A college degree is what a high school diploma used to be.

When I graduated from high school, in the early 1960s, I'll bet at least half my graduating class was glad to be done with school and were ready to enter the work force and make some money. College was for the nerds, the egg-heads.

Fast-forward to now. Your high school diploma will get you a job handing burgers out a window, but so will your college degree, especially if it's in the fields that our society doesn't value: Art or English or Philosophy or Psychology or Sociology, et al.

So you went to college for four years, and what do you have to show for it? Likely not much. You may well still be living at home, with your parents casting worried glances your way.

Of course there are college degrees you can get that guarantee you a good job: Computer Science or Petroleum Engineering or Business. Those are jobs our society values because they produce results (i.e., revenue).

But most of us aren't computer-savvy or math-oriented or interested in business. We went to college because we wanted to know more about something in particular but also about life and lots of other subjects. We read all those books and wrote all those papers and took all those exams because we thought we'd come out on the other end being respected for all that we'd endured and achieved.

Or not.

The sad fact is that so many people go to college these days that the degree is being diluted. It used to be a big deal that you had a degree: now almost everyone has one. And that puts you right back in line for the job you're least qualified for: working at the coffee shop, mixing lattes, or selling clothes in a big box store, or renting movies. All those jobs that require maybe a high school diploma (or not).

So what were those four years for? Good question.

I remember a friend who lived up the street whose dad worked on an assembly line and made enough money to buy his family a two-bedroom house and a car and let his wife stay home.

Those days are gone. They went away when our country shifted from a manufacturing economy to an information economy. Gone are those mind-numbing jobs of fitting this part into that part, for good wages. They've gone overseas, where labor is so cheap as to be mind-boggling: two dollars a day looks good in some cultures.

So you have your degree. Now what? You can teach in elementary or middle or high schools, but only if you've taken the requisite education courses. Otherwise, you're pretty much in the pool of "unskilled workers" -- right alongside the high school graduates.

Maybe you can land a job with the highway people, holding a sign that tells drivers to slow down for road repair ahead. Or handing out those burgers through the window. Fries with that?

The sad point I'm making is that a college degree doesn't mean much any more. It's like a high school diploma used to be. It shows an employer that you had at least enough discipline to stick with the program for four years.

No matter that you went four years PAST high school. You're still just good at something he/she doesn't value: Art or Philosophy or Music or English, et al. Can you type? Do you know how to use Excel? Are you any good on the phone selling whatever product?

We've become a consumer society, where meeting the needs of people who buy things matters much more than knowledge itself. Almost nobody reads these days, at least not what we consider to be good books. They read thrillers and romances, science fiction or fantasy. Escape lit. Nothing to challenge the mind or our pre-conceptions about how life should be.

Are you surprised? You shouldn't be. We've been trending downward in our reading for a long time as the audience tends more and more toward movies and instant feedback. And your degree in the Liberal Arts has become less and less viable in the job market.

There was a time that going to college meant becoming more open to new ideas, more tolerant of other ideolgies, just generally smarter, grounded in the basic philosophies of logic and ethics, well-read in literature, even semi-fluent in a foreign language, able to talk simple psychology or sociology or just politics with another intelligent human. But these traditional attributes of a higher education, which still serve us so well in our day-to-day lives, which enrich us and make us more interesting people, nowadays are downplayed and even de-valued, both in colleges and in our society.

What is valued now, more and more, is your ability to get a good job and make lots of money.
Damn the rest!

So if the sad truth is that a good many college degrees will not guarantee you a better job than if you'd never gone to college at all, where does that leave you? In the coffee shop, probably, at least until you figure out where to go (back to graduate school?).

But while you're pumping those lattes, you can be sure that your customers have someone more interesting to talk to than their average coffee-hawker, and that may keep them coming back.
Bigger tips? You bet.

Hey, you may get to be a manager someday!

(Just don't forget the art and literature and philosophy that got you where you are.)