FAFSA said no. They said I don't get any help at all, but my parents don't make enough money to help me. So, they made a tiny bit too much for the government to help me go to college, but they don't make enough to actually pay for any of my stuff.
So, right now, I owe my dad about um well, before we get into that, um my dad when I was 18, he took out a bunch of Parent PLUS loans. Now, Parent PLUS loans are loans that are for college through the parent. So, the loan technically falls on my dad. It's his responsibility to pay technically. Um, but as somebody who likes my father and sees that he is having trouble paying his bills, um, it it's my responsibility through through the government. It's not, but he took it out so that I could go to college. Um, and he had good intentions, so I have to pay him back. Uh, and I I understand that. Um, so I have $43,000 uh in student loan debt through my father and then I have another $22,000 um that was taken out on me. So, I have about $64,000, $65,000 in student loan debt as of right now. Um, on an income-derived repayment plan, um, I owe about $200 a month on my loans, but my father, because he owns a business and whatnot, um, and it goes off of his numbers and not mine, they can't reduce his loan. They can't refinance. They can't consolidate it. They can't transfer to me. That's not how Parent PLUS works. He owes almost $500 a month for my student loans. So that puts me at $200 a month to pay off my loan and almost $500 a month to pay off his loan. I think the total comes out to about $650, $670 every month that I have to pay for student loans for degrees that are not doing anything for me. And that's minimum payments. Um, I'm going to probably, unless I come into money, um, I am set to be paying $650 a month for at least the next 10 years. That's [ __ ]. That's really [ __ ].
Um, these degrees have not done anything for me. Um, like I said, I have a degree in cyber security and I have a degree in business process management. So what I wanted to do was I wanted to go into data analytics. I wanted to climb the corporate ladder and work with data. I love working with data. Um, and that's what I wanted to do. Now, COVID started, so I only got two years of like the quote-unquote college experience, right? Um, and I never I worked really hard during college. I didn't join a frat or a sorority. I only hung out with my friends like twice a week on campus. Um, I would wake up at the ass crack of dawn. Um, and study before my classes. I would have classes until like 4:00 or 5:00, get my homework done, and then uh work a part-time job. Um, I cooked food on campus, so wasn't making, you know, wasn't exactly making any money there. Just barely enough to to afford food during college. Um, so two years in, COVID starts and everything goes online. Um, and it's not like today where now they have those systems in place, right? I mean, my professors were scrambling at the start of COVID to try and get everything in place to where they could feel like they were still teaching people. Um, and what that amounted to was basically we would go to class with masks on and just had more work. Like I would have to wear, which I'm fine with this, right? Like I'm not a COVID denier or anything. I'm just saying it kind of ruined my college experience because we still had to pay an I still had to pay an assload of money to go to this college. But I wasn't allowed to talk to anybody or do any activities. All of our school clubs got shut down. I was in a couple school clubs. I was very active on campus. So all the clubs got shut down. I couldn't talk to anybody. Like the school cafeterias and everything were closed. I lost my job. Um, and then I was like, I need to deal with this student loan crisis that I'm going to have for the next 10 years.
So, um, if you go to U of L, there's actually this pretty cool program. It's called the UPS Earn and Learn program. Um, and basically students can load airplanes overnight and UPS will pay for your college while you work there. Um, so I already had three years of college debt at this point. Um, but for my last two years, almost almost my last two years straight, um, I worked at UPS and loaded airplanes overnight. um, which is very hard to do when you're getting two degrees and you you have 15 to 20 credit hours every year, every semester. So what I would do is I scheduled to have later classes. So I would go to class around 10 or 11 in the morning. I would have classes until about 3:00 or so. Um, and then I would do homework from like homework and eat food, basically is all I did after that. Um, I worked like five, six hours a day, studied. Um, I was on the Dean's List for four years straight. Um, during my five-year stint of college. So the last four years I was on the Dean's List. So I did four or five hours of classes. I would study, eat food, and then at 10 or 11 p.m. at night, I would drive to the UPS World Port, um, which is like the world's largest cargo airport or whatever. Uh, and I would load airplanes from midnight to 5:00 in the morning. I would then come back, sleep four or five hours, repeat. Um, and then I would basically sleep on the weekends. Um, and and the UPS Earn and Learn program covered, I mean, it saved me probably $50,000. I would have like $50,000 more dollars in debt if it wasn't for that, but that was very, very difficult. I almost am not here today. I I almost ended it several times. And while I was there, there were people who ended it. There was a lady who jumped off um a six-story packaging like mail facility um about 300 or 400 feet away from me while I was waiting for work to start one day. Um, and she was pregnant and she hit the ground and that was it. Um, I knew people there who had had their legs and ripped off um by like people driving these little tractors that carried these giant boxes to load into the airplanes. I almost broke my arm like twice or three times there. I almost had a metal spike driven through my leg uh while loading a 10,000 lb um like a 10,000 lb metal crate um into a Boeing 747. It was very dangerous. Very dangerous. And but I, you know, I did what I could to try and to pay off my loans to try and cover for school so I wouldn't have to get more loans taken out.
