Editor’s note: This article synthesizes an interview with Rick Edelman, founder of Edelman Financial Engines (~$300 billion AUM, 1.3 million clients), author, crypto educator, and founding head of the new School of Financial Planning at Rowan University. Sponsor segments and show transitions are omitted for clarity.
Edelman—now a strategic adviser and board member after stepping back from day-to-day firm leadership—returned for a wide-ranging conversation on the future of college, why financial planning may resist AI longer than most professions, and what’s driving the latest crypto drawdown.
“The Truth About College”: Getting In Isn’t the Hard Part
Edelman’s book The Truth About College (released December 2025, debuted at #1 on Amazon) argues American families obsess over admission—and ignore whether college still works for most students.
His core statistics:
- 24% of college freshmen drop out
- Less than 60% graduate within six years
- 10 years after graduating, fewer than half work in jobs that required their degree—most are in roles that required no degree
- Average cost approaching $250,000; average undergrad debt about $30,000
- 50% of today’s college students have been clinically diagnosed with depression
He is not anti-college. His premise: for most kids, college remains the best path—if done correctly. Too many choose the wrong school, wrong major, and too much debt, and emerge unprepared for today’s workforce.
The roadmap he offers: graduate in four years, debt-free, on the dean’s list, with a degree aligned to a field they love—with alternatives (vocational paths, etc.) when college isn’t right now.
Elite Schools Don’t Fix the Stats
When pressed on sending kids to prestigious universities for social networks and character-building, Edelman said the troubling outcomes persist even at elite and Big Ten schools. Two principles he cited:
- An average kid at a great school will have an average life. A great kid at an average school will have a great life. It’s more about the student than the sticker.
- 85% of incoming freshmen are undeclared; 80%+ change majors; 60% change schools—often at heavy cost when credits don’t transfer (new schools may reject 43% of prior credits, extending time and expense to years five and six).
For wealthy families, a costly detour may be absorbable. For average borrowers, “finding yourself” on campus can become a financial trap.
Colleges as Salesmen—and a Coming “Free College” Era?
Edelman compared many institutions to car salesmen: maximizing enrollment and revenue without fiduciary duty to students. Examples he raised:
- Lazy rivers on seven campuses—amenities to attract 17-year-olds
- On-campus food banks for food-insecure students
- Remedial English and math—signaling students weren’t ready for college-level work
- Out-of-state tuition gaming at state schools chasing higher-paying non-residents
- Graduate-outcome marketing with survivor bias—showing employed graduates, not dropouts
Counter-trends: elites like Brown, Harvard, Yale, MIT offer free or heavily subsidized tuition for families under $100,000–$200,000. Edelman predicts that within 20 years, college may be free broadly—like K–12—with community colleges already free in many states and guaranteed transfer paths to four-year state schools.
Nationally, enrollment is down about 15% versus a decade ago—easier to get in, harder to stay and graduate. That, he said, is the real crisis.
Rowan University: Training 500 CFPs a Year
Edelman is founding head of the School of Financial Planning at Rowan University in New Jersey (~30 minutes outside Philadelphia). The program will offer a minor, major, master’s, and online track, with goals to produce 500 CFP-ready graduates annually at scale.
The talent gap he highlighted:
- ~1,500 U.S. business schools graduate 250,000+ business/finance/marketing/accounting majors yearly
- Fewer than 200 schools offer financial planning degrees, producing under 4,000 planners a year
- A McKinsey estimate: 100,000 advisors may exit the profession over the next decade
Why the imbalance? Most 18-year-olds—and parents, guidance counselors, and even business schools—don’t know financial planning exists as a fiduciary profession. Programs often sit outside business schools (e.g., under home economics at Ohio State). Kids say “wealth management” or “private equity” without understanding who actually owns the client relationship.
Edelman Financial Engines funded the Rowan initiative with a $10 million gift and plans internships and career paths across its 175 offices. The model will start with New Jersey high-school outreach, then replicate nationally—“in a box” for other universities—with certificate programs in tax, estate, retirement, and college planning for career changers.
