What can you really do with a college degree?

High school graduation: "I now present to you the class of ... ." From that moment forward, young people are on their own for the very first time. Young people begin to take on all the responsibility of an adult life, all the stresses of owning their life and growing as a member of society. The kids have now been raised into young adults, and their future is up to them. Yeah, right.

For today's average young adult things are different. Higher education has replaced just getting a good job with a high school diploma. Colleges have evolved from something only elite, preppy white males do, to the norm for all young people, despite gender or race everywhere.

Let's face it, without a degree, what can you really do in today's world? Then again, what can you really do with a degree in today's world?

It's something that has been proven time and time again. Junior goes off to college, spends five years getting his bachelors of subject matter, moves back home to start his new life and quickly finds out that he just wasted the last five years of his life trying to obtain a degree that is getting him nowhere except the job he could have received right out of high school at entry level.

Of course, not all degrees fail people, many help folks succeed. But there are plenty of young adults in Lodi and across this country that are hitting a job market that simply has no room but at the bottom for them.

Now that college has been welded into Americans minds as "the thing to do," what happens to those young people that know what they want to do, but because mom and dad are paying they spend years going after a degree they don't want or need?

This is true for one young Lodi woman by the name of "Amanda." Amanda is in a slump. She, unlike many other people her college age, knows what she wants in life. The problem according to Amanda: her parents also know what they want from her life, and that's a degree.

Amanda wants to take up cosmetology school and in two years be done with it.

"However, I am unable to go to school for that now because I have to get my degree from a school that has barely any credibility," Amanda said, adding, "(I am) majoring in a degree that I have no interest in and bores me to death while my parents pay thousands of dollars for four years when I could just go to cosmetology school for year, maybe two and begin my life. I just feel like I'm wasting my time here."

Here's the real question parents ought to be asking themselves. Are my kids in college because they want to be, or is it because they have to be? As I've observed, most parents shoot their youngin's off after the cap has been thrown without giving things a second glance.

Amanda continues: "I understand that it is important to have a degree under your belt, but I don't understand why everyone is expected to go to college the second (they) graduate from high school."

As I've heard said many times, you only get one life, use it wisely. And while many young people graduate from colleges every year in broad-based majors hoping that they might be able to find something they want to do for the rest of their life, there are thousands that still don't know what to do.

Certainly college has its perks, right?

"The lifestyle isn't bad, who could complain about having their room and board paid for while living on your own far away from home. I know I can't. It's just the fact that I am being forced here against my will," said Amanda.

Amanda is one of those people I referenced above as majoring in something rather broad so she might be able to use the degree at some point in her future if need be, but cosmetology and a family is what Amanda says is on her mind for the future.

Another negative for Amanda is what she calls a corrupt college system where opinions of professors and alcohol are all that matter. "You learn nothing but how to do keg stands and defend your opinion to closed minded people," said Amanda.

Amanda admits that she feels very fortunate to have a family that supports her, but she has grown increasingly aware that she is wasting her time and her parents' money. So the questions remain: How many other young adults are on this exact same route in life? How many young adults know what they want and a college career is just getting in the way? How many parents think they know what's best for their kids, even if their kids don't think it's best?

Wade Heath is a college student and editor of the Lodi Youth Perspective: http://www.youthlodi.blogspot.com. He can be reached at: reachwade@lycos.com.

First published: Tuesday, September 19, 2006