And then the semester that I'm supposed to graduate, spring 2023, ChatGPT comes out. Catch, I think, three or four. And the AI revolution started. So the semester that I graduated, to try and get a data analytics job, they all started just getting replaced. Um, now data analytics jobs still exist, but it's significantly harder to get into them. So that brings you to today. I, with two bachelor's degrees, I have only been able to get help desk jobs, which you say, well, that's fine. No, it's not. Help desk jobs don't require bachelor's degrees. I haven't used these. I could have gotten those jobs if I just applied for them straight after high school. I could have gotten them. An interest in computers is enough to work at a call center and answer phones all day, which, by the way, is miserable, miserable work. All I did was get yelled at uh and try and fix systems that I had never even touched before because I, one of the places I worked at was an MSP, which is like you're every CEO in your state's [ __ ] and you've you're you have no proper training on any of their systems at all and you're expected to fix them. Um, another help desk job I worked at, which I'm going to give the company name here, I hope this doesn't get me in any trouble, but Atria. Atria Senior Living. Um, the my boss at the help desk there, she's still there, uh was abusive to her employees, verbally abusive, and would threaten that she was just going to fire us and replace us with an AI or a different software or someone from an MSP or something. And she would hold that over our heads. Uh, and I believe she still does with the workers who are there. Uh, she fired me one day for being 10 minutes late. Um, I had been late a couple times before, um, but not, uh, not a ton, not a lot. Um, and I got stuck in traffic. I sent her a picture of my map saying I was going to be there on time and then the number adjusted and I sent her a picture of me in standstill traffic. Uh, and then I drove down like the median, like the side of the road for like five miles to try and get there on time. And when I got there, she made me work, but was laughing the entire time. And I was like, "I'm not going to work if you're just going to let me go." I knew this lady didn't like me. Uh, because I was like anti-AI. She was trying to get us anyway. Um, anyway, I I I I didn't like her, but um she let me go like right after I caught like the call queue up. Like there was two people out sick or something and there was this huge influx of calls. Um, and as soon as I caught the call queue up, she walked up to my desk and told me that I needed to leave and had me escorted. And then when I complained and asked questions, she laughed at me. Um, and the other help desk jobs I've been at have like the other workers who have been there for years and years and years all told me that there was no climbing there. Even with degrees, they said like the corporate ladder was separate from the help desk and like the help desk, there's no rung that lets you transition over to the corporate side. Um, and three or four different companies, different help desks, an MSP, a call center, that was the case. Every place was just full of people who were down on their luck, who had been answering phones for five plus years, and they they were just like sad people who were lost and didn't know what to do. And none of them had ever been offered a promotion.
So, I've just been moving companies here and there, and still to this day, with two bachelor's degrees, the only jobs I really get offers for are like $17 to $20 an hour, which can't pay my like that that barely pays my rent. That doesn't pay $650 a month in in loans. Um, so that's that's kind of my story is I I couldn't get any scholarships because I was just above the threshold for applying for government assistance. My parents made a tiny bit too much money for me to get any kind of assistance at all, but they didn't they're not very well off. Like they didn't make enough money to help me at all. So, all of all of this $65,000 in debt is on me and it's my responsibility and I can't afford it. And having two degrees, I was told my entire life that a bachelor's degree, if you have a bachelor's degree, you're set. Um, I remember being in high school and there were posters all over the walls and it broke down like these stacks of money and it was like your education level and how much you make on average. Um, and that's not been the case. Like the way that it happened for me with the global pandemic and then having to work overnight to like stay on the Dean's List and keep up my good grades. Like I went to college during a global pandemic and then right before I graduated, AI came out and started taking all the jobs that I went to college for. So now I'm in this limbo state where I'm I'm trying to get like a manual labor job like through some friends uh through some people that I know uh that's like that's not going to use my degree though. I don't think I'm ever going to use this thing is my point. And I'm stuck with that debt for 10 plus years.
