Jeremy Peer
- Jeremy Peer felt stuck at his $60,000 accounting salary but can't afford to go to business school.
- A TikTok account inspired him to pursue business analytics as a career switch.
- His SQL data analytics training was only $250, and he's working towards a free Microsoft certification.
It took Jeremy Peer 10 years to pay off $40,000 in student loans for his bachelor's degree in accounting. Now, he's taking online courses to land a higher-paying job in business analytics instead of shelling out tens of thousands of dollars on business school.
During the pandemic, Peer moved from his hometown of Detroit to Colorado Springs mainly to explore the outdoors. But he also moved to Colorado for its diverse mix of industries and job stability compared to Michigan.
"Everything around there is kind of based around the automobile industry and manufacturing," Peer told Insider. "When the industry goes down, they all slow down with it, which we learned in, you know, 2008, 2009."
There's one problem. "I cannot currently afford a house," Peer said.
The 34-year-old makes around $60,000 a year as a staff accountant for a non-profit in Colorado Springs, according to documents viewed by Insider. "I want a house to have a stable place to raise a family someday and a place to call my own to retire in," he said.
But moving up in the accounting world to afford a house would be costly. "That would be probably more college and more money and more time — a lot of time," he said. "I didn't want to do that."
Then one day in the fall of 2021 Peer saw a TikTok showing him it was possible to land a high-paying job without going back to school. Now he's building up skills to work as a business intelligence or data analyst.
Peer is part of a growing movement of Americans realizing that racking up degrees isn't necessary to secure good-paying jobs. Today, fewer Americans are going to college to avoid student debt and find jobs when work is plentiful. At the same time, a number of states and companies have dropped degree requirements to fill vacancies, instead focusing on skills and offering training courses to recruit workers. Americans are waking up to the fact that you can build skills and get hired without going to school, or back to school in Peer's case.
You might just need skills — not a fancy degree — to land a job
With his student loans paid and new life in Colorado, Peer wants a house. He just needed a job that would allow him to afford one, and without taking on more student loans.
Swiping through TikTok, Peer came across a video of Hannah Maruyama, who runs the Degree Free TikTok account and podcast with her husband, explaining how she got a job with Salesforce making $70,000 a year with no college degree, even though the job required one.
"Okay, how does she do this?" Peer recalled thinking at the time. He started listening to the Degree Free podcast and reading their newsletter and learned that Maruyama got hired after completing a Salesforce certification in just over a month.
"The company wanted to see that she had the skills to do the job that they needed," he said.
Peer realized he too could build skills instead of going back to school.
From Degree Free, he learned business intelligence and data analysts are some of the most in-demand jobs in part because "it's such a relatively new field" and "it's not something that's really taught at colleges," he said.
Echoing Apple CEO Tim Cook, Peer explained companies like Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce have "all created their own pathways or education courses or certification path because people are not coming out of colleges with the skills that these companies are looking for."
"When I learned you could actually get jobs in that field with self-taught courses," he said, "That's when Degree Free kind of pushed me over the edge, or confirmed what I had been thinking," he said.
Learning from Degree Free what courses exist and how to restructure his resume to get interviews, Peer said he "hunkered down and took that four-month course" in SQL data analytics for $250 over four months. When he completed it in January 2023, he started applying to jobs. Peer said he's started Microsoft Learn's Power BI course, which is free and includes 10 hours of instruction, to enhance and legitimize his SQL skillet with a Microsoft certificate. That's a far cry from the $20,000-$30,000 price tag he was looking at for MBA programs.
"This is something I can do right now and get a raise versus being in a master's degree, a CPA, which would be another three years probably," he added.
"That should be enough to launch me over the top into a new, higher paying career," Peer said over email. "It will be life changing for me."
Peer said an analyst could expect to make $75,000-$90,000 in the Colorado Springs area where he lives. Indeed, a career site, reported that $89,000 was the average salary for a data analyst with less than one year of experience. And unlike accounting, Peer wouldn't need to go to school to make more money as a data engineer or scientist.
Technology is leaving college in the dust
"What is taught to all young people, including myself, is this: graduate from high school, go to college. Doesn't matter what degree it is," Peer said, "you have to get something in order to be successful in life."
That philosophy led him to graduate in 2015 with a bachelor's degree in accounting because "the job field just seemed much more stable," he said. "Before that I was actually going into computer science."
However, "Technology changes very fast," Peer said, "and it's hard, hard to keep up with."
As an accountant for a Detroit-based distribution firm back in 2019, he saw firsthand the business need for analyzing large data sets.
"I saw this new technology as a new opportunity," he said.
Though Peer said college "still provides value" and is "definitely still an important part of society," the specialized skills demanded in the job market make him think "a generic college degree is not as relevant anymore."
For those considering college, he suggested exploring "free resources before going into debt to try and do something they may or may not like doing."
Have you built a career without a degree? Tell your story to this reporter at edodd@insider.com.