Degrees Without Doors

We were told that education was the key. That if we worked hard, got our bachelor’s, maybe even a master’s, the world would open its doors to us. Instead, most of us find ourselves clutching keys to locks that don’t exist. The majority of graduates aren’t in the jobs they dreamed of, studied for, or even wanted. They’re in the jobs they could get. Survival roles. Positions that were available, not fulfilling. We trade passion for paychecks, curiosity for consistency. The system has no space for us to thrive—only for us to squeeze in where we fit.

The job market is supposed to reflect progress, opportunity, and innovation. But it feels broken, stagnant, suffocating. Instead of new positions being created to match new generations, we wait. Wait for someone older to retire. Wait for someone above us to die. Careers don’t open through creativity—they open through vacancy. And while we wait, companies proudly stretch budgets by outsourcing work. Even jobs for American companies, meant for American graduates, slip away overseas because someone in another country can be paid less. It becomes a race to the bottom: who can be exploited more cheaply? The one with the student loans and rent due, or the one across the border with a lower cost of living? Talent, education, and passion collapse under the weight of numbers on a balance sheet.

Living near the border only sharpens the wound. It’s not just a line between nations; it’s a line between opportunities. Every application feels like a silent competition against someone unseen, someone cheaper, someone more “cost-effective.” Remote work—once hailed as freedom—has turned into another battlefield. When companies can shop globally for labor, they don’t look for who is best, they look for who is cheapest. The degree in your hand means nothing when the algorithm has already filtered you out.

It feels embarrassing, almost laughable, that in a country of such wealth and technology, careers don’t expand with the people who need them. We are told to be grateful for scraps. We are told that patience is a virtue, that one day those “above” us will move on and we can slide into their roles. But what kind of system requires us to wait for death in order to live? Instead of creating new spaces for new voices, the world clings to the old. The workforce is clogged, innovation is stifled, and ambition is starved. We graduate into waiting rooms, not workplaces.

Philosophy teaches that work should give meaning, tying our fleeting lives to something greater. But now, work has been stripped of meaning. It has become only survival, a contract of exhaustion. Degrees were supposed to be doors; instead, they are paper reminders of a promise never kept. We live suspended—competing not for growth, but for scraps. Competing not for the chance to thrive, but simply for the right not to drown. And in that suspension, hope itself becomes fragile.

Maybe religion comforts us in death, and maybe education was meant to comfort us in life. Both promised light in the darkness, both promised meaning. But just as death remains uncertain, so does the promise of the job market. And so I sit here, near a border both real and invisible, wondering how long we must keep waiting. Wondering if the next generation will inherit keys that open doors, or if they too will carry degrees without locks, dreams without spaces, and ambition without air.