So I'm not here to ask for money. I I'm here to share my story. Um, but I also don't want to I don't want anybody in here who is also broke and dealing with uh like this student loan crisis. Please do not like please don't give me anything. Don't. There's so many problems in this world. There's so many people that are struggling way more than me. Um, and I recognize that. I just wanted to share my story. The video cut out for some reason here. Um, I was just saying if there is somebody who is well-to-do out there, um, hit me up. Send me an email. This sucks. I I don't know what to do. Um, those pieces of paper, I don't think they're going to do anything for me. I I I'm very caught up on on uh on AI stuff and being in the industry. The jobs that I went to college to get, I don't think are going to exist in four to five years. But you know what's still going to exist in four to five years? My debt. All this this mountain of debt that is looming over me and keeping me from living an okay life. Uh, every month my dad hits me up and asks for $500. I don't know. I can't tell him no. I can't. So, I'm just going to keep working these very low-wage jobs and trying to make ends meet and I just what am I going to do? Struggle? Just just struggle for the next 10 years? The whole point was you're supposed to go to college and struggle in college and then life is easy breezy beautiful covergirl after that, right? That's what I was told my entire life. My dad said, "If you go get a degree, you're going to be fine." But I think that had I not gotten a degree, I could have worked retail, had five or six years at a retail store and be a store manager right now and make more money as a store manager for some retail place than I am at any of these help desks. Like I could be making at least $24, $25 an hour as a retail manager, but $21, $22 to be all these different CEOs like [ __ ] that they yell at all the time and you know, I'm losing this, I'm losing this amount of money every minute. You need to fix this and it'll be something I've never seen in my life. That's the only job I I am like able to get right now. Apparently the the state of the world is just so messed up. Like so many people my age are just completely drowning. And like I know an older guy who doesn't have kids or a wife or anything like that. You know, he got into it like 15 years ago. So he's he's pretty he's he's doing pretty good. And I talked to him about the economy being horrible and how everybody I know is struggling with student debt and no most people I know aren't using their degrees. Like have I mentioned that my girlfriend, she has a degree in psychology and she realized that staying at her current job she would make more money than being a therapist. So she went to college and is also not using her degree. What's the point? Like why why does college cost $25 or $30 or $40,000 a year and you as an 18-year-old with no older siblings who have gone through this has to sign your life away for like Sally Mae or something. God, I hope I hope nobody watching this has a Sally Mae loan. Those are like 10 to 14% interest. That's just a scam. They need to shut Sally Mae down. But even government loans are like 7%. 7% interest on $80,000. And like most corporate entry-level jobs are like out the window now because of AI. Like where are you supposed to start? They're keeping middle people and they're keeping like seniors and stuff, right? But you have to work your way up or you're supposed to work your way up. Corporations today don't want to train people. Every company I've worked for, like four or five companies now, there's no money for training. They don't have that budget anymore. They don't. They used to walk into jobs and they would train you. They don't do that now. It's Google it. Go talk to another coworker. Figure it out. Like I saw a few days ago the the CEO of McDonald's actually did like this press thing and he basically said that there's a huge divide in this country right now and if you make $100,000 or more, you believe the economy is good. You believe the economy is great and you don't understand everybody else. But if you make less than $100,000 a year, this is probably the most you've struggled in your entire life. I mean, grocery prices are through the roof. I was supposed to pay $7 for a pound of ground beef. I went to McDonald's the other day and it was $12.50 for McDonald's. McDonald's used to be four bucks. In my lifetime, McDonald's was four bucks. I'm only 25. Why is it tripled? What are we doing? What are we doing? Am I supposed to live on ramen? Like, I mean, I could do that, but that's not good for you at all. What What the hell am I supposed to do, guys? I just want to know. Like, I'm not I'm not hopeless. Like, I I I hope that, you know, we can put things in place to help people who are like me and who are stuck with this giant mountain of debt. But that compounded with AI taking all the entry-level jobs has has really just [ __ ] us sideways. Like like I just feel like I'm being gangbanged every day by like help desk just treating me like I'm a number and then getting slapped in the face with debt which like equals the same amount of my paycheck. Like I haven't made savings. I haven't built any savings in over two years. Every time I get a check, it goes out. Every time I get a check, it goes out. And they'll go, "Oh, you got a secret lab. You got a nice chair." I've had this thing for over four years. Over four years. Like, we're not we're not doing good, family. We're not doing good.