Why Financial Planning May Outlast AI
Edelman called financial planning a potential “last man standing” profession: at its core, a human relationship. Clients intimidated by money want someone to say, “I got this—don’t worry about it.”
- Self-directed investors have held steady at roughly 30% for decades—the other two-thirds aren’t rushing to chatbots
- Robo pioneers like Wealthfront and Betterment now employ CFPs and build referral networks to human advisors
- Advisers will use AI behind the curtain—like tax software today—while clients value personalized synthesis: how does all this noise apply to my life?
The host’s framing—that a trusted human adviser’s attention will feel like a luxury in a sea of bot interactions—Edelman endorsed. His line: “AI won’t put you out of business. The adviser using AI will.” Accounting, he suggested, may be automated decades before planning is.
Crypto Winter 2026: Death by a Thousand Cuts
Edelman—an educator via the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals (DACFP), not a money manager—called the first half of 2026 brutal for digital assets. By his count, this may be roughly the sixth “crypto winter” using 50%+ drawdowns as the threshold.
Headwinds he cited:
- Bitcoin down ~50%; Ethereum and Solana down roughly 75%
- About $4 billion drained from popular crypto ETFs in a 10-day stretch
- Capital rotating to AI names—SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic—away from Bitcoin
- Broken correlations: Bitcoin fell while gold held up; semiconductors doubled as Bitcoin halved
- GENIUS / Clarity Act stalled on Capitol Hill—crypto firms and banks fighting over stablecoin yield; Polymarket pricing low odds of passage by year-end
- Michael Saylor’s Strategy sold 32 Bitcoin (first sale since 2022) to fund a preferred dividend—then bought 1,500+ a week later, shaking conviction narratives though Edelman said it wasn’t a market call
The Bull Case: Tokenization and Institutional Buildout
Despite prices, Edelman sees a massive disconnect between market action and infrastructure:
- Tokenization of securities, cash (stablecoins), and ETFs—BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, State Street, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan racing to add products
- Crypto ETFs: ~9 at launch in 2024, nearly 200 now; BlackRock filed an income ETF targeting 15% yield
- 95% of endowments and pensions without Bitcoin exposure said they plan to allocate; 76% of current allocators plan to increase
- Morgan Stanley reportedly wants advisers to allocate 4% of client assets to crypto
- NYSE and NASDAQ partnering on real securities tokenization—not synthetic replicas like a controversial Robinhood venture attempt—with potential 24/7 trading and T+0 settlement
His answer to “then what?” after 17 years of crypto: tokenization is the point—moving illiquid assets on-chain, driving transaction volume and, he argues, underlying coin demand as trillions of on-chain settlements accumulate fees.
DACFP’s annual conference saw a 60% attendance jump even with Bitcoin down 50%—a sign advisers feel they can no longer ignore client holdings.
Bottom Line
Edelman’s through-line across three topics: narrative lags reality. Parents chase admission while graduation and career fit matter more. Students overlook financial planning while firms face a looming advisor shortage. Crypto prices crater while institutions build rails that didn’t exist five years ago. For advisers, his practical message is consistent—meet clients where they are (college bills, career anxiety, crypto questions) with human judgment augmented, not replaced, by technology.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Is Rick Edelman against sending kids to college?
A: No. He argues college remains the best path for most students—but families focus too much on getting in and too little on graduating on time, debt-free, with the right major. His stats highlight dropout rates, underemployment, debt, and mental-health strain—not a blanket anti-college stance.
Q: What is Edelman building at Rowan University?
A: The School of Financial Planning, where he is founding head. Backed by a $10 million gift from Edelman Financial Engines, it aims to produce up to 500 CFP-ready graduates per year through undergraduate, graduate, online, and certificate programs—and replicate the model nationally.
Q: Why does Edelman think financial planning can survive AI?
A: He believes the profession rests on trusted human relationships and personalized judgment clients don’t want to outsource to bots. Advisers who adopt AI as a back-office tool may thrive; those who ignore it may lose to AI-augmented peers—while pure robo platforms increasingly add human planners.
