u/Active-Ad5908

I'm (26M) currently working at my dad's company as a CAD operator. The company is basically me, my dad, and my mom. I finished high school with no interest in college because I was never much of a school person, and I wanted to join the military instead. My parents were completely against it, so I went along with what they wanted and went to school. After every semester, as the loans kept piling up, I would bring up joining the military again, and every time I got the same response. Yeah, I know, major people-pleaser move. Now I'm carrying $230k in debt with a General Studies degree, and somehow I managed to get myself into a doctorate program that I hated almost from the start. I left after about 10 months because I couldn't justify burning any more money.

For context, I wasn't trained for this field and didn't study anything remotely close to it. My dad had basically been running the business alone for about 5 years and needed help, so I joined him thinking I was just doing him a favor. I taught myself the software and figured out how to put the drawings together within about 3 weeks of starting. Now it has turned into my actual job.

At some point early next year, we're supposed to take over another small company, along with its office and 3 employees. My dad has talked about retiring within the next 8-12 years and has said multiple times that he'd like to hand the business over to me. I know that from the outside this probably looks like a good opportunity, but I don't enjoy this work at all. What scares me is that the student debt has put me in such a tight spot that I don't feel like I can take a risk and do anything I want to do. I feel like I'm being boxed in little by little into a life I didn't choose.

Right now I'm paying about $2,300 a month toward the loans, which leaves me with roughly $400-$700 after the rest of my expenses to save or invest. I want to move out soon and start my life, but at this pace it feels like that isn't going to happen anytime soon.

I saw some labor market data a few days ago and honestly it's been stuck in my head. Nearly 46% of new college graduates are working in jobs that don't need a degree at all. The average student loan balance is around $34k, and total student debt is close to $1.8 trillion. And yet somehow the traditional advice is still: go to college, sign the loan papers, and deal with the consequences later, because that's what people do.

I'm not against education at all. I'm just questioning the system itself. Years of lectures, theoretical courses, maybe an internship if you're lucky, and then you graduate and wait for the job market to figure out what to do with you.

Lately I've been looking at other models where people learn by doing things, work across different countries, get exposed to real companies and measurable outcomes. Things like Minerva, Mesa, newer venture-builder programs, etc. I'm not saying they're perfect, but I feel like they're much less disconnected from reality than the regular path.

Has anyone else started to feel how strange it is that the traditional path is still accepted like this???