Um, I I I'm not I'm not hopeless. I'm not in any any kind of danger or anything like that. Uh, I'm not going to do anything stupid. You know, I haven't been, you know, feeling mentally in in the trenches like that um since since college. I've been good for a couple years here. Um, but it's there's just so much like unprecedented confusion and uncertainty with my generation. I'm I I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen. Like I there's $100,000 in paper sitting on my floor right now and like I'm thinking about getting a job at like a restaurant, which I'm not trying to downplay restaurant work, but why the [ __ ] did I go to college for five years if I'm going to work at a restaurant? It just doesn't make any sense to me. So like if you want to go to college to be an engineer or something um all you know more power to you. If you want to go to college to be a doctor or something like that like you need degrees for these jobs and these jobs are very likely to not go away. You know engineers, doctors, nurses, stuff like that. Um, accounting, finance, uh, most things, it, marketing, um, I mean, we're down here with the art majors now where we are expected to be unemployed. Like, there used to be those jokes about like, oh, we got a gender studies degree or whatever. What are you what job are you going to get with that? Well, now people who get regular degrees are unemployed. So, we're all here together now, guys. We're all here together. We all went to college. We all got scammed out of 100 grand and the next 10 years of our life. We are indentured servants uh to the government. We are not getting any debt relief. They just hold that like a little carrot on a stick. Um, oh, you got to jump a little higher. Oh yeah, we're never getting that [ __ ] dude. We're never getting any debt relief. Um, it's just a [ __ ] joke, man. It's a joke. I don't know what else to say about it. So, thanks for coming to my TED talk.
I tried filming this multiple times. Um, I didn't want to script or anything like that. I tried scripting it out and I was like, that's not genuine. Why am I scripting this? I'm just It's my story. I'm just going to tell it. So, thanks for coming to my TED talk. Um, I did start a company. We are not profitable uh at all. I started a company last year, a very small game development company with my friends. Um, I'm kind of a workaholic, if you can't tell. God, my screen keeps going black. Um, it's called Cowhammer Studios. Uh, we are an indie game development studio. Um, and it's me and just me, my girlfriend, uh, and two of my other friends. We do all our own art, music, code. Um, we do license out some sound effects and stuff, but we don't use any AI. We pride ourselves on not using any AI. Um, that's how we are now. That's how we're going to go forward. And we're currently working on a game called The Forbidden Flask. Um, it would mean the world to me if you would go try it. Um, and if you would support us over there. Um, like I said, we have not made any money at all from that. This is a side thing that we are doing um for fun. But, um, if you want to support me, that's one way to do it. Um, we have a separate YouTube channel over here. So, go over there, try out our game, join our Discord. Um, our Discord is actually the best way to talk to me and the other people on our team. Um, so join that. Let me know what you think about the game. Um, the world is crazy and um, you know, I think it's going to get worse before it gets better. I really hope that they do something about student debt. I I just know so many people that are drowning and suffering right now and can barely put food on the table. Um, it's awful. And we were all fed this fed this thing that, you know, going to college would make us set for life and that was your path to being happy as an adult. It's not true. It's just not it's not the case. I don't think they were lying out of being malicious or trying to get my money or anything like that. Um, but between AI and everything else that's going on, um, and also just the way it works in general where you're just stuck to a help desk forever until you get really lucky. I mean, I I could be doing the same job with a $200 SER that I got online in two weeks. Um, anyway, that's my TED talk. Um, I hope everybody out there is doing okay. Um, if you are stuck with this kind of debt and you're in a hole just like me, leave a comment down below. Um, let's talk about it. We need to There needs to be change. There needs to be change. But I wish you guys the best. Thank you.