Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig getyourdegreehere.com. NS
Answer
getyourdegreehere.com. 5 NS ns-932.awsdns-52.net.
getyourdegreehere.com. 5 NS ns-1289.awsdns-33.org.
getyourdegreehere.com. 5 NS ns-1588.awsdns-06.co.uk.
getyourdegreehere.com. 5 NS ns-383.awsdns-47